Thanks to the rise of modern calligraphy and lettering, fonts with handlettered vibes are emerging everywhere. For those of you who love the look but couldn’t be bothered to lift a pencil, these lovelies might just be what you need.

This beautiful, hand-lettered script font is not ‘free’ when you’ve realised the creator raised $4,006 through Kickstarter to make it!

Now – I’ve never created a font myself (writing and scanning through this Handwriting Font Creator doesn’t count) – so I can only imagine the labour intensive process of building a working computer font, but I think it’s only fair that we shell out a sum of money to buy them. Computer fonts certainly have their own ease of use, what with producing that hand-lettered look instantly and consistently, plus, you won’t have to learn all the different styles.

Personally, I call fonts I recognised in a design by (admittedly snobbish) nature (‘Trebuchet. Gotham… again. Aller. Monotype Corsiva, in a logo, really?’), so as a designer, I wouldn’t want to be too predictable in that sense. And of course I highly endorse old-timey, fully manual hand-lettered everything. However, neither a font nor a handwritten letter is the whole story. A great deal more goes into a finished design: colour, composition, and balance, to name a few. With this in mind, none is superior to the other – each has their own unique qualities to boast. It’s up to us, the designer, to choose and use them to our advantage.

If you do choose to buy a font, remember to check the license agreement. You might need to purchase a different license for a more extended use. It is more expensive, yes, but you get what you pay for. If you hesitate, just imagine trying to create a font from scratch and how long it would take you 😉

S.