Colorful Fonts Guide: The Best Free Color Fonts

Want to know all about colorful fonts? Good news, you’ve come to the right place. Buckle up as we take a deep dive into color fonts.

Fonts play a very important role in graphic design. It’s one of the 3 elements that I discuss in my party favors course that I consider a part of the design trifecta: background, graphics, and fonts. Traditional fonts are limited to a monochromatic style, with just a single color, before you make changes to them by adding special styles and effects.

If you’ve ever wanted to learn more about color fonts, what they are, which programs they are compatible with, and where to find them for free, you’ll learn all that and more with this colorful fonts guide. And if you are more of a visual learner, you can jump to this video to see colorful fonts in action.

What are Colorful Fonts?

Colorful fonts are a type of font that include multiple different colors and graphic features to each character. Color fonts aren’t your typical fonts. As you type, each letter is already pre-styled and designed. There is no need to add special effects or set a color because they are embedded into the font itself. These fonts use scalable vector graphics (SVG) to define the color information, allowing for the display of multiple colors, strokes, highlights, gradients, and detailed designs. 

Colorful fonts go by many different names. They are also known as chromatic fonts, opentype-svg fonts, color vector fonts, decorative color font, or multicolor fonts. They are different from the traditional black-and-white style that you are used to typing with everyday. Unlike traditional single-color fonts, colorful fonts instantly captures attention and adds style and personality into your design.

The file format of colorful fonts is an opentype font format. This is different from svg or png font letters. SVG and PNG letters are individual images of each letter, which requires you to individually place each letter in one-by-one. While this is an option if you want to create a colorful design, it is time-consuming. Instead, using an opentype-svg font format allows you to simply type out your wording, with the characters already styled.

Compatibility and Supported Programs

It is important to note that color font technology is limited in its compatibility. While it works with big name design programs, many popular platforms and programs do not support such fonts. If you use Adobe products, the industry standard for graphic design, you can use color font formats. Adobe Illustrator CC, Photoshop CC, and InDesign CC offers full support for colorful fonts.

Colorful fonts can also be used in Inkscape, Procreate and Affinity programs. Luckily for my Silhouette users, colorful fonts are also compatible with Silhouette Studio. Keep in mind that the colored letters, when typed, will act as an image. The colors are not separate layers suitable for vinyl cutting, but instead work as a type, print then cut design.

Unfortunately, colorful fonts are not compatible with web based programs and can not be displayed on browsers, including Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Safari and more. In addition, colorful fonts can not be used in web based programs such as Canva. Finally, sorry Cricut users, chromatic fonts are not compatible with Design Space. If you attempt to use colorful fonts with programs they are not compatible with, you will only see the outlines or silhouette of the letters. You will not see the colorful features and style.

Where to Find Colorful Fonts Free

Getting your hands on high quality colorful fonts for free isn’t hard, you just have to know where to look. Websites such as Fontspace, FontSquirrel, Google Fonts, and Dafont offer free fonts available to download for personal use. Keep in mind, you may not be able to see the color when viewing in a web browser, unless an image is used to display the font.

You can download colorful fonts free from Creative Fabrica using their free trial. They have an entire category featuring color fonts that can be downloaded for commercial use. With their 30 day free trial, you can grab up to 10 colorful fonts free. Currently they have over 1200 colorful fonts to choose from. With so many options, you’re sure to find a beautiful color font to fit your design needs.

If you’re a graphic designer, crafter or small business, definitely consider Creative Fabrica’s annual subscription for 4.99/month. The subscription includes unlimited access to over 7 million assets of fonts, designs and graphics. I personally find it an invaluable asset for when I’m creating new craft projects or stationery designs.

The Best Color Fonts

Emojione Color and Trajan Color Concept are some basic color fonts you may already be familiar with. But below are a few of the best color fonts to try as a beginner.

This is only a small selection of chromatic fonts available. Head over to Creative Fabrica to check out even more. You can find tons more with holiday themes like Christmas or the 4th of July. You can even find them based on occupation, such as nurses or teachers.

Uses for Colorful Fonts

Colorful fonts opens up so many creative possibilities, enabling you to create colorful designs in record time. From invitations to party favors, tumblers, apparel, social media graphics and more, colorful fonts are a quick way to add colorful style to your designs. You can experiment and quickly switch up your color scheme, font size, and additional graphic elements to improve your overall design, instead of using basic one-color fonts.

See It In Action-Video Explanation and Tutorial

Colorful fonts are still relatively new, but it is still something you should incorporate into your design process. It’s rich graphic features makes color fonts an asset to designing colorful projects. With their compatibility across popular design software and availability of free downloads, colorful fonts will become an essential tool for you to use. Have you ever used colorful fonts before? If you have, let me know what’s your favorite colorful font in the comments. If you haven’t, will you be giving them a try?