30+ Typographic Tutorials, Resources and Freebies
Do you love typography? Do you want to learn how to design your first typeface or to get the knack of hand lettering?
Check out these useful typography resources (including some great font freebies) as you might be pleasantly surprised and inspired to try something new.
If you are keen on typography and love playing with letters, you will find some amazing resources in the list below. Included are some of the greatest tuts available online as well as some free typography ebooks to help you start with type design. There is also a bunch of free experimental free fonts created by fellow designers.
Have a look at the resource list below and feel free to add your favourite resources in the comment form below.
Tutorials
How to Design and Construct a Functional Cursive Font
This tutorial will show you how to create a cursive font, convert it into valid bezier outlines and clean it up, package it into a font, and code the OpenType rules that program its cursive behavior.
Hand Lettering Step By Step
A quick tutorial that will teach you how to get started with hand lettered quotes. Ideal for beginners in hand lettering.
How To Make Typographic Wallpaper In Photoshop
A straightforward tutorial explaining how to create an appealing typographic poster in Adobe Photoshop. Such posters can be used in presentations, magazines etc..
Script Handwritten Typography in Adobe Illustrator
This tutorial shows one of the many ways that can be used to create a script handwritten typography with Adobe Illustrator. The tut will give you the initial knowledge of creating handwritten type.
How to Add Watercolor Textures to Typography
Teela Cunningham is giving some great ideas for adding colour to your typography projects. She uses some of her very own creative watercolour textures and releases some for free download so to give it a try with your favourite typeface.
How To Create Typography Illustrations
This is an advanced tutorial teaching how to create a typography illustration from scratch by using Photoshop and Illustrator. Fonts, textures and filter actions are provided for free so you can give it a try.
Proper Vintage Typography with Adobe Illustrator
Another great tutorial showing how to play with shapes and letters to create a vintage looking typographic illustration with Adobe Illustrator.
Create vector barbed wire typography
Again, this is a lovely tutorial that will teach you how to use Adobe Illustrator to create interesting barbed wire typography. The .AI file is provided for free so you can play with it or use it as a reference.
How to create hand lettering using your pencil and Adobe Illustrator
This is a step-by-step tutorial teaching you how to use Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator to create a custom hand lettering.
How-to Make a Simple Type Logo with Adobe Illustrator
This tutorial will show the basics of creating a simple logo with the help of Adobe Illustrator. You will learn how to use and apply different effects to your text so you can have a lot of options in your future projects.
How to Vectorize Hand Lettering
One of the most popular way of digitizing hand lettering is by scanning it and after that putting it in Adobe Illustrator to vectorize it. Teela Cunningham is showing how to do it in this great tutorial.
Hand Lettering with Brush Pens Tutorial by Calligrapher, Joanne Fink
In this tutorial, calligrapher Joanne Fink shares some great instructions and techniques for hand lettering using some Coloring Brush pens.
How to Design Typographic Retro Vintage Logo in Adobe Photoshop
Retro vintage logos are really popular right now. This wonderful tutorial will show the basics of creating such logo using Adobe Photoshop. Knowing the basics, you will be able to create some lovely vintage logos.
Freebies
Marziona Free Font
A font created with a great attention to detail, a lovely display font with modern letterforms. Comes with uppercase, numerals, punctuations. It is a pro font but there is a free version for download.
Fakedes Typeface
This interesing font is created by Cyril Mikhailov, a talented designer from the Russian Federation. Supported are Latin and Cyrillic letters and symbols.
Layered Type
A completely free font, that can be easily customized by editing the source files. Feel free to play with it.
Muller font
Muller font is another wonderful creation of the FontFabric type foundry. Muller is created for advertising, packaging, editorial and branding, to web and screen projects.Two fonts – Thin & ExtraBold are available as a free demo versions with basic character set.
GEOM Display Typeface
Geom is a display typeface which is inspired by geometric forms and grid. It is free to use and amend. Currently released as an .AI file.
Brocha Typeface
Brocha is a plyful brush typeface that can be used in creative designs. It can be used in personal projects.
CÍCERO Free Font
CÍCERO font is created for The Higher Institute of Design (ISDI) in Cuba. The Cícero font family includes 3 weights (light, regular and bold) and 3 morphological versions – serif,
italic and small caps. It is characterized by excellent legibility.
Ego Typeface
Ego typeface is a beautiful font with great geometric personality. It is inspired by Picasso’s Constellation drawings and bezier curves. You can download the .AI and .EPS version to play with.
Legend font (free, latin & cyrillic)
Created by Polina Loseva from Moscow, Legend is a free font based on the insular majuscule script, which combines Latin and Cyrillic letters. It is an attempt for a font that look medieval and combines Latin and Cyrillic letters.
Hectra – Free Handcrafted Font
This font was started as an experiment to turn into a lovely Hectra font family with Regular, Bold and Funk versions. It is a brilliant and versatile typeface that looks great in different design projects.
Bough Typeface
Bough is a hand-drawn typeface with vintage look and aesthetics. It has two versions: regular and condensed. Each letter has an alternate glyph, so you can easily combine them to achieve a vintage and classy look.
Hamster Script (Free Font)
Hamster Script is a free font inspired by sign painting and brush hand-lettering. It is extremely useful for branding, T-shirt design, headlines, posters and signage. It is free to download and use in print and web, personal or commercial projects.
Books and Ebooks
Butterick’s Practical Typography
This is a free ebook that can be read online and it is full with practical information that can be really helpful for both beginners and experienced designers.
The Typographer’s Glossary – Common Type Terminology
This is an ebook in PDF format giving all the explanations regarding letters and type. This is an excellent source for anyone who wants to know all the terms and be a specialist in typography.
Type Classification Handbook
Having trouble with classifying type? This ebook will help you learn the 10 broad classifications of type and broaden your knowledge about type.
Meet Your Type – a field guide to love & typography
A wonderful free ebook which will help you with some basic information about type. You will learn how to choose the perfect typeface for your audience, how to combine different typefaces and make them look perfect. Worth having a look.
The Elements of Typographic Style Applied to the Web
This online book will give you some interesting and useful knowledge about web typography such as rhythm and proportion, horizontal motion, spacing, hyphenation, harmonies and many more. If you want to be a good at your job, you should have a look.
Erik Spiekermann’s Typo Tips – Seven Rules for Better Typography
This book will give you some basic rules of better typography and point out some common mistakes that sometimes designers do. Erik Spiekermann goes into the tiny but important details that will help you achieve the perfect type when creating print or web projects.
![Design & Development Resources Worth Checking Out [Week 09]](http://designify.me/wp-content/uploads/design-dev-resources-160x160.jpg)
B E A U T I F U L Petia Koleva! Nice to meet you. Excellent collection defined very innovative ideas and thoughts. Once again thanks so much.
Thank you. Hope you find useful stuff here 🙂