Color fonts are an important step in the evolution of graphic design. They bring fun and creative changes to your usual font files. You can expect features such as multiple colors, gradients, shades and textures. They also include vector shapes and bitmap images.
Are Color Fonts (or chromatic fonts) the next big revolution in graphic design? We’ll see. On the other hand, we can say for sure it’s going to change the way we use typography and they can make your design look more incredible than any other type of font available today. ONLY IF USED RIGHT.
Instead of using the same boring styles of fonts, color fonts allow designers to get more creative and step out of their comfort zones when it comes to crafting titles and headings.
Thanks to their ability to contain all types of characters (even emojis), color fonts can change any type of text, bringing depth and richness to the design.
So don’t get left behind, and read on!
Now, what exactly are Color or Chromatic Fonts?
Vector details look clear and sharp however large they are scaled, while bitmap color fonts can look pixelated or blurry when scaled to a size greater than their intended maximum size.
Each color font is made up of a ‘fallback’ core, which is the standard OpenType vector font, plus additional data tagged on which is rendered in SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) format. Amongst font developers, color fonts are referred to as OpenType-SVG fonts.
Let’s take for example the Trajan Color font: It combines the standard Trajan Pro font with colors, shadows and gradients to obtain the metallic effect. If the browser you are using supports color fonts, you will se the metallic color version. If not, you will see instead the fallback version.
It is important to remember that most browser versions are currently unable to support the technology, as color fonts are quite new on the market.
There are some differences you will notice straight away when using color fonts.
- The file size is much bigger than regular font files, some going up to tens of megabytes.
- This difference applies only to color bitmap fonts. Just like any other pixel-based image, these fonts can be scaled properly up to a certain size. If you push beyond that resolution, the font will look pixelated.
Although OpenType-SVG are the industry standard, they currently don’t work with Silhouette Designer and Cricut Design Space. You can use them on popular design software such as Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator and Sketch.
Did we pique your interest? You can start exploring all the possibilities color fonts offer with some of the best color fonts currently available, by reading down.
If it’s that much of a hassle, why use them?
The same reason for which you were using WordArt back in the day, to pop your PowerPoint presentations.
They add that extra oomph to your design
After years, or better, decades of Swiss School – inspired clean design, it’s a funky and refreshing trend, but be aware that those minimalists will not always embrace this one with a smile on their face.
Color fonts tread on a shaky line between bad and good taste, but somehow, they feel exactly spot on for the moment. They’re making their appearance alongside a revival for all things retro in design, as well as a new maximalist mood across all design fields, from fashion to interiors. Color fonts don’t take themselves too seriously and are instantly engaging, and that’s what makes them particularly attractive to designers and marketers looking to entice the fickle, tech-obsessed millennial market.
Above all, color fonts are fun! While early color fonts have been designed with websites and apps primarily in mind, they also have the potential to offer something youthful and fresh to print design too. You can’t use a color font without cracking a smile, which is perhaps what designers and consumers are craving in these politically and socially uncertain times.
So, let’s jump to the top 5 free color fonts to kickstart your designs:
1.Gilbert
The Gilbert font was originally designed for striking headlines and statements that could live on banners for rallies and protests and it is now currently being built out into a whole family of weights and styles. The font is available in two versions, a standard vector font and a color font (in OpenType-SVG format) currently usable in Photoshop CC 2017, Illustrator CC 2018, InDesign CC 2019 and above.
2.Blockino
Blockino is a very unique color font project that allows you to customize its colors to your preference. The free version of the font gives you 8 pre-made color styles to choose from. You can use it for free with personal projects.
3.Bixa
Bixa was originally designed as wood type for letterpress, and is now transformed into a multicolor font for web: Bixa Color.
Bixa Color comes in 12 different layers; in any color you like and in any combination you prefer. It jumps from analog to digital and from black and white to multicolor. It works without plug-ins, hacks or black magic. You use just one font file, and it will automatically work in modern software and browsers.
4.ColorTube
Ivan Filipov: “Colortube is my first color OTF font, created with the help of the great Adobe Illustrator extension Fontself. It is something that I started working on few years after I created Multicolore, but I never actually finished. The summer of 2017 the lovely folks at Fontself made me revive this project and here it is – a fully fledged OTF color font!”
5.Playbox
It is whimsical and playful in every form, from the color, to the shapes, to the varied spacing. It is the ultimate exploration of the creative boundaries of the OpenType-SVG color font.
BONUS: CS Juicy
You can easily combine some colors you want into 1 alphabet. Because CS Juicy Color is a font that composed by several parts that can be easily converted into solid path and replaced color.
Conclusion
Or
“Ok I got it – they’re nice, but how should I use them?”
If you’ve been infected by the color font bug, it can be tempting to renounce all your old fonts and go a bit crazy. Before you create designs that can resemble a bad acid trip, take into consideration these tips and pointers for making the most of this new typography trend:
- As with standard fonts, some are better than others.
- Just because you can use a color font doesn’t mean you necessarily should.
- Be mindful of the limitations of your color fonts.
- If you have your heart set on a bitmap font, it’s advisable not to use this at a larger scale than was intended by the font designer.
- Color fonts are heavier than their OpenType relatives, due to the extra amount of data they carry.
- If you want to use color fonts for web design, you should also take into account the possibility that it may be a long time before most visitors will be able to view the fonts as you intended.
- Pairing color fonts with cleaner elements on your designs will help layouts feel more balanced.
- If you’re still unsure about how to use color fonts in your designs, it’s a good tip to remind yourself of the purpose of your design.
By Hibridium
