We’ll be looking at the crème de la crème of scrawl scripts to find the best handwriting fonts ever!!
Scrawl Scripts are an incredibly personal thing. They range from the very good to the very, very bad, and their uses can be either robust, niche or anywhere in between. This top ten guide to the best handwriting fonts will aim to showcase some of the greatest handwriting fonts available and highlight their pros, cons, and potential uses.
#10 Christmas Gift
Designed By: FontPanda.com | Price: Free for personal use | Download
Designed by FontPanda, Christmas gift has the kind of cheery appearance that makes you want to deck the halls and break out the eggnog. Bold and legible, the font is suitable for all short, reasonably large sections of type. Great news for graphic designers, Christmas comes early this year as this font is free! May all your days be merry and bright!
#9 Jackie Sue BF
Designed By: Jackie Geerlings & John Bomparte | Price: £18 | Download
This one may divide people. Jackie Sue may not be appropriate for day to day use, but as the image above demonstrates, the typeface can be very effective when used for large scale designs. Think, the specials menu in a restaurant. Being able digitally to replicate these kinds of scribbles is what scrawl scripts are all about, so this font gets two thumbs up and a solid place in the top ten!
#8 Mathilde
Designed By: Lee Batchelor | Price: Free | Download
Casual and yet refined, Mathilde reads like a Dear John note left under an ashtray in a 1940’s Parisian railway café on a rainy day and is one of the best handwriting fonts that are free. Designers may want to use this scrawl script to demonstrate a classy well-educated look but perhaps in short sentences as the type runs a little thick for larger paragraphs.
#7 Serial Sue
Designed By: Jeroen “Joebob” van der Ham | Price: £20 | Download
A couple of years ago, I took to the design forums in an attempt to find a typeface that was utter gibberish. I wanted to give a scrawl script the appearance without actually having to use legible words and thus be forced to provide a context. Of course, it would be entirely unreasonable to state that this font is illegible; however, it’s a design that is almost calligraphic in nature, draws the eyes to the form of the letters before the meaning of the words, which is great.
#6 Architects Daughter
Designed By: Kimberly Geswein | Price: Free | Download
A popular type on Google, Architects daughter, is arguably the most legible font from our top ten, which is why it works extremely well as a web font. Web fonts are becoming increasingly popular as they provide much greater scope for creativity when designing websites. More flamboyant, less legible scrawl scripts can be applied to websites in image form, but for larger paragraphs, the fonts legibility and web compatibility make it ideal for large blocks of SEO friendly text..
#5 Pastel Crayon
Designed By: Letters & Numbers | Price: Free for personal use | Download
This style has been done to death but rarely is it done as well as Pastel Crayon. The scrawl script is well-formed and well produced. Try looking at this font like it was a sandwich toaster. Its uses are limited, but when you need a bready molten cheese-filled snack, hot damn!
#4 Chalk Hand
Designed By: FontsCafe | Price: Free for personal use | Download
It would almost be a crime to call Chalk Hand a scrawl script as, in terms of letterforms, the style runs a lot less haphazardly then many of its scripty counterparts. Like Pastel Crayon, it’s a bit of cheese toasty, but designers working with, let’s say, a title card for a silent movie or anything else that they want to add a whiff of that era to then it may well be worth paying the token amount of money it costs to use this type commercially.
#3 Journal
Designed By: Fontourist | Price: Free | Download
A ubiquitous scrawl script isn’t much good to anyone, so if Journals place in the top ten was ever at risk, it is because it is a popular font which, once you’ve used, you will begin to see cropping up elsewhere from time to time. Fortunately, the fonts popularity isn’t so great that it’s entered the world of Bradley Hand or, dare I say it, Comic Sans. Casual in nature, Journal lends itself to short taglines very well indeed and best of all…it’s free!
#2 Berimbau
Designed By: Ricardo Marcin, Erica Jung | Price: from £12 | Download
You may or may not know that the Berimbau is a single-stringed percussion instrument…well, it is, but it’s also one of the most visually pleasing scrawl scripts I’ve ever come across. Neat and almost skeletal in nature, Berimbau melts onto the page and is diverse enough to be either subtle or impactful. Designers probably won’t be using this for large blocks of text, but in the great love affair that is typography, Berimbau is the foxy scrawl script that lives out of town and does things that Bodoni won’t.
#1 Lucy Scrawl Script
Designed By: Lucy Riddance | Price: Free | Download
Perhaps not an obvious choice for the number one spot, Lucy Scrawl Script is neither the prettiest nor the most well-formed. However, don’t forget that scrawl scripts are digital representations of human visual communication, and this type allows for a neat and realistic typeface that can be used for both short taglines and large sentences. Like Architects daughter, the font is web compatible and is free to use for both personal and commercial projects.
As we’ve already covered, scrawl scripts are an incredibly personal thing, but hopefully, this top ten will have introduced you to a few new favourites that will become staples in your collection. If you feel there is a script that has been overlooked, post it in a comment, and it may even make it into the next top ten, some way down the road.
