It’s January, and what better time to revisit our typography and freshen up our designs for 2024.
In this month’s roundup of the best new fonts, we find a large number of vintage, retro, and revival typefaces. Is it that 2024 will be a heavily retro year, or were these designs simply created at the tail-end of 2023, and we’ll have to wait for February and March for 2024’s trends to emerge? Only time will tell.
In the meantime, here are the fonts that caught our eye in January. Enjoy!
BD Orange
BD Orange is a script-like grotesque typeface with a vintage sci-fi feel. It includes variable weights from Thin to Loud Black and features tons of alternatives and optional ligatures. It’s an excellent choice for a logotype when you’re looking for something retro but clean and clear.
Protest Grotesk
Protest Grotesk is another retro-feeling grotesque typeface, this time drawing inspiration from early 20th-century constructed letterforms. It comes as a variable font and in a range of weights from Thin to Black, plus their accompanying italics. It’s an excellent option for a corporate typeface.
Hypercube
Hypercube is yet another retro sans-serif, not grotesque this time, but taking its cue from mid-century Swiss modernism by way of 90s and 00s office aesthetics. It works better on screen than fonts from that era, but it still manages to evoke the turn of the millennium and the early days of the web.
Baram
Baram is a unique typeface that creates a sense of motion and impermanence by constructing its letters out of waves. It would have been a gift to the glitch aesthetic a few years ago. It would make a great starting point for designing a logo that needs to evoke speed.
SFT Schrifted Serif
SFT Schrifted Serif is a beautiful serif font with graceful curves and fine details. Inspired by the Stockholm districts of Gamla Stan and Södermalm, it comes in three optical sizes, Text for body text, Display for headings, and Subhead for smaller headlines. It’s not yet finished, but you can download the beta version.
Palacio
Palacio is a nice, clean brush script that can be used in place of lettering for a warm, personal feel. It includes plenty of alternate characters and optional ligatures so you can adapt the shapes to your content. It’s a good choice for a more relaxed logotype.
Afronaut Pro
Afronaut Pro was inspired by a blend of Latin and Arabic typography and Zambia’s all-but-forgotten space program. It blends simple geometric sans with flowing calligraphic shapes. There are six weights, from Ultra Light to Bold, and there’s a variable font available.
Champion
Champion is a modern revival of the slab serifs typically seen on sports jerseys. The angular shapes are simple, bold, and almost (but not quite) monospaced — the utilitarian aesthetic works well for editorial design. There are four variations: Champion, Champion Condensed, Champion Sans, and Champion Sans Condensed.
Giliant
Giliant is a new option for devotees of the Art Nouveau trend. It’s a graceful display serif with a high contrast and fine details. There’s only one weight available, but it works well for editorial or brand design projects that evoke luxury and desirability.
Octave
Octave is a serif typeface reviving French Old Style designs. It features some rare musical emojis and symbols, making it ideal for text describing music. Its open counters and regular rhythm make it highly legible, and it’s a good upgrade for anyone looking to refresh documents currently using Times.
Art Company Mono
Art Company Mono is an extremely elegant monospaced serif. It was initially intended for display purposes, but it maintains its readability well at small sizes, and this, combined with the monospacing, makes it excellent for tabular data. There are currently four weights, from Thin to Bold, and their accompanying italics.
Super Ground
Super Ground is an excellent display font that uses lowercase letters to extend the width of characters, allowing you to create text with variable width and rhythm easily. It’s ideal for threading through dynamic images and is crying out to be used in editorial design.
Rossela
Rossela is an elegant serif with classical proportions. It’s ideally suited to display text and features several ligatures that create points of interest — the RO and KO ligatures are particularly pleasing. It’s both modern and formal. There’s a single weight and an italic.
Sittl Pro
Sittl Pro is a geometric sans with rounded corners. It evokes a subtle retro feel and is ideal for logo design and signage. There are four weights, from Regular to Black, and accompanying italics.
Teenage Tropics
Teenage Tropics is a self-consciously 1960s-inspired display face that blends retro styling with a tropical vibe. It ripples like sunlight on water and is precisely what we need to add some warmth to our January.