If you’re designing a poster, the font choice is critical to gauging your intended audience’s interest.You want to choose a font that is readable but also fits the personality of the poster’s subject, whether it’s informational or an advertisem*nt.
You’ll find a variety of free and paid fonts available designed with posters in mind. You don’t always need a specialized font to make an impactful design.Standard fonts work well, too. With so many fonts out there, it can be challenging to decide which one to choose for your poster.
We’ve done the hunting for you and come up with the best fonts for posters.
1. League Gothic
League Gothic is a typeface in the sans serif family created for The League of Movable Type. It’s a revamp of the Alternate Gothic #1 font from 1903.
The tall, skinny letters of league gothic are commanding but professional. This typeface is an excellent choice for posters with serious topics since it’s attention-grabbing without distracting from other information.
While the font is readable, it’s not preferable for body text. It works fantastic for headings and subtitles.
2. Aleo
Aleo is a slab serif font that has three different weights. It has a gentle roundness that sets it apart from the other fonts in the slab serif family.
Alessio Laiso made the lettering a companion to the Lato font. Aleo is a popular poster choice both for readability and friendliness.
This font can be used for headings or as a text font.
3. Arial
Arial is the standard font for most word processors, like Microsoft Word and Google Documents. The reason is it’s both clean and contemporary.
The font works great for body text, but you can adapt it for almost any media form.
Arial works great for informational posters and is an excellent complement for busier fonts.
4. Bodoni
Giambattista Bodoni first created his font in 1798. Different versions now exist in the font family, with both traditional and modern versions available.
The typeface is characterized by its contrasting thick and thin lines, providing its stylish look.
Due to its unique lines and thin serifs, Bodoni works best as a header or title font for many different posters. It can slow reading in small sentences.
5. Garamond
Garamond is a typeface named for engraver Claude Garamond. It’s fairly readable, thanks to its size.
The design resembles a calligrapher’s handwriting and is part of the serif font family.Because the font style dates back to the 16th century, it is particularly well suited for print.
It has a unique style while still being very readable, making it an excellent choice for body text.
The typeface is often used in books and works well on posters.Garamond is probably quite familiar to you as it is used in the Google logo. Book covers such as Harry Potter and several Dr. Seuss titles utilize Garamond.
6. Franklin Gothic
Morris Fuller Benton designed the Franklin Gothic family of fonts in 1904. Benton created over 200 types in his career, including News Gothic, Brazil Coffee and Fine Quality.
Franklin Gothic includes 26 styles from regular to bold to everything in between. The birth of the original font occurred during a time when people didn’t have digital devices. Because of that and the layout of the font, it is well-suited for posters and print.
The font originally had a single weight but was later expanded to include italic, condensed, extra condensed and wide. The font has a thick and thin pattern to the letters to give them some interesting variation. The lowercase x-height is taller than in many fonts.
You can use Franklin Gothic in body text, but it works best as a header on a flyer, poster or sign. The font also appears in newspaper headings.
You’ll find many variations of Franklin Gothic. The best known might be the redesign by Victor Caruso in the 1979s dubbed ITC Franklin Gothic. Caruso’s version is frequently bundled with Microsoft Windows operating system.
7. Equinox
If you’re looking for something a bit more modern, Equinox offers a sans serif, modern minimal options. Released by the Tugcu Design Co. The owner of the company, Mehmet Reha Tugcu, is an Istanbul native specializing in type design. He has a penchant for sci-fi style and has made more than 100 fonts so far.
Although the font has a slight space-themed look, it is simple enough to work for other purposes that need a modern edge. It comes in regular or bold weights with some alternate letters to create a unique look. The numbers are also quite unique looking but still easy to read.
Use equinox for headings and subheadings and pair with any sans serif font that is legible at smaller sizes for your body text.
8. Coldiac
We fell in love with the look of Coldiac. We enjoy hunting up obscure fonts and sharing them with our readers. It just goes to show that you can create a really unique look in your designs if you take the time to think through the personality you want your font to have.
If you want to embrace a more elegant style, Coldiac checks off all the boxes. Thin lines and angled serifs give it the look of simple calligraphy while still remaining legible enough to read.
Even though the typeface has a lot of display details, it looks good in smaller sizes, making it ideal for a one-font design. You’ll gain pointed-pen serifs on lowercase characters and added ligatures.
The elegant font looks amazing as posters and signage for a wedding or formal event of any type. It equally looks great on invitations. Use it in print or online.
9. Bethanya
Script fonts can be tricky with posters as they can also be difficult to read in some sizes. However, a script font adds a touch of elegance to any design. Released in 2017, it’s only been used around 2,000 times, making it less common than many other fonts widely used for posters and other purposes.
Bethanya is a pretty, flowing script font that pulls one into the words. It is still legible at larger sizes because it has thin lines that flow smoothly into one another.
The font is a modern calligraphy font released by Megatype foundry. It’s free to use for personal projects but you must buy a commercial license to use it for anything where you make money, such as a book cover, for a business poster and so on.
Choosing Your Poster Font
When you design a poster, there are many things you need to consider for the best design. The size, color and images make a difference in catching an audience’s attention. The font you choose is one of the most critical decisions for your poster.
The right font should be both readable and match the style of the information you’re displaying. These five fonts are excellent choices that can complement other typefaces to accomplish your team’s marketing goals.
