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StanWelks
Known Participant
February 1, 2011
Question

Advice for vintage fonts?

  • February 1, 2011
  • 2 replies
  • 28631 views

Can anyone recommend some free fonts that would work for a vintage feel for a period from:

1. The 1920's

2. 1930's

3. 1940's?

Thanks!

This topic has been closed for replies.

2 replies

Tai_Lao
Tai_Lao
Inspiring
February 3, 2011

Oh, you also want your "vintage" fonts to be free?

It takes some gumption to post this on the web site of the premier purveyor of fine type.

kendrawolf
kendrawolf
Participant
November 5, 2018

Why not just answer the question instead of giving unnecessary attitude? What is the point? Are we not here to help each other? Or is this a place to shut down people with a genuine interest in figuring things out? I like Ingeborg, Ginger Pro, American Scribe. There are so many others, and many are free, but they take a little time to find.

    T
    Test Screen Name
    Legend
    November 6, 2018

    There are many things which might make a font "vintage". For instance we have design styles. The big styles in architecture and design made their way into fonts, so we have Art Deco fonts (e.g. 20 Art Deco Fonts to Create Retro Logos, Posters, and Websites ~ Creative Market Blog ) Art deco is, I think, mainly associated with the 1920s and 1930s. Don't know how many of these fonts are free.

    But another possibility is to try to make the look of old ordinary documents. These often used poor quality printing processes with a distinctive look, from magazines to playbills, from telegrams to classified adverts. The HP Lovecraft Historical Society specialise in creating documents with a vintage feel, and while not free, $20 will buy 50 very well thought out fonts for particular purposes. https://store.hplhs.org/products/hplhs-fonts https://creativemarket.com/blog/art-deco-fonts

      Tai_Lao
      Tai_Lao
      Inspiring
      February 3, 2011

      Typographically speaking, you're talking about periods that are a mere blink of an eye away, nothing vintage.

      For instance, Times was commissioned and designed in 1931; Futura was designed in 1927; Bauer Bodoni in 1926, etc.

      All of the above, and a bunch of others from the 1920s, 1939s and 1940s are very much in use today, so I doubt you'll be able to get a vintage look via this route.

      If you insist, however, you can go to http://new.myfonts.com/ and type 1920s etc in the search box.  Fonts there are tagged that way too.

      ____________

      Wo Tai Lao Le

      我太老了

      J
      jacobw53246852
      Participant
      October 14, 2019
      What a terrible answer. Those are all period typefaces, obviously he isn't looking for a blackletter from the 1800s. This is an old thread, so I'm sure you won't see this, but hopefully you understand now that Bodoni, Futura and Times were commissioned in the early 1900s, and they are used today, but they don't FEEL modern. There's a huge difference between how something looks and how something feels.
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