Old English Font Generator

What people mean by “Old English” lettering

The phrase usually refers to the heavy medieval lettering seen on newspaper mastheads, certificates, sports jerseys and tattoos — textura blackletter, drawn with dense vertical strokes and pointed terminals. It has nothing to do with the Old English language, which was written in a mix of Latin letters and runic characters such as thorn and wynn.

Unicode gives you the blackletter letterforms, in a light and a bold weight. The bold weight is the closer match to the classic Old English look, which is why it is pinned first on this page.

Set it like a wordmark, not a paragraph

Old English lettering was designed for display: mastheads, titles, initials. Treat it the same way. One or two words in bold blackletter reads as a wordmark; a full sentence reads as an obstacle. Adding spacing between the characters — the wide variant here — mimics the generous letter spacing used in traditional signage and makes short titles noticeably clearer.

For a heraldic effect, pair the lettering with a single ornament: a cross, a pair of blades, or a bracket frame. One ornament, not five.

• Bold blackletter for the classic masthead look
• Wide spacing for titles that must be read at a glance
• One ornament maximum, or the wordmark turns into clutter

Before you commit it to something permanent

These characters are drawn by whatever font is installed on the device showing them, so your screen and someone else’s can differ noticeably. For a tattoo, a print job or a logo you need a real font file and a designer. Use this page to test wording, spacing and capitalisation — then hand the wording over.