Want to stay ahead of the design curve? From street art-inspired typography to fun, functional serifs, here are the hottest font trends for 2023.
ByKelsie Rimmer|Updated February 15, 2024
Fonts are not only vessels for communicating information – they’re powerful design elements that evoke emotions, convey meaning, and shape our visual experiences.
In the digital age, where content is abundant and attention spans are fleeting, selecting the right font has become essential for effective design. Fonts can breathe life into words, transforming them from a simple message into a visual expression of creativity and identity. In 2023, designers and typographers are exploring more innovative styles and techniques than ever before.
Ready to explore the dynamic font trends impacting the design world this year? From bold, expressive typography that commands attention to fun, functional serif fonts that exude sophistication, here are the top font trends dominating the design industry in 2023.
1. Street Art Typography
Over the past two decades, street art has exploded in popularity. The style’s vibrant colors and eye-catching creativity continue to make a mark on buildings and public spaces worldwide. And we’re increasingly seeing artists experiment with graffiti-style typography and urban fonts, with the trend popping up everywhere, from music videos and murals to fashion labels.
“Street art is probably the art form that has evolved the most over the last two decades,” says Anthony Thiebaux, Graphic Designer & Art Director at Maztrone. “For some time now, street artists have been interested in typography, mixing their graffiti experience with traditional typographic inspirations. I have no doubt their creativity will surprise us throughout the rest of 2023.”
British artist Pref’s murals feature overlapping and interlinking letters, inviting viewers to disentangle each design to decipher common words and phrases. Meanwhile, New York-based artist Faust takes his cue from traditional graffiti-style typography to create calligraphic works of art. His large-scale creations are elegant and edgy, combining cursive characters and a speedy, scrawled style.
Add grit and grunge to your next graphic design project with this street art-inspired typeface from Envato Elements. Featuring characters, numerals, and punctuation marks, use it to add a rebellious, rule-breaking element to your work.
2. Mixing 2D Design & 3D Typography
Our love affair with 3D typography has shown no sign of slowing down in 2023. With the increasing number of affordable and efficient tools that can be used to achieve these effects, we also expect to see more larger-than-life fonts within 2D environments.
When it comes to typography, mixing dimensions gives rise to collage-style fonts and graphics – as seen in this Instagram post from Nike announcing the launch of a new collaboration. Emblazoned across a sky-blue background and overlaid with a felt-tip swoosh, the bubbly, balloon-like, bright-yellow slogan – ‘80s R Back’ – achieves immediate impact.
“For years, 3D typography has been evolving and seducing more and more designers,” says David Milan, professional designer and lettering artist. When I started to get interested in it, there were only a few of us who were dedicated to it. Today, things have changed a lot. Technology has followed this evolution by offering more affordable and efficient tools to make this practice even more accessible.”
This ombre offering of SVG fonts combines 3D typography with a handwritten effect for a collage look and feel, adding depth and dynamism to your digital designs.
And for more standout statements, Strong Girls is a layered serif font featuring regular, outline, and long extrude styles, which can be stacked on top of each other.
3. Fun & Functional Serif Fonts
It’s official – serif fonts are back, but with a difference! While serifs were born on the printing press and are associated with old-school styles – like Times New Roman – the modern interpretation of the serif has resulted in fun-yet-functional typefaces.
For example, Leida is a typeface that gives a nod to historical designs by the Dutch masters. Part of this robust but refined serif font’s appeal is that it’s easy to read – whether in print or in-app. It’s also packed with personality, making it a smart choice for brands with plenty to say.
Strike a balance between fun and functionality with Gorgeous from Envato Author saltandpepperdesigns. This brand-new serif font looks equally at home on product packaging and social posts as on websites and wedding invites.
Fun, functional serif fonts inspire the latest logo design trends, and we’re also seeing a swing back to serifs. Check out the article for more visual identity inspiration and boost your next branding project.
4. Kinetic Typography & Animated Type
From the opening sequences of TV shows and movies to the pages of websites and apps, kinetic typography and animated fonts have taken our screens by storm. This font trend is all about movement – something that advancing technology and software have made all the more achievable. So whether revolving, expanding, morphing, or changing color – we expect to see fonts continue to flex and flow this year.
For example, motion artists Mat Voyce and Andrew Hudson both use animated typefaces to express emotion, and this lyric video from Damaged Goods Club also features a range of kinetic typography, taking singalong lyrics to the next level with glitch effects, 80s-inspired palm trees and pastels, and horror-film-inspired fonts.
Squeezing, shrinking, swirling – there’s no stopping this kinetic typography template. These looped animations from Envato Elements are ideal for bold backgrounds and attention-grabbing visuals.
5. Expressive Typography
As brands seek to cut through the clutter and form emotional connections with audiences, designers, business owners, and marketers are exploring expressive typography to add an approachable feel to their brands and content.
For example, this branding project for Inkagave references the drink’s key ingredient – agave – through a slightly spiky serif font. Similarly, the mix of thick and thin verticals and big and small apertures lends a mismatched, organic feel – perfect for a wild-harvested artisan product.
Similarly, the delicate typography used by Carina communicates the softening and soothing properties of the skincare brand, while a rich red color complements the products’ dark glass bottles and jars.
For some instant Romance, the curves and curls of this timeless yet modern serif font are a match made in heaven. Or check out Sogrivent, an elegant, expressive font ideal for branding and visual identity projects. Its uppercase letters are all understated authority – while its lowercase letters’ looping ligatures convey an out-of-the-ordinary approach.
6. Accessibility
Clear lettering, scaled-back color combinations, and easy-to-read type sizes are all important considerations when ensuring accessibility in font choices.
This branding from Let’s Wine is a perfect example, with its minimal logo and barely there background giving the simple sans serif font plenty of room to breathe. Clarity is also the order of the day for the coffee shop Cupping Room, which harnesses a distinct typographic hierarchy and plenty of white space for a concise and comfortable reading experience.
Simplify graphic design projects, prints, posters, and packaging with GR Read. Inspired by headline trends, this clear sans serif font intends to aid comprehension, has accents to support 26 different languages, and can be found on Envato Elements. As can the geometric letter shapes of Mosafin, which features sharp angles and thin lines for added clarity.
7. Bold, Sturdy & Structured Type
Now for a big, bold trend that refuses to stand in the shadows. Brands are turning towards sturdy and structured type to communicate a sense of security and legacy while ensuring their message is loud and clear.
PEPSI ’s recent rebrand features a confident, custom typeface that sees the beloved beverage’s name spelled out in solid black. APRON – a new kid on the fintech block – also uses a sturdy and structured type to align with its commitment to keeping customers’ money and data secure.
Whether designing a logo or working on a website, try this bold typography trend in your next project. Created by Envato Artist MadeDeduk, Heavy doesn’t take itself too seriously and features playful ligatures and international glyphs. Meanwhile, the sans serif, Bokis, adds strength and stability to any statement, making it ideal for headlines, titles, and posters.
8. Retro Returns Stronger Than Ever
The retro font trend reigns supreme, with designers revisiting various decades to find inspiration and add their modern twist. This nostalgic nod to a 1950s advertisem*nt is fun, friendly, and familiar. At the same time, this orange offering places us firmly in the Summer of Love, including soft corners, mellow curves, and an organic style.
“Retro and psychedelic styles are continuing to play a role in graphic design,” said David. “Whether designers choose to fuse retro and modern elements or push the boundaries with new technology and techniques such as AI tools, retro and psychedelic typography can add a playful and dynamic touch to any design project.”
We’ve seen psychedelic typography used across many design projects while big, bold bubble letters are inflated to their limits. Throwback fonts invite you to board a virtual time machine and seek out vintage influences – such as the signage-style font in this Wes Anderson-inspired artwork.
If you want to experiment with font styles from different eras, head to Envato Elements and download this optimism-infused Double Bubble 3D typeface that conveys a sense of childlike wonder, or get to grips with this groovy font with a funky, psychedelic feel.
If you’ve got retro fever, enter Wes Anderson’s world with our color grading reel, which talks you through editing techniques and typography to make your footage look like one of the master filmmaker’s nostalgia-infused movies. And check out the history of freeform typography – which gave us irregular and varied typefaces – in our Retro Design Trends.
9. Custom & Variable Fonts
Granting designers new levels of freedom, this font trend is opening doors in the world of typography, and – going forward – we expect to see many varying types emerge. Custom and variable fonts allow designers to precisely define typefaces’ width, weight, and contrast, giving them much more versatility.
“Variable typefaces have definitely changed the game,” says Anthony. “They’ve really opened new doors in the world of typography. This technology allows you to precisely define the width, weight, and contrast of the font you want. It gives designers so much freedom, and in the future, we will see many variable types emerge and very quickly become an industry standard.”
Take this variable sans serif all-caps font – a descendant of late 19th-century gothic typefaces – that can be made higher or wider on a whim. Then there’s Agrandir – a contemporary, custom font family featuring several stylistic alternatives, which can be turned on for individual letters or as overall presets.
Tap into this trend with the Cobya font from Envato Elements, a variable-weight typeface with a meandering wave-like look.
10. AI & Co-Creation Tools
Artificial intelligence continues attracting attention with art generators such as Stable Diffusion, DALL-E 2, and Midjourney streamlining and supercharging the font creation process.
As the technology continues to evolve, we’re seeing lots of eye-catching experiments – like this type generator, which allows users to input a word or phrase and use the multiple sliders to change the color, direction of movement, and type height and width.
Artists such as Gianpaolo Tucci and Edoardo Benaglia are showcasing their typographic AI experiments, resulting in some weird and wonderful characters – from these letters that resemble fantastical architectural structures or quirky living organisms to this puffer-jacket-style alphabet that was generated by DALL-E 2.
And that does it for the font trends we’ve spotted this year so far! While here, explore the top graphic design, branding, and logo trends for 2023 and beyond.
