Best 1950s Fonts for Authentic Mid-Century Designs
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The 1950s were a special era. It was a time when a range of designs were introduced, especially when it comes to typography and commercial designs.
The modern design of the day in the '50s became the retro vibes of the 21st century that are still used today. These 1950s fonts help graphic designers create vintage designs with a genuine, authentic feel.
Best '50s Fonts
Here is a strong list of fonts that embody the 50s vibe. A graphic designer can use these in plenty of vintage and retro projects. Take a visual project to the next level with a 1950s design for classic logos and authentic branding projects. Review the list below to find a font that works best for any project needing a retro style that advances design for commercial and personal projects.
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Fifties Typeface
Envato Elements is a great resource for beginner and seasoned designers alike. You can kick off with this typeface to add to the many beautiful 1950s fonts available for the graphic designer font library online.
This is a retro serif font that offers all the capabilities. It comes in TrueType, OpenType, and WebFont formats. It includes all the basic options from punctuation, uppercase, lowercase characters, and other extras.
It's an affordable option and has an attractive design that works well not only in vintage designs but in modern designs needing a little throwback.
MidCentury Typeface
This is a fun and bold style typeface with a bouncy baseline. The letter forms are different and bold, with a retro feel and a modern design style. This is an art deco style reborn with mid-century. This font can be used at any size and has commercial licensing.
MidCentury is a great option for large formatted posters, illustrations, and retro looks on print media. Create commercial projects that stand out in the field. Using these all-caps letters, a designer can create unique designs with the included alternatives. It's a definite must for the font arsenal.
Carosello – 1950s Marker Font
This is a handmade versatile font that works well with professional design products to access the full capabilities of the glyphs. It's a great option for fun personalized projects that need to have a special touch.
Vintage logos are a perfect fit for this bold script typeface. Use this in online graphics for social media titles and banners, or use it in print media for vinyl applications and illustrations.
Winter is Coming – Playful '50s Font
This is a fun vintage font that brings back memories of “I Dream of Genie” or “Jetsons.” It's a great light serif font to use for package designs or shirt designs. It's iconic and classic!
There are two font formats: OTF and TTF. Three variations of this font with a shadow option for versatility. This is an amazing 50s font that you'll want to have in your toolbox.
Mortina – 50s Display Font
This is a sans serif vintage-style typeface. It's used with a strong focus on signage, logo design, and promotional design. It's bold and can be used in virtually any size.
This is a great option for professional design software like Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator in an OpenType font file. The designer can then access a multitude of glyphs to enhance the font as an iconic design.
It has multilingual support and PUA encoding to go along with the standard characters and numerals. This is a must to have in the 50s font library.
Surfnik – Vintage Surf and Beatnik Font
This is an edgy retro display hand-made font that works well for fun projects. It has a chiseled look to the character forms. It's a vintage all-caps font that works well for large signage and promotional projects.
Have a tiki hut or a pool party with an island theme coming up? This is a font to stylize the event, from the poster designs to the fun party favors. It comes in six different weight/line styles that create depth for a unique design. It's affordable and has web options available to design across platforms as well.
Snifter – Retro Party Typeface
This font is ready for the party with its retro text design. There are icons included with the glyphs panel accessible with the OTF file.
This is a great option for shirt typography design. It's bold and eye-catching. This font is a vector file, so it has no size restriction, and it can work across programs and platforms. It's a playful typeface ideal for bold designs that utilize bright colors and large surface areas where text is the design element.
Les Paul – Layered '50s Font
This is a great vintage font option that has a wide selection. This font comes with eight font files. This includes regular, outline, lined, inline, and extras!
Les Paul can be used as an all-inclusive set for all graphic design needs for a project. There's no need to find icons; they're included and ready to use!
This vector-developed typeface can give a designer a massive impact on logo design and branding projects for a client. Create print and digital media with this beautiful font.
Atomicaboy – 1950s Geometric Script
This is a fun script that's bold and unique. With this large display font, there are many options to create fun shirt designs, menus, signage for a company, or logos.
It includes uppercase, lowercase, punctuation, numerals, and stylistic alternates that can be incorporated into any design.
This is an upright script with a geometric design base. Script fonts like this create a unique option to add to the font library. There are two versions of this font, and it can be fully accessed in multiple software programs.
Jaywalker – '50s Display Font
This is a bold all-caps font. It's a classic option for a 50s style design. This font works well for print or digital media. It includes the base characters, numerals, and punctuation along with special characters and alternates.
The OTF file has over 160 glyphs that, with design software, can be accessed and used. This boldly designed font can use colors creatively within each letter to give it that retro feel. There's virtually no limit to the size that this sans-serif can be used with its vector design.
The Big Tickle Font Family
This is a family of typefaces that includes over ten options to work with throughout a design. The captivating lettering pulls in many options with layers and colors for a professional design. It's a great option for book designs, party invitations, poster cover, holiday cards, and social media art cards.
Its capabilities allow for print and digital media use alike. This is a fun serif that also has multilingual options. It's a versatile font family that has a fun retro nostalgic element.
Rockabilly Romance – 1950s Script Font
Who doesn't know about the 1950s romance bad-boy movies like Crybaby or Bad Boy? There are three styles included with regular, outline, and underline options with this brush script.
This font could work for digital eBook design or print novel design. There are elements to this iconic 1950s typeface that allow for it to remind society of the classic diner or neon signs advertising products or services. It is a must for the 1950s font library, no questions asked.
Milescut – 1950s Font
This cutting-edge nostalgic font was created to mimic hand-cut all-caps lettering from Blue Note in the 1950s and 1960s. This is an amazing option that's affordable for any designer.
Milescut is perfect for typographical designs that rely heavily on text alone. This is an all-caps modern typeface that can be worked into images thanks to the ligatures and extra flourishes. These extras add length to certain tails overlapping and integrating letters with each other.
It's bold and exotic for a vintage font.
CA Weird Stories – Slanted '50s Font
This large italic typeface has a weird extraterrestrial feel to it. This is not a classic typeface, but rather an edgy alternative to the classic vintage options.
Create edgy designs with this retro chiseled feel. This gives an unstable feeling to the design to create a supernatural and eerie feel to any design.
Stack this typeface with color and blocky design to complete a retro feel that's unsettling to evoke emotion off the screen.
Tropika Island Font Family
This fun, illustrative '50s font is built with an island theme. The font family includes retro extras with two font styles: a bold serif and a casual script option.
The best part of this vector font is the 3000+ pairs of ligatures! They help to create unique letter combinations for any project that needs a tropical twist with a custom-designed look!
The catch is to access all the great options and glyphs, you must use software (like Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop) that supports OpenType features.
This is a great option for signage or calligraphy-style font projects in cutouts and vinyl applications.
Display Gothic 1958 Font
This is an amazingly affordable desktop font to use for a variety of designs. Create a custom package for a client with this sans-serif. It features international character support with an OTF file.
Display Gothic 1958 is needed from a crucial design aspect in that it's vintage, clean, classic, and bold. Create a bold poster art design with this bold typeface. It's a great option with the basic ligatures included for print design.
Sinzano – Interlocking Typeface
This typeface is a slender, elegant alternative for a high-fashion-focused design from the vintage era in mid-century America. It's unique in its interlocking design. The all-caps characters work well to interact not only as text but as a visual design element for the graphic designer.
It's multilingual supported and can be used as a WebFont, giving it international pop for the design world. Use on retro projects that need an extra touch of class and elevation for any client.
Burbank – 1950s Script Font
This is a beautiful script with a vintage touch. The beautiful script typeface has an appeal of elegance that allows for sophisticated branding or book cover design.
Create a vintage novel cover with this elegant script that draws on the emotion of the subject matter. With vector design creation of the ligatures, it allows for options from print to digital media packages to advertising across platforms.
The best part is this font stays relevant for your historical work with free updates and feature additions when applicable.
Mister DeVille – Midcentury Font
This is a great mid-century font style. It's a bold, rough sans-serif made with uppercase characters to create a dynamic all-caps modern typeface. It does not work off an even baseline to give it a creative movement on the screen.
Mister DeVille a great option for window lettering or bold promotional design. This is a typeface that works with spooky emotions with vintage design elements. Use this font for poster designs, party designs, or a variety of designs that need a Halloween or spooky feel.
Vintage Wheel – Vintage Script Font
This is a casual script that is ideal for signage and fun textual sayings within promotion or creative product marketing.
This font comes in four files: OTF, TTF, WOFF, and WOFF2. It can be used at any size opening the door for billboard design and screen design. Use this font online and on print for an illustrative brush script font.
Luckiest Guy
This is a bubble-like vintage font that has a comic feel. It's an all-caps font that's bold and catching for title design.
Use this option for a comic Art Deco styling for poster text, movie title text, or vintage novel cover design. It's a great option to use for clothing design as well. Create projects with fun sayings or classic letter cutouts to apply on boards and windows. The applications are endless!
Swung Note Interlocking Font
This is a retro fun option that touches on the psychedelic fonts from the '50s and '60s. It is playful, and the design has adaptable weights that work with the letters based on uppercase and lowercase settings and use.
Swung Note is adaptable and versatile with many different colors and so on. Create custom letter designs for logos and other branding projects. The font itself can be the fanciful element needed to be the focal point of the design.
Transistor – Super Condensed Sans Serif
This super condensed and thin font is an all-caps option that mimics the style of vintage fonts in the mid-century. It's perfect for newscasters to use or designs of car production signage. Transistor is great for the mechanical world for parts, hardware stores, and packaging.
It is a great option for industrial advertisement magazines or business communications. It's clean and direct. The font package is offered at a great price to be used by hobbyists and professionals alike.
El Camio – Throwback Display Font
Creative Fabrica offers a great vintage option for a font that works well across platforms and with Cricut software! It's a bold sans-serif font that works well as a display typeface for titles and large projects.
El Camio is a great option for hints of art deco throughout a large schematic or a small text-only design. Installation guides come with downloading the font file for Windows and Mac operating systems.
Use this font on any project that needs a bold title!
Spooktacular – 1950s Beatnik Font
It's not a vintage mid-century font list without the spooky Scooby-Doo-like options! This is an extensive family with 15 variations of the font. It allows for dynamic designs from light fonts to heavy fonts.
Spooktakular is a great retro serif display typeface with a sans-serif option. With the OTF file, there are extras that include thematic icons to incorporate into a design. This leads to options for graphic designers to create their own bonus vintage illustrations within a project.
The font package is broken into two styles: 10 serifs and 5 sans-serif downloads. Enjoy this amazing option with many different levels of licensing available.
Master of Poster
Use this amazingly fun sans-serif font with a worry-free license. This all-caps font is unique in how the ligature design for tails on letters tie other letters together in a geometric and box-like form. It comes in three different weights.
This is a simple yet profound vintage option. Create classic logos or sophisticated branding. This is a font for designers that works into a great visual project. Use it for text heavy projects where the text is the artwork.
It gives a great spontaneous vibe and fanciful element for designs you see in advertising, social media creatives, and mainstream magazines. A great, solid option for the font library.
Laguna Vintage Collection
This font package has it all! This includes a block version, a condensed version, and a casual script. It is an entire package a graphic designer will love. Not only are there in-context ligatures with this great font, but other graphic design extras are included.
It comes in an OpenType file or TrueType file to access in professional and non-professional design programs alike. Create a dynamic logo, book cover, or retro posters for clients. This is an iconic typeface that's pivotal to retro design concepts prevalent in the 1950s.
Spy Royal Font Family
This is a classic 1950s and 1960s signage font. It includes variants and Unicode variants. It's a great movie font comic poster option to create a semi-cartoon and animated textual element to the design.
There are multiple levels of licensing, so the designer can pick and choose or download the Cadillac version with all options to use this font across platforms.
Get creative with kerning and letter spacing. Add alternative characters with this OpenType font. It's great to use for alternative designs when a project needs a unique vintage touch.
Tipique – Mid-Century Font Revival
This amazingly fun and dynamic font comes in OpenType format. It's a great option for professional designers that use products. The mid-century sans-serif font is unique in the tailing of certain character forms giving it a signature look.
Use it in lowercase or vintage all-caps font styling to create book text and book cover designs. It includes all sorts of characters, from multilingual options to pagination symbols. This is an in-depth retro-style vector font that's a must to have. An added bonus is stylized letter sets for alternatives that give it that extra unique touch.
Hucklebuck – 1950s Script Font
This is a true vintage sans serif script. It's primarily used as an OpenType font to utilize all its capabilities. It's offered in TrueType as well, but in OpenType, the multilingual character options can be used.
Hucklebuck is a great option for '50s designs with large-format printing. Think of vintage movie posters, and retro designs will start flowing. Use this font for personal branding or illustration enhancement for graphic artists and book illustrators. It's a great option for a retro comic strip.
Chonky
This is a fun brush script font. It would be great for large sign advertising and could be utilized by street artists for hand-painted sign lettering projects for the side of buildings of urban artscapes.
It is a relatively new font on the market and is affordable for hobbyists and professionals alike. This font can be used across platforms from desktops to eBooks to web applications. There are licensing options and ways to tailor this font to fit your design needs. It's a great script option for the retro wheelhouse.
Yolanda – 1950s Script Font
This is a very affordable option for a font to add to the library to expand on the retro style. It features a funky design that is fun for sign designs or logos. It is a great vintage option that is compatible with Windows or Mac operating systems. Use this font in any design software.
It also comes ready to use with Cricut or other vinyl cutting machines for fun letter application designs for studios or coffee shop menu boards. This retro typeface includes commercial licensing if needed for a professional project to go big.
Drive-In – Mid-Century Typeface
This vector-designed mid-century font is clean and classic. It is a great option with all uppercase characters and boasts pseudo lowercase letters built into the font package.
There are two versions included: solid and inline. This gives the font family versatility to be used in different applications.
There are alternative characters for certain letters to give a unique flare to the font. Create nostalgic designs that will blow away the audience with impactful connections to whatever message the client needs to be conveyed.
Why You'll Love Using These 1950s Fonts
Graphic designers love to create beautiful designs that captivate their audience and embody the client's message. It's important to incorporate different themes in elements from colors to graphics to illustrations to typefaces.
To stay on the most cutting edge with ideas, it's important to have many elements, including vintage elements like the 50s typeface style, to be sure to have dynamic versatility in the toolbox as a designer.
Beautiful 50s fonts like these above are a must for any beginner or advanced graphic designer.