In a digital landscape where conventional typefaces are calibrated to perfection, handwritten typefaces that echo human touch can serve as a refreshing and inviting design choice.
For some designs, classic typefaces are too perfect. If your design feels a little cold or generic, a font that looks like handwriting might be just what you need to inject warmth and personality into the project.
Introducing a handwriting-style font frees your design from the confines of perfect uniformity. The genuine irregularities and imperfections lend a captivating allure, distinguishing your work with individuality and charm.
How to use handwriting fonts in web design
Handwritten typography breathes visual variety into your designs. Script fonts add a dash of class, the bold styling of graffiti fonts conveys an urban look, and the varied thickness of brush fonts’ strokes provides a unique touch.
However, handwriting fonts pose accessibility challenges, making them a better choice for display fonts: Limit them to titles, headings, and pull quotes, and avoid using them in body text. To improve readability, surround them with more white space than you typically would and pair them with a standard web design font or other highly legible typefaces, such as sans-serif fonts like Arial and Helvetica.
10 realistic handwriting fonts to energize your designs
From flowy cursive scripts to bold brushstroke typefaces, here are 10 of our favorite handwriting fonts to give your projects an air of individuality.
1. Billy Ohio
Billy Ohio, a handwriting typeface by Alit Design, is a dry brush script font that uses textures and shadows for a three-dimensional look. Curved strokes and looped letters evoke a casual vibe, suiting sports-related designs, the outdoors, and local eateries or boutiques. The full character set includes alternate glyphs and a large collection of swashes.
Billy Ohio is free for personal use. Commercial licenses are available from Alit Design.
2. Jane Austen
Designer Pia Frauss drew inspiration from Pride and Prejudice author Jane Austen’s handwriting to create a beautiful script font of the same name. Ideal for literature-focused or historical projects, it encapsulates Austen’s elegance and literary charm with sophistication and authenticity.
The Jane Austen font is free for personal use, which includes self-designed websites. Commercial use requires a license.
3. ITC Kristen
Experience the whimsical allure of ITC Kristen, a charming font that resembles a young child’s penmanship. Designer George Ryan’s letters capture the unevenness of hand-printed writing while still being legible. By channeling a child’s innocent wonder and imaginative spirit, ITC Kristen infuses youthful nostalgia and creativity into designs, making it perfect for playful and imaginative projects that promote products and services for children.
ITC Kristen is free for personal use and licensable for commercial use through Microsoft.
4. Lemon Tuesday
Lemon Tuesday is a casual, lively brush-style calligraphy font by Daria Kwon and Ivan Gladkikh. Angular uppercase letters grab readers’ attention, while the curved lowercase counterparts guide viewers’ eyes along with a sense of carefreeness. Compatible with Latin and Cyrillic alphabets, Lemon Tuesday is a versatile multi-language option for inspirational designs, arts and crafts businesses, and cafes.
Lemon Tuesday is free for both personal and commercial use.
5. Marcel
The Marcel font draws inspiration from the handwriting of Marcel Heuzé, a French internee who sent letters to his family from a German labor camp during World War II. P22 Type Foundry’s Carolyn Porter found Marcel’s letters in an antique shop and was captivated by his expressive, calligraphic style.
Carolyn devoted years to research and design work before compiling more than 1,300 separate glyphs in the font’s pro version, including ink spots, swashes, ornaments, and ligatures. The creation of the Marcel font was so unique that the designer wrote a book about it. Marcel’s Letters: A Font and the Search for One Man’s Fate tells the story of the font’s origins and Carolyn’s attempts to discover whether Marcel returned home to his family safely.
You can find this cursive font in the Adobe Fonts collection or get it directly from the foundry.
Build completely custom, production-ready websites — or ultra-high-fidelity prototypes — without writing a line of code. Only with Webflow.
Build completely custom, production-ready websites — or ultra-high-fidelity prototypes — without writing a line of code. Only with Webflow.
6. Moonstone History
Moonstone History is a fluid, versatile signature font by the Timur Type foundry whose nostalgic aesthetic makes it ideal for projects with a vintage feel. Its uneven baseline gives it a natural character, making it a strong choice for designs for handcrafted products, clothing boutiques, and artisanal food and drink items.
Moonstone History is free for personal use. For a commercial license, email the foundry directly at timurtype.studio@gmail.com.
7. Om Telolet Om
Locomotype Studio originally created the Om Telolet Om font in response to an Indonesian social media meme that went viral in 2016. The meme involved a video of a group of children yelling “Om telolet om!” — an equivalent to the arm-pumping “trucker salute” in the U.S. and Canada — at passing bus drivers, asking for them to honk their horns. In Indonesian, “om” means “uncle” or “sir,” while “telolet” is the musical sound of local bus horns. This playful font is designed to look like improvised writing with a felt-tip pen and is an excellent choice for lighthearted designs.
Om Telolet Om is free for personal use. For professional use, contact Locomotype Studio directly.
8. Pacifico
Featuring fluid strokes and rounded letterforms, Pacifico exudes vintage coastal ambiance. Vernon Adams, the designer behind the brush-style font, drew inspiration from the vibrant Californian surf culture of the 1950s, capturing the decade’s carefree spirit. Conjuring feelings of beachy nostalgia, this laid-back font is a good fit for retro-style designs and vacation-related projects.
Pacifico is one of the built-in handwriting fonts in Google Docs. It’s free for personal and professional use.
9. Pure Heart
When developing the all-caps brush font Pure Heart, designer Greg Nicholls started by hand-painting uppercase letters over and over. Next, he used digital techniques to infuse the font with hyperrealistic brushstrokes, leveraging texture and transparency effects to add dynamism and life to the font. Radiating individuality, passion, and raw expression, this impactful script is perfect for music events, creative branding, and any design that needs to convey boldness and originality.
Pure Heart is available on Creative Market as a package that includes several files: an OpenType-SVG character compatible with Photoshop or Adobe Illustrator, vectorized OTF and TTF fonts for designers who want simpler options, and a range of swashes and paint splatters.
10. Sevillana
Sevillana is a delicate font inspired by the hand-lettering on traditional Andalusian ceramics. Typographer Olga Umpeleva’s design embodies the essence of the decorative plates of Seville, a city in Spain’s southernmost region, Andalusia. It incorporates stylistic elements into both its upper and lowercase letters, resulting in a quaint typeface that’s as timeless as the ceramic designs from which it comes.
Sevillana is a Google Font that’s free for both personal and professional use.
Add any font to your Webflow site
Whether they’re elegant brushstrokes or graceful cursive scripts, handwriting fonts express a unique story through the irregular curves and lines that mimic the minute nuances of penmanship and calligraphy.
You’ll find both paid and free handwriting fonts on design sites like Canva, Behance, and Dribbble. If you find one you like but it’s not within your budget, use the What Font Is tool to search for fonts with a similar style. If you’re limiting your search to free options, try the Google Fonts library or our list of the 12 best places to find free fonts. Or you can use a font generator like Webflow's free tool to design a handwritten font based on your own handwriting.
To use your chosen script in a Webflow project, upload it as a custom font and then customize it to give your design a unique, personal touch that’s sure to leave a lasting impression.
