Color Fonts (also known as Chromatic Fonts) are the latest technological advancement in the world of typography and the next step in the evolution of typesetting. We’re all familiar with digital fonts that progressed from the concept of movable type, but one drawback that those two systems have in common is each character can only be produced in a single colour. Digital type can of course be modified with an array of text effects and customisations, but the new wave of Color Fonts use the OpenType SVG format to save colour, texture and transparency information directly into the font file. Essentially, Color Fonts are character sets of full colour graphics that provide exciting opportunities for creating vibrant typefaces.
Color Fonts are quickly gaining traction after support was included in Adobe programs, but the technology is already in use in the form of webfonts and the emoji keyboard on your smart phone. The add-on for Photoshop and Illustrator named Fontself is equipping creatives with the tools to experiment with Color Fonts by turning any kind of graphic into a character for a typeface. Some early examples of Color Fonts seem to have fallen victim to the novelty of being able to include vibrant colours and as a result can be quite garish, but one application I’m personally intrigued by is the idea of using Color Fonts to produce brush fonts in order to preserve the transparency and detail of the brush stroke. Existing brush fonts have to be vectorized from the original scan, so all that lovely detail is lost.
Still being in its infancy, the selection of quality Color Fonts is still fairly small, but I’ve scoured the web for all the interesting examples I could find. Check out these Color Font offerings and watch out for how designers find clever and unique ways to harness this new technology.
Heady Rough OpentypeSVG
Silver chrome and aluminum 3D font
Macbeth – OpenType SVG Font
Crude OpenTypeSvg
Flow SVG
Beast SVG font & Graphics Pack
FoilBalloon – Color bitmap font
Posy
Rocked SVG Font
Avallon OpenType-SVG Font
Watercolor font
Neon – OTF colour font
Tribal Aleut OTF color font
MEMPHIS Type Collection
FLEURO Colour Font
Aires Font
Batik India Color Font
Beach Towel Color Font
Mempix Multicolor Font
Alphabet watercolor
Popsky Multicolor
Thinks Opentype SVG
Color Block – Colored Font
OneLine Bold color font
Moligne – SVG Font Duo
Locus Sans Display and Color Font
Butter Love – Opentype SVG Dry Brush
Bluesky OpentypeSVG Font
HBPENCIL SVG Font
Almonte – OpenType SVG Font
Pure Heart – OpenType SVG Brush Font
Take Charge – OpenTypeSVG Brush Font
Lightbox Color Font
Atmosfhira Opentype SVG Colorfont
Fiesta Color Font
Abelone
Gilbert
Bungee
Bixa Color
Great list. I love color fonts and I hope some day all apps support them.
I’d be delighted if you include my Persian/Arabic color font to the list. There are no other Persian color fonts ;)
https://www.behance.net/gallery/59031069/Si47ash-Colorful-Dream-Fonts
Thanks for sharing, Chris!
What a nice selection! These are cool! Thanks!
Thanks for the helpful info about Color Fonts and the awesome showcase of them!
Great work Chris! LOVE LOVE LOVE these fonts you’ve found, especially Gilbert ❤️
These are incredible! Thanks so much for digging them up – can’t wait to try them out!
Hello, Great work Chris! LOVE LOVE LOVE these fonts you’ve found, especially Gilbert ❤️
This is a great and awesome post and a couple days i have searched this type of post, Now i am so glad to see these awesome instructions.
Not such a “late technological advancement” though. In the late 1980s to early 1990s the Amiga computing platform was going strong. There was a font package for it called “Kara Fonts”. While the Amiga computer and the Kara Font package were well ahead of it’s time, modern computers are much more useful. It is refreshing to see that color fonts are finally available to us once again.
These fonts are awesome! They way they are named makes a lot of sense. Never knew about colored fonts before. I assume they only have specific uses.
What a cool story… I hope you’re protecting your intellectual property rights, in capturing the process of helping people build them themselves Crypto Currency latest news and interact with them also…. interesting combo.
Beautiful color fonts. Nice selection. We too created a free color font.
Beautiful color fonts