In recent years, tattoo-style typography has become a big influence on all areas of design. As a result, there are now hundreds of tattoo typefaces available online for use in your projects, and many won't cost you a penny!
But how do you find free fonts in a tattoo style that rock – the diamonds among the rough? We've scoured the web to find you the top free tattoo fonts for designers. And if it's tattoos you're interested in, take a look at our posts on the best tattoo designs and some more out-there tattoo art.
01. Tuamotu
Tuamotu's tribal flourishes are a real eye-catcher
This South Pacific-inspired tattoo font by Imagex Fonts is really brought to life by its tribal designs within the letterforms. It's free for personal use; contact Imagex if you want to use it commercially.
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02. Always Beside You
Always Beside You is a script font with just a hint of scratchiness
Jonathan Harris is a veritable font monster, with 433 fonts on FontSpace and over 11 million downloads to his credit. For a taste of his skills, check out Always Beside You, a slightly scratchy script font that's perfect for tattoo designs and free for personal use.
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03. Lemon Jelly
No, not that one
This one caught our eye because it shares its name with Fred Deakin's old band; free for personal use, it's a big and friendly-looking script font created by Billy Argel.
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04. Serval
This feline font has some lovely strokes, but it might scratch
This calligraphic font from Maelle.K and Thomas Boucherie is gloriously scratchy and perfect for taking the edge off a too-serious script tattoo. It's free to use, but contact the designers if you have any commercial plans for it.
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05. Tattoo Vieja Escuela 1
If Beavis and Butt-Head got tattoos, it would be one of these
Swish, painstakingly-designed tattoo fonts are all well and good, but sometimes you want a tattoo that looks like it was done in prison with a contraband blade and a ballpoint pen. If so, step up this awesome set of old-school ink from Woodcutter.
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06. Tribal Tattoo
Want a bit of retro class? Get your '90s on with this collection of eye-catching tribal designs, featuring plenty of Celtic knots, stylised dragons, spirit insects and spiky abstract designs.
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07. Sailor Scrawl
Get that nautical look with this salty hand-drawn font from the Out of Step Font Company. Each letterform features a little diamond, and it's free for personal use.
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08. Man Down
We love the bold strokes of this new decorative font from British studio Chequered Ink. Inspired by Maori tattoos, this fantastic tribal font is free for personal use, you can purchase a license to use it commercially.
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09. MOM
Inspired by old-school lettering, designer Rafa Miguel created tattoo font MOM. "I'm a big fan of American traditional tattoos, this is a just a tribute to the great artists that use this style," he comments on Behance. MOM is available for free for both personal and commercial use.
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10. Reditum
The first of a number of stunning scripts in this list designed by talented fontsmith Måns Grebäck, Reditum is a calligraphic font that's guaranteed to add a touch of style to your designs. Free for personal use, it comes complete with a number of glyphs and standard ligatures.
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11. Lina Script
This slick tattoo-style script font has a cheeky touch of graffiti to it. Designed by Vicky Mardian and Måns Grebäck, a full commercial licence will set you back $59 but you can download a free demo for personal use.
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12. Angel Tears
Angel Tears, by Billy Angel, boasts a gorgeous hand-drawn feel. With 128 characters – including upper case, lower case and punctuation – it'll add a distressed look to your designs.
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13. Tribal Dragon
A playful upper-case tattoo font, Tribal Dragon was created by prolific font designer Jonathan Harris and is free for personal use.
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14. Blackletter
Created by Dieter Steffmann, this tattoo font is licensed as freeware, which means that – unlike most on this list – it's available for both commercial and personal projects; no questions asked.
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15. Crux
Crosses are a staple of tattoo design, and this dingbat font by Spanish designer Woodcutter brings together a range of brilliant designs that you can download for free.
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16. Precious
BoltCutterDesign has created a number of free fonts
Designed by BoltCutterDesign, Precious Regular is a traditional, calligraphy-inspired tattoo font that you can download today. The graphic design company have also created a wide range of free fonts, so be sure to check out their site.
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17. Pentagon
Pentagon is a less traditional free tattoo font offering but by no means is it dull. You can download Pentagon for free if it's for personal use – we think plenty of you'll have fun experimenting with this design.
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18. Little Lord
Designer Nick Curtis has produced over eleven hundred fonts – almost five hundred of them freeware fonts, which have been downloaded and enjoyed by over three million people worldwide.
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19. Spring
This free tattoo font entitled Spring, combines the illustrative elements of tattoo designs with the traditional, calligraphy style typography that is often etched with ink.
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20. Rose
Rose tattoo font is free for any personal work
Going with the more handwriting font style, Rose is free for any personal design work. Featuring only capital letters, this is one of those tattoo fonts that's perfect for headlines and eye-catching straps.
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21. VTKS
Consisting of both lower case and capital letters, VTKS Tattoo font is a mix of old and new style tattoo typography. As is often the case with downloads of no-cost tattoo fonts, the creators would appreciate donations and so if you do end up using it, we'd encourage you to be generous!
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22. Cute
Go down the cute route with this tattoo font
This cute font comes in capital letters that makes for a brilliant headline font. The subtle additions to each letter make this one of the more fun and playful tattoo fonts we've seen, and will provide plenty of typography experimentation.
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23. Extra Ornamental No. 2
A fancy approach to tattoo fonts
Extra Ornamental No. 2 is a fancier approach to tattoo fonts, with its extra attention to detail, swoops and shading. As a 'busier' font design, it may only work in bigger scales.
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24. True Love
Davide Cariani is a UX designer and web developer with a passion for typography. True Love was created in his spare time and is his first type experiment. It was inspired by old school tattoo typography; glyphs available include letters, numbers, dash and dot.
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25. Blessed Day
Blessed Day is free for personal use, with commercial licenses available to purchase
Designer Billy Argel has some of the most popular tattoo-style fonts available to download online, Blessed Angel is another one of them. The design is free for personal use only. The commercial version is revised, with additional glyphs, and can be purchased on Argel's website.
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26. Original Gangsta
Since we have quite a few elegant, soft script fonts in this list, we thought we'd add one that's a little more meaty. Original Gangsta is a design by Gilang Purnama Jaya of GP Typefoundry and is available free for personal, non-commercial use only.
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27. Scriptina
Scriptina is by Apostrophic Labs
This elegant script font is one of Apostrophic Labs' most popular designs, with a whopping 5.7milllion downloads to date. Free for personal use, the typeface includes a full set of upper and lowercase letters, numbers and a selection of special characters.
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Next page: 24 more tattoo fonts for your body art...
