Choosing the right font for your t-shirt is one of the most important aspects of t-shirt design. The font can make or break your design because you want the font to flow with your design and be easy to read. Different t-shirt design platforms may have different or unique fonts to choose from. But what’s the best font for t-shirts?
These are some of the best and most commonly used fonts for t-shirts across all platforms:
- Amatic SC
- Bebas Neue
- Butler
- Caveat Brush
- Collegiate
- Damion
- Garamond Pro
- Graduate
- Helvetica
- Interstate Black
- Josefin Sans
- Jost Black
- Lexend Deca
- Lobster
- Montserrat
- Oswald
- Permanent Marker
- Roboto
- Sacramento
- Subway Black
Whether using t-shirt designer software with a Cricut or a dedicated t-shirt website, you can find at least some of these fonts. In this article, I’ll explain why each of these fonts is a good choice for t-shirts, share some tips for choosing the right font, explain how to find new fonts for t-shirts, and more.
What Are the Best Fonts for T-shirts?
There are thousands of fonts, and choosing the best one for your t-shirt design can be difficult. Not to mention that different t-shirt design platforms may have different fonts. However, several fonts can be found on pretty much any website or platform used to design t-shirts.
Below are 20 fonts commonly used for t-shirts. Each of these fonts has certain designs that it works best for due to the font’s characteristics. I’ll provide an overview of each font and explain which types of designs you can use it with.
1. Amatic SC
Amatic SC is a commonly used font all over the Internet for various purposes, but it works well for t-shirts, also. The font is hand drawn and very simple, but it is very effective for designing because it’s unique and stands out. Because of its simplicity, the font is a great choice for designs centered around the outdoors and nature or a simpler way of life in general. If you want to pair it with other fonts, it goes great with other simple print fonts.
2. Bebas Neue
Bebas Neue is a bold and in-your-face sans-serif font, meaning that the letters are free from tails and strokes. It consists of blocky, condensed letters and is generally an all-caps type font suitable for designs where you want the text to stand out. It’s great for branding, headlines, humor, names, and anything else you want to be easily noticed. This font pairs well with other types of block-style lettering, whether bold or not.
3. Butler
Butler is one of the newer fonts, and it’s a serif font, meaning that the letters have tails or strokes on them rather than being traditional block letters. This is a modern take on a classic font style. It’s easy to read and best used on t-shirts where you want the text to stand out and be read easily. It’s not a good choice for smaller text on shirts. It’s great for classic and traditional t-shirt designs and pairs well with other classic-style fonts.
4. Caveat Brush
Caveat Brush is a handwriting-style font in which the letters may have slight variations depending on their location within a word. It’s a playful and whimsical font that is great for short texts and quotes on t-shirts. If you want to avoid the variations in letters, you can use this font with all capital letters, as the style of lowercase letters tends to vary. This font is great for fun t-shirt designs and even kids’ t-shirt designs. It looks great with blocky sans-serif style fonts as well.
5. Collegiate
The Collegiate style of fonts refers to a wide range of fonts that may not look the same but have similar features. The type of collegiate font you get may vary based on the platform you’re using or the font website you download it from. In general, the all-capital letters are extra-bold and outlined with white space for contrast to the dark letters. This font is great for one to two-word phrases on t-shirts but can quickly be overwhelming on the eyes when used for long phrases and quotes. This font is primarily used on college or other academic-style designs, as well as for sports-themed designs. Pair it with simpler block letter style fonts.
6. Damion
Damion is a bold and italic but casual script-style font in which the letters are rounded and give off a fun and whimsical vibe. This versatile font can be used by itself or as an accent font to bolder, block-style fonts. It’s great for humor, branding, and other types of t-shirt designs that only contain words and no additional graphics.
7. Garamond Pro
Garamond Pro was created by Adobe. It’s a timeless font that can be compared to the arguably overused Times New Roman. It’s a standard typographic serif font that is very easy to read. It’s not ideal for fun and whimsical designs but is a great choice for professional or elegant designs. It can also be used with t-shirt designs that feature art or have large blocks of text and is best used by itself than with other font types.
8. Graduate
Graduate is a specific style of collegiate font in which the letters are bold and capitalized but not outlined. Because it’s not as in-your-face, this font is more versatile than other collegiate fonts. But, it should still be used rather sparingly and paired with sans-serif style block fonts if large amounts of text are needed for your design. Like other collegiate fonts, this one is best used for school and sports-themed designs.
9. Helvetica
Helvetica is one of the most widely-used fonts across all aspects of design. It’s a sans-serif typeface that is easy to read and can be used with any other font. The letters are tightly spaced together, as well as wide and tall. Many t-shirt design platforms and software have Helvetica as a font option. It works well with any design but avoid using it for super-small blocks of font because it won’t be easy to read due to the letters being tightly spaced.
10. Interstate Black
Interstate Black is a bold font variation in the Interstate font family. This font is thicker than other Interstate fonts but still easily readable. The font was inspired by the font used on highway and interstate signs while traveling, so it’s designed to be noticeable. It’s great for t-shirt designs that are serious, professional, or you just want to be able to read easily. Because of the name, this font is also a great choice for travel-themed t-shirt designs.
11. Josefin Sans
Josefin Sans is a sans-serif, geometric style typeface with a vintage 1920s art-deco style. It looks best when a large font is used, so it’s great for t-shirt designs with text only or with a small graphic. Some describe the font as being delicate, so you don’t want to use it with other font styles that may overpower this font. It’s also best to make the font color contrast with the t-shirt color as much as possible to ensure that the font is easily readable.
12. Jost Black
Jost Black is a standard, sans-serif-type font. It’s the bold version of the Jost font family and is inspired by 1920s German-style fonts. This is another versatile font with many uses for t-shirt designs, including headlines, branding, names, humor, and other casual designs. It’s a thicker font and looks good with lighter fonts.
13. Lexend Deca
Lexend Deca is another standard, sans-serif-type font created to improve reading proficiency. That means that this font is supposed to be very easy to read. It’s a very clean and simple font that is great for casual and professional t-shirt designs and branding. It works well with bold-style fonts and serif or sans-serif block fonts.
14. Lobster
Lobster is an OpenType font which means that the letters can have different variations depending on where they are in the word. This font is like a combination of script and standard print font styles, in which some letters connect to each other and others don’t. This is a great font for quotes on t-shirt designs. It can pair well with graphics and other font styles, including other scripts or standard block letters.
15. Montserrat
Montserrat is a simple and minimalistic font widely used on t-shirt design websites and platforms. It’s inspired by the font used on signs in the Buenos Aires neighborhood of Montserrat. This font is clean and easy to read, especially when all capital letters are used. It works well for curved designs and designs with singular text. But if your design has multiple lines or styles of text, Montserrat works well as the second or third line of text you read since it looks great in smaller sizes. It also looks great with two other fonts on this list: Oswald and Roboto.
16. Oswald
Oswald is a newer sans-serif font that was created in 2011. It’s another simple, clean, and minimalist font and it’s widely used for all types of design purposes due to being easy to read. It looks good in large and small font sizes, especially for t-shirt designs with a lot of text. You can also pair it with other simple fonts, such as Montserrat and Roboto. But it looks good when paired with any other font style as well.
17. Permanent Marker
Permanent Marker is so-named because it looks like it was written with a permanent marker. This bold font is textural and designed to mimic handwriting, so it’s a great casual but fun font. It looks best in all capital letters and is great for text-only t-shirt designs or shirts with minimal graphics, especially if the font color contrasts greatly with the shirt color.
18. Roboto
Roboto is a standard sans-serif font in which the letters are curved instead of blocky. It’s bold and modern but not rigid, and the font looks natural and easy to read. This font works well for professional and business-oriented shirt designs for branding, headlines, names, and more. It looks great with other standard fonts, such as Montserrat and Oswald, but it also looks good with script and italic fonts.
19. Sacramento
Sacramento is a script font that is in between formal and casual. It’s inspired by hand-lettering in the 1950s and 60s. It’s a very clean font that is great for t-shirt designs that are simple and feminine. You can pair it with sans-serif standard block fonts such as Montserrat, Oswald, and Roboto, but avoid pairing it with other script fonts. But Sacramento stands out and has a commanding presence, so it’s best used as the largest or main font of your design.
20. Subway Black
Subway Black is a bold, standard font in which the letters are rounded and slightly curved, giving them a puffy appearance. It’s a semi-serif font, meaning some letters have tails and strokes and others don’t. Some describe the font as retro, but it’s a great choice for casual t-shirt designs that are humorous or athletic. Being a bold font, Subway Black pairs well with lighter or more traditional fonts, such as Helvetica.
Best Font for T-Shirts on Cricut
If you primarily use a Cricut for designing and creating your t-shirts, you may wonder what the best font for t-shirts on the Cricut software is. After all, Cricut has many fonts included in the Design Space, and the selection can be overwhelming.
Of course, it depends on the overall design, but generally, sans-serif and serif fonts are the most versatile and can be used for pretty much any design because they look good in capital, lowercase, or a mix of letter styles. Here are some of the most popular sans-serif and serif font styles that look great on t-shirts:
- Beach Bum
- Dear John
- Four Seasons
- Kyden
- Poker Night
- Rockwell
- Street Signs
- Typewriter
Cursive script fonts are also popular with Cricut and can give way to many trendy designs. Some of the most popular and best fonts for t-shirts on Cricut in the cursive and script style include:
- Babette
- Brush Script
- Chloe
- Embassy
- Mahogany
Fonts for Vintage T-Shirts
If you’re looking for fonts for vintage t-shirts, there are several good ones to choose from. Of course, it depends on what software or platform you’re using because the font choices can vary. But from the list above, the best ones to use are:
- Josefin Sans
- Jost Black
- Sacramento
- Subway Black
Other great fonts for vintage t-shirts that weren’t mentioned above include:
- Budge
- Java Heritages
- Nickson
- No. Seven
- Rumble Brave
You can find and download these fonts on various font websites by doing a Google search. And, of course, if your vintage shirt design is sports or academic-themed, Collegiate is a good font choice because it can work for vintage or contemporary designs.
Best Cursive Fonts
The list above only listed two cursive fonts simply because cursive fonts aren’t as popular all around as standard print fonts. However, from the list above, the two best cursive fonts are Damion and Sacramento. Damion is more casual, while Sacramento is feminine and a mix between casual and formal. Lobster is also a great font if you want something that mixes cursive and print.
Other great cursive fonts that didn’t make our list include:
- Aguafina Script
- Brody
- Fancier Script
- Great Vibes
- Lavender Script
- Pacifico
- Petit Formal Script
- Satisfy
What Is the Best Font Size for T-Shirts?
There is no standard answer for what the best font size for t-shirts is. It just depends on the size of the t-shirt, as well as the design and whether the text is going to be the only thing on the shirt or if there are going to be graphics and images as well.
On a large adult t-shirt, the recommended font size for text-only designs is between 9 and 12 inches for standard fonts. But the font may need to be smaller if you’re incorporating graphics on your t-shirt or have multiple lines of text. It also depends on the font style because some fonts, such as scripts, tend to be smaller than traditional block fonts.
Fortunately, most t-shirt design software has a tool you can use to experiment with different fonts and font sizes. That way, you can see how different sizes will look on your shirt and you can adjust as necessary.
Tips for Choosing the Right Font
There are thousands of fonts out there and choosing the right one for your design can be overwhelming. It helps if you narrow down a few fonts and then make your final decision.
The easiest place to start is by choosing fonts that are appropriate for the design style of the t-shirt. For example, if you intend to do a professional design for a business or event, you may not want to use whimsical or fun fonts and opt for block letters or sans-serif style fonts.
Once you’ve narrowed down the general style of fonts you’re looking for, you can choose two or three favorites and experiment with them. Place each of them on your design and play around with the sizing and location of the font as well.
Finally, once you’ve narrowed your choices to one or two, you want to ensure it’s easy to read. That means you may have to play around with the size somewhere and choose the font color and t-shirt color carefully.
This is where the design tools on various websites come in handy. But the good news is that once you’ve narrowed down the fonts that go with your design, choosing the right one shouldn’t be nearly as difficult.
Where to Get Fonts
Most t-shirt design programs and platforms come preloaded with many fonts. Some fonts are standard fonts that you can find on pretty much any design platform. Others may be unique to that website or software, as is the case with Cricut.
That being said, you may find a font that you like that isn’t on our list, or you may not see exactly the type of font you’re looking for. You can visit websites like Google Fonts or Font Squirrel for a massive directory of free online fonts. Other websites may offer paid fonts or font collections as well.
What If a T-shirt Design Website Doesn’t Have a Certain Font?
Many t-shirt design websites all come with similar standard fonts. But if you find one you like that another website doesn’t have, you can often visit one of the font websites mentioned above, search for the font, and download the file for the font you want.
Then, many websites have a tool that allows you to upload files for certain fonts after you’ve downloaded them from the font website. However, sometimes you may have to contact customer service to have a font added, so it just depends on the website and what kind of tools and features they have on hand.
Some of them allow you to add new fonts for free, while others may charge you. And in some cases, you may just have to stick with the fonts on hand. It helps you play around with different t-shirt design websites to see which fonts you like for your designs.
T-Shirt Font Generator
Sometimes, you have no idea what font you want to use for your t-shirt design. But, you may know that you want a font that is easy to read, a bold font, or a font in a certain style, such as script or handwritten.
This is where font generators come in. These generators allow you to filter by certain categories, such as sans-serif, modern, vintage, or whatever style you’re looking for. Then, you can type in your text, compare different fonts in that particular style, and download the ones you like. A great one to check out is FontGet because they have a variety of categories to filter by.
What Is the Best Font for T-shirts?
Hopefully, you found this guide to the best fonts for t-shirts to be helpful. You may have also learned that there is no true best font for t-shirts. It depends on the design you want to create, the style of font you’re looking for, etc. Whether it be a standard serif or sans-serif font, a vintage font, a script font, or whatever, the font should be compatible with the overall design and theme of the shirt.
I’ve included 20 of the best and most commonly used fonts, but there are thousands of others to choose from as well. And hopefully, you’ve also found some helpful resources for finding fonts in this article. Please feel free to share this article with others who might enjoy it.