How To Find The Best Fonts For Vinyl Decals (and How To Upload Them)

I don’t know how many there are, but it feels like there are millions of fonts out there to choose from and it can get a bit overwhelming finding ones that will work for your project. So I thought I would just give you a few pointers to make it easier sifting through everything out there, specifically for making vinyl decals. 

Either watch the video here…

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Or read below…

I’m mainly talking about fonts that are on external websites here, rather than ones that are already available on design space, silhouette studio, or on your computer, although you can of course use those as well. 

For a full list of where to find different fonts online, check out my Members Only area which has sites for both free and paid-for fonts as well as lots of options for pre-made SVG files. :

Licensing

So first off, the boring bit - if you’re selling decals with lettering in them, then you need to be using a commercially licensed font (unless you’re drawing your own). It can get a little bit confusing when the terms are vague, but usually as long as the font says it comes with a commercial license that you can create an end product with then you’re fine, although there are sometimes limits on how many products can be made.

Ideally, the font will come with a license file included, but if it doesn’t, just make a note of where you found it, and if it’s one you use a lot, check back every so often in case the license changes.

I do go into it a little bit more in-depth about licenses in this video if you’re stuck…

A lot of sites like Font Bundles and Creative Fabrica tend to mostly offer commercially licensed fonts automatically, but on sites like Dafont or Font Space, a lot of their free fonts are for personal use only. So if you want to make sure you’re only searching through the 100% free ones, make sure to tick that option when you’re searching…

and that will narrow things down a lot. 

Font Styles

Right, so now that’s out of the way, you want to think about what style of font it is you need…  so again you can usually narrow this down on a lot of sites by selecting a certain category.

So that could be brush, or calligraphy, or handwritten, just tick what you want and it will come up with all of the relevant options under that style. Then have a scroll down to see if there is anything that you like the look of. 

For making vinyl decals, in particular, you really need a solid font for it to cut properly, so avoid brush fonts like this that have gaps in them…

ones that aren’t very smoothly written…

and also really thin calligraphy fonts like this (unless you’re doing larger decals)…

because if you do these too small then they will just rip or won’t stick properly. 

Check The Character Map

Then if you have one that looks good, it’s also a good idea to check that all of the characters, symbols and punctuation you may need are included.

If you don’t use letters with accents very often and it doesn’t include them, then you can always make these using an existing letter and a dash or two dots etc, so it’s not the end of the world if it doesn’t have every single one. 

Check for Flourishes

Also if it’s a script font, you might want to look for ones that have extra flourishes to add to your designs to make them look a little fancier.

Once the font is downloaded, you can either find the flourishes in Font Book on your mac, or Character Map on a pc and then copy and paste them into Design Space or Silhouette Studio. Or you can find them under Glyphs in design software like Photoshop usually.

These are great as the more the font has, the more creative you can get with your designs. 

Consider The Quality

This isn’t always the case, especially if you can find a good weekly freebie, but the quality of the fonts you find are usually on par with how much you’re paying for them. So a lot of free fonts aren’t always as good quality as the ones you pay a bit more for on Creative Market for example… so you might want to think about what you’re going to be using them for, and if you’re going to use them for a lot of your work then it might be worth investing in the ones that are made by more experienced designers.

Or you may want to look at paying for a subscription with a site like Creative Fabrica for constant access to lots of different fonts…

or signing up for a Plus Membership with Design Bundles for discounts and exclusives…

Make sure you are signed up to lots of the newsletters as well so you don’t miss out on any of their good freebies or discount deals!

How To Install

So, once you’ve found the one you want, you may need to sign up for an account if it is one of the paid for sites, but otherwise hit the download button and find it in your downloads section. 

Then on a Mac or MacBook you just need to double click on the one you want and click install font. And it should get added to your font book for you to use in any of your design programs or on Design Space or Silhouette Studio.

For Windows I can’t demonstrate it but apparently, you just need to right-click on the font and select install and it will be added to your system fonts I believe.

For iPads or phones you may need a font installer app to be able to do this, to then use them in design space or procreate or wherever else. I have a tutorial for adding fonts to an iPad below if you want to give that a watch (skip to 3:20)…

And then you’re ready to start designing and making! 

My last tip!

If, like me, you end up with a tonne of different fonts because you get excited, then my last tip is to use wordmark.it to see what you already have downloaded on your computer. This will save you constantly looking for new ones once you build up a good collection.

Let me know in the comments if you have any recommended fonts for vinyl decals that you love to use, or have any questions!