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Beautiful Hand Drawn Typography
Beautiful and creative typography can come in a variety of different forms. Hand drawn typography can be an excellent source of inspiration for graphic designers and typography lovers. In this post we will feature 40 creations that use hand drawn type. Some have been created completely by hand. Others have been sketched and scanned into Photoshop or Illustrator. Another option is to use fonts that create a hand drawn effect.
You may also be interested in:
- Vintage and Retro Typography Showcase
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- Breathtaking Typographic Posters
- Gorgeous Examples of Floral Typography
- Creative Print Typography Layouts
Beautiful Hand-Drawn Typography
Sources and Resources
Steven Snell has been designing websites for several years. He actively maintains a few blogs of his own, including DesignM.ag, which regularly provides articles and resources for web designers.
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- 1
- 2August 11th, 2009 4:12 pm
So awesome.
Love the fresh typography
- 3August 11th, 2009 4:36 pm
I see this style a fair bit. But to my eye, many of these samples look like the kind of doodling I’d expect from a teenager in a school workbook during a particularly boring class. There are a few beautiful works in there, amongst a lot of noise. Many of the ones with multiple words are just a “mind-dump” of ideas, again reminding me of bad teenage poetry where ideas are just spewed out randomly without much cohesion.
Don’t get me wrong, I love hand-drawn typography, calligraphy especially, but there needs to be appropriateness in the application of this style. If you’re aiming for a teen audience with the “workbook doodle” style, then that’s perfectly fine. I find similar feelings with the scrapbook collage style. For a professional business though? I don’t feel it is as appropriate an image to be conveying.
- 4August 11th, 2009 5:03 pm
Thank you! I do not feel that these are amateurish or just random “mini-dump” pieces but if I had, I would share the opinion that they were nothing special. Quite the contrary, I think these are perfect examples of this playful and humble hand-drawn look that is quite fresh and stylish at the moment, as opposed to the tired and disingenuous fashion of computer graphics that “simulate” a hand-drawn look. Thank you, for this lovely collection!
- 5August 11th, 2009 6:06 pm
Some of these are fantastic, but I must say I’m really getting sick of the whole “exploding swirly fluorishes” thing.
- 6August 11th, 2009 7:32 pm
The New York one and the Nice To Meet You one stood out to me. I enjoyed them all though!
- 7
- 8August 11th, 2009 8:07 pm
awesome typo.. wonder if someone could turn em all into real fonts! :)
- 9August 11th, 2009 8:13 pm
Beautiful! Thank you for posting these!
- 10August 11th, 2009 9:39 pm
The House Industries font is just awesome!
- 11August 11th, 2009 10:31 pm
Beautiful…
- 12August 11th, 2009 10:44 pm
The french in Si Scott typo says : “our story will become legend, together we are invicible. Together its for life, here it’s…
You’ll never be alone, always faithfull” - 13August 11th, 2009 11:19 pm
This post is a tragedy for me!
Now that I spent hours on getting the CSS right on my site…
I’m thinking about doing everything again on paper and scan it ;-)No seriously, amazing works!
- 14August 11th, 2009 11:23 pm
Lol, the last one, “OLD SCHOOL” is seriously old school. Almost like something I’d see on a desk in class back in the early 90’s when I was still young. :’3
- 15August 12th, 2009 12:29 am
Mike its just a post calm yourself down. Get on with some work.
- 16August 12th, 2009 1:55 am
Charleen
You should work for the UN.
- 17August 12th, 2009 2:48 am
hey gr8.
wish we’d have thought of that.
- 18
- 19August 12th, 2009 4:49 am
For some jobs it’ll be very interesting.
- 20August 12th, 2009 5:10 am
What about Eduardo Recife from misprintedtype.com ??
- 21August 12th, 2009 5:10 am
These type of typo we can use it in banners I think so.
- 22August 12th, 2009 5:29 am
There’s some awesome stuff here, and also (at least) one with a typo…
Been there myself, drawing myself giddy, when suddenly I realize “donkey” does indeed have an “n” in it.
heh - 23August 12th, 2009 6:20 am
not sure how you can have a list about hand drawn type and not include Marian Bantjes
Just one example of a huge range of beautiful type.Also check out Luca Barcellona and Chris Piasik
- 24August 12th, 2009 7:34 am
WOWWWWW.. awesome man.. wd lov to learn typography.. looks soo cool..
Kittu k - 25August 12th, 2009 7:40 am
Nice compilation, love this stuff. (Good to see you have recovered from the Photoshop post lol.)
- 26August 12th, 2009 7:47 am
I submit Aaron Horkey’s work for consideration. The guy is amazing. Check his Flight of the Conchords poster.
Not to mention the fact that he’s a ridiculous illustrator…
- 27August 12th, 2009 8:31 am
WOWWWWW.. awesome man.. wd lov to learn typography.. looks soo cool..
Kittu k - 28August 12th, 2009 9:06 am
RE Mike’s comment: I actually think most of these are much more sophisticated than “just a ‘mind-dump’ of ideas” reminiscent of “bad teenage poetry”. The styles are quite casual, if that’s what you’re referring to. But there are actually some well thought out layouts going on here, good use of color, and some nicely drawn typography. If this is what you expect of a teenager who’s bored in class then you must know some very talented kids!
- 29August 12th, 2009 9:24 am
Wow, that’s a awsome collection =O
- 30August 12th, 2009 10:40 am
lovely and new and fresh….thanks for sharing
- 31August 12th, 2009 11:04 am
Wow, thanks for including my work in this post. I would appreciate it if my piece was linked to my actual website and not my old deviantart page.
http://artbycruz.com/print/kanye-west/
Thanks!
- 32August 12th, 2009 5:34 pm
I-N-S-P-I-R-A-D-O-R!
- 33August 13th, 2009 6:20 am
This awesome post prove that in this digital world hand are still more creative then mouse.
Thanks for this fabulous collection.
I made a post about this collection and add a link to this page at my blog. - 34August 13th, 2009 7:07 am
Great work! It is so encouraging to see a revival of hand drawn typography. Nothing beats picking up a pencil and actually DRAWING, away from a computer.
- 35August 13th, 2009 8:03 pm
To be a term elitist, this is all lettering, technically, not typography: It’s like calling a photograph a painting just because they’re both images.
- 36August 26th, 2009 6:23 am
frankensteining ??? good idea
- 37September 9th, 2009 12:16 pm
muy muy muy buen post gracias, cheken nuestra pagina saludos | TrompoDesign. saludos!
- 38October 30th, 2009 6:41 am
Very cool ideas, I always like seeing designs that merge drawing and type! No one can argue the importance of computers, and clean typography definitely has its place, but drawing by hand lends a certain personality you’ll never get from a machine.
- 00
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Awesome post.