Top Font Trends for 2021

The font trends for 2021 are a bit crazy looking, in more than one way. This new year’s trends, identified by 99designs community of designers, appear to share a general theme: movement and fast approaching.

Whether it’s through dynamic action lines, fluid shapes or alternating letter sizes, these fonts are stretching their limbs in preparation for the new year. There is a variety in this year’s trends, it’s looking like 2021 might just be the year fonts come alive.

We gather 5 font styles that will rock in 2021. If you have more examples of your own and want to share them, leave a comment bellow!

Alternating baselines

All caps text is useful to make words feel more important and grownup, but all caps lettering also comes with a price. From a design perspective, capitalized words tend to form a boxy shape, which can read as less visually interesting than the height variation provided by lowercase forms. But by taking advantage of uneven sizing, font designers are writing outside the box in 2021.

Dynamic lettering

Dynamic letters create the illusion of movement using fluid shapes, textured shading, and action lines like a mid-motion snapshot. This trend is an analogue compliment to last year’s kinetic type, reminding us technology was never a necessity for moving art.

Solid shadows

Even the simplest shadow will launch a design into the third dimension, and this year the font designs of 2021 are lifting off with the aid of extra weighty shadows. These shadows are solid enough to embed their fonts in stone while their angular projection gives letters the appearance of flight.

Typewriter font

For a font grounded in defunct technology, there is something special about the enduring appeal of typewriter font (Courier, for all the typeface nerds out there). Like the mistakes on typewritten manuscripts, you can’t get rid of this font so easily, and in 2021, designers are reinventing it for the digital age.

Standout letters

For better or worse, fonts are designed to fade to the background. While this may come across as dull, it’s what allows letters to read well, putting the meaning of the words ahead of the designer’s ego. Typically, fonts achieve this through a predictably uniform style, but in 2021, many designers are creating wordmarks with individual letters that stand out from the rest.