Retro script fonts with a mid-century feel
Connected brush and monoline scripts in the manner of 1930s to 1960s advertising, film titles, painted signs and record sleeves.
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For about thirty years in the middle of the twentieth century, the casual script was a staple of commercial lettering. Sign painters and advertising artists wrote brand names with a flat or pointed brush in a quick, confident, forward-leaning hand: baseball teams, soft drinks, motels, kitchen appliances. The letters were chunky, joined by short strokes, and often underlined with a swoosh from the last letter.
Fonts that revive this lettering fall into a few types. Heavy brush scripts with rounded ends feel sunny and informal. Monoline scripts, drawn with a line of constant thickness, recall neon tubes and chrome car badges. Upright connecting scripts with narrow letters come from film titles and hotel signs of the 1930s and 1940s. Each sets a slightly different decade, so it is worth matching the font to the period you mean.
These are wordmark and headline faces. A retro script works for a name, a slogan or a label, usually one or two lines, set large and often on a slant or an arc. Their capitals are designed to lead into lowercase, so never set them in all capitals, and avoid letter spacing, which breaks the joins.
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Pacifico
Inspired by 1950s American surf culture: rounded, connected brush letters in one weight.
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Lobster
Heavy, slanted, joined letters chosen word by word from alternates and letter pairs, the way a lettering artist would, with Cyrillic.
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Yellowtail
A flat-brush script in the tradition of 1930s script faces and sign painters' lettering, mixing joined and unjoined letters.
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Cookie
Brush calligraphy tied to the advertisements and pin-ups of the 1950s, with looped capitals and a joined, slanted lowercase.
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Damion
A connected monoline script modeled on mid-twentieth-century display lettering.
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Sacramento
A monoline, semi-connected script with looping capitals, traced to the brochure hand-lettering of the 1950s and 1960s.
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Parisienne
A thin, casual connecting script with a slight bounce and large looped capitals, inspired by a 1960s advertisement.
Samples load a basic Latin subset of each family. Every family here carries an open license; its page states the terms and offers the original files.
Questions about retro script fonts with a mid-century feel
How do I add the classic underline swash to a retro script?
A few fonts include swash endings as alternates. Otherwise convert the word to outlines and draw the tail from the last letter by hand, matching the stroke thickness.
Why should script fonts not be set in capitals?
Their capitals are drawn as decorative initials that connect to lowercase. In a row they collide and become hard to read.
Can I use these retro scripts on products I sell?
Yes. Most are under the SIL Open Font License and two are under the Apache License 2.0. Both permit commercial use on packaging, signs and merchandise.