We all agree that the 1980s were inspirational.
The decade left a lasting mark on contemporary art for its bold aesthetics (it brought us Madonna, big hair, and neon colors), nostalgia, digital revolution, and emphasis on self-expression through DIY practices.
If that’s your taste and theme of creativity, you have come to the right place. This article will focus on ways to incorporate a nostalgic feel inspired by the 1980s’ futuristic sci-fiction films or outstanding retro graphics into your designs.
Today, I will explore a series of old-school fonts to bring you the good memories of Knight Rider, Atari, Miami Vice, and the original Nintendo.
Remember that when creating a flyer or a poster, your title is the first thing people see, so read on and choose carefully.
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Synthwave Fonts for Retro Designs
1. Alien Encounters
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Alien Encounters should be your top choice if you are looking for a synthwave font to give you the closest encounter with an alien form. Alien Encounters by ShyFonts gives a vaporwave vibe and is an excellent choice for creating a neon outrun work of art.
Alien Encounters contains uppercase and lowercase letters and numbers, with limited punctuation options. To get the best out of this font, you must apply the synthwave colors available.
It is a free-to-use font for personal use only. To use it commercially, you must purchase its $10 desktop license for up to five users.
Alien Encounters’ commercial package contains all fonts in the free package in TrueType and OpenType formats with print and preview embedding options enabled.
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2. Miami Beat
Another exciting font for retro designs worth trying is Miami Beat. It is eye-catching and memorable for font display purposes. The font works well with high-contrast colors but can also be an excellent fit for layering.
Miami Beat is a multiline font by Type Factory with a summer night theme. Hence, it is perfect for branding, creating quotes and magazine titles, product design, store branding, and film.
Miami Beat’s key features include uppercase, lowercase, symbols and punctuation, numeral, ligature, alternate, and multilingual support. Miami Beat also contains OTF, TTF, WOFF, and WOFF2 files.
You can purchase a Miami Beat desktop or webfont license for personal and commercial use for $12.
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3. Endless Sunrise
Endless Sunrise is a hand-made retro-styled script font derived from countless 80s movies. The font strives to capture inspirational heroism and competitive spirit through a loose, hand-drawn design with complimentary sans-serif.
Endless Sunrise is a unique font set with a complete collection of alternatives and underlines for customization. The full customization options ensure you don’t repeat an E or I, as in many script fonts.
The font also features lowercase, uppercase, numerals, punctuations, and language support. Other contents of the Endless Sunrise Font Duo include regular, alternative, underlines, extra, and extra italic.
Endless Sunrise is perfect for creating retro title designs, posters, music albums, and book covers. An Endless Sunrise lifetime license is available for $24.
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4. Outrunner
Remember the era when people wore vibrant colors to go to discos, listened to music, or watched science fiction movies with colorful posters? Outrunner will revert you to such memories and beyond.
Outrunner is another exciting font to add a throwback feel to your designs. It is a versatile font you can use whenever you need a script font, as it is not exclusively used for retro designs.
It is perfect for classic, retro, and modern designs, including signatures, logos, branding, blog headlines, invitations, and merchandise. For better results, you can combine Outrunner with alternates of OpenType elements.
Outrunner font’s key features include lowercase, uppercase, numerals, alternates, punctuation, and diacritics. File formats available include OTF and TTF. You can purchase the Outrunner retro script font premium license for $17.
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5. Last Dance
Consider the Last Dance Retro Movie Script font to add old-school enchantment to your work. The hand-drawn script font is brimming with nostalgia and pays homage to iconic dance movies such as Dirty Dancing and Flashdance.
Last Dance Redux revamps your artwork to improve readability. It has cleaner characters and efficiently uses resources, making it ideal for print and web projects.
Whether using the original version or Redux, you’ll enjoy features such as lower and uppercase characters, numerals, punctuation, underlines, and language support.
Last Dance has various buying options for personal and commercial use starting from $24.
6. Action Hero
Action Hero is a textured-brush font ideal for designing action-packed movie titles and posters. It is ideal for movies featuring hostage situations on speeding trains or buses or a one-person army rescuing stranded POWs.
The Action Hero font collection features multiple creative options, so you don’t have to worry about repeating characters as you strive to achieve authentic hand-drawn title designs.
Some of Action Hero’s outstanding features include numerical, punctuation, lower and upper cases, underlines, and language support. You can purchase Action Hero’s personal or commercial license starting at $24.
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7. Bayshore
Bayshore is a 1980s-inspired monoline script font ideal for designing posters, music videos, packaging, and any project that needs a retro touch. It is a hand-drawn font perfect for creating slick and stylish lettering.
The Bayshore font collection includes underline and end swashes, glyphs, and a set of 10 neon glow actions to accompany the font. Whether you want to create a logo, merchandise, or product packaging, Bayshore guarantees your artwork a quality retro effect.
Bayshore is a single font file with features to help you customize your text. Other features include end swashes that separate each lowercase character, which can be accessed through any software with OpenType capabilities.
Bayshore also has four underline swashes with various lengths to help you underline your text and give it outstanding quality by simply typing any square brackets.
The free Bayshore version is available for download. It also has a premium version which runs $18 per individual style.
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8. Revive 80
Revive 80 is a collection of eight versatile typefaces hugely inspired by popular 1980s designs. You’ll agree that the 80s vibe is making a significant comeback on our screens, supermarket shelves, and elsewhere.
So while almost everything else has a vintage feel, why not your creative pieces? Revive 80 is a comprehensive font collection that does not target a specific genre.
Its versatile nature enables its three sans-serif typefaces to fit different design heights and widths. It has various licensing options to suit individual and organizational needs and is structured for a one-time purchase of $29.
Revive 80 font collections are OpenType, meaning they can be accepted within most design software, including apps on mobile and tablets. Its multilingual support includes Western European, Basic Latin, and Euro and Pan-African Latin.
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9. Hot Rush
As the name suggests, Hot Rush is a synthwave font that takes you on a retro nostalgic ride of the 1980s. Hot Rush is a blend of Sans and Script duo that perfectly complement each other with long, fast, and textured strokes for your script.
Hot Rush is an excellent add-on to retro-inspired artwork, whether you are creating merchandise, logos, or packaging. The Hot Rush font collection is made of Hot Rush Script, a fast handmade font for your upcoming script.
The Hot Rush Script font only contains uppercase characters and supports numerals and punctuation. Hot Rush Sans is also condensed with only uppercase characters, numerals, and punctuation.
Hot Rush Sans Striped is a second version of Hot Rush Sans with vertical shapes through every letter to create a retro style. Hot Rush also has an italic version that is included as a separate font.
Other outstanding features include end forms, four swashes, and English, Italian, French, German, Portuguese, Swedish, Norwegian, Dutch, Indonesian, Turkish, and Hungarian language support.
You can purchase Hot Rush for $22 or combine multiple licenses for a 15% discount.
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10. Neon City
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Neon City is a nostalgic font carefully handcrafted to elevate your project across all topics. This font brings a visually appealing typographic balance suitable for various design ventures such as logos, branding, social media content, ads, and product designs.
This font captures the essence of authentic neon signs in a decorative typeface. Its letters showcase geometric shapes with softly rounded edges, reminiscent of actual neon tubing.
Files available in the Neon City font include Neon City (TTF, OTF), Neon Script (TTF, OTF), numbers, punctuation, and multilingual language support.
Purchase the font for $10.
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11. Stacker
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This unique font with a futuristic style can add an intriguing touch to your logotype. Drawing inspiration from real-world neon lights, Stacker employs sleek letter forms with smooth rounded corners.
Just like actual neon tubes, the font exclusively utilizes lines featuring open start and endpoints. This distinct font is an excellent choice for incorporating your own luminous light effects or even designing authentic neon signs in the physical world.
The Stacker font type offers exceptional versatility for your creative endeavors. It empowers you to craft designs, headlines, posters, logos, badges, and more, all of which exude an exquisite aesthetic.
This font is particularly well-suited for creating marketing materials with a unique retro effect. The package includes the Stacker font in both OTF and TTF formats. You’ll find a comprehensive set of standard glyphs and ligatures.
Additionally, the font comes with a web font version, making it adaptable for online use. The font boasts multilingual accent support, ensuring its usability across different languages.
Whether you’re working on a PC or Mac, installing the Stacker font is a straightforward process. It seamlessly integrates into design software like Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, InDesign, and even Microsoft Word.
Notably, the font incorporates PUA-encoded characters, enabling full accessibility without the need for extra design software. Moreover, it provides multilingual support, accommodating various language requirements.
Stacker font is available for purchase for $35.
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12. Redsun
Redsun stands out as a cutting-edge, contemporary font with a futuristic flair. Drawing inspiration from the captivating allure of neon designs, this font boasts exceptional quality and is tailor-made for various applications.
Its versatility shines through in its ability to elevate game branding, game titles, posters, magazines, logos, and various other design projects.
In terms of compatibility, Redsun ensures a seamless experience across different platforms. It integrates with Windows, Apple/Mac, and Linux systems, guaranteeing accessibility for a wide user base.
Moreover, it offers the convenience of effortless conversion into a web font, ensuring that your creative endeavors can be easily shared and displayed on websites.
Redsun’s appeal extends beyond digital platforms, making it an ideal choice for physical crafting projects.
Whether you’re using cutting-edge machines like Cricut, Silhouette, or similar cutting machines, Redsun’s design adapts effectively, preserving its distinct characteristics.
In essence, Redsun emerges as a font that encapsulates the spirit of modernity and futurism.
Its ability to transcend various design purposes and its compatibility across different technologies position it as a valuable asset for designers seeking to infuse their projects with a touch of contemporary style.
A Redsun lifetime license goes for $9.50 at this time of writing.
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13. Walneo
Walneo is an exceptional display font that draws inspiration from the captivating aesthetics of vintage neon signs.
Its distinctiveness lies in its ability to cater to a wide range of applications, making it an ideal choice for logo design, social media utilization, movie title creation, and any context where a striking impression is sought after.
This font possesses the power to leave a lasting impact on viewers, owing to its evocative resemblance to retro neon lights. With its roots deeply embedded in the nostalgic charm of neon signage, Walneo emerges as a font that seamlessly marries the past with the present.
Its allure becomes most evident when applied to various mediums, such as logos, where its uniqueness can elevate branding efforts to new heights.
Furthermore, Walneo’s versatility extends to the realm of social media, lending an air of nostalgia and flair to digital content. The font is available for purchase for $8.40.
14. Horsemen
Horsemen presents a captivating font with a dark and evocative essence that is poised to elevate your design ventures.
Drawing inspiration from the vintage allure of the 80s, horror aesthetics, and retro artwork, Horsemen offers a unique typographical choice to infuse intrigue into your creative projects.
It finds its forte in a multitude of applications, excelling particularly in titles, t-shirt designs, comic compositions, posters, album jackets, video game visuals, and packaging designs.
By embracing Horsemen, you ensure your designs maintain a timeless and distinct appeal, seamlessly blending the sharpness of contemporary design with the enduring charm of classic aesthetics.
The package encompasses the Horsemen Regular and Horsemen Slant styles, encapsulated within Opentype File versions.
This amalgamation allows designers to experiment with various font angles effortlessly, providing a versatile toolkit to manifest a broad spectrum of visual concepts.
Whether you’re aiming for an edgy and macabre vibe or seeking to infuse your work with nostalgia, Horsemen is an ideal choice to enrich your creative explorations for $32, available for a one-off purchase.
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15. Hastron
Hastron is a masterpiece of retro design. Its single-line script style adds to its visual appeal, making it perfect for crafting logos, badges, and labels reminiscent of neon signs.
The numerous glyphs, alternates, and ligatures complement these attributes, empowering you to create exceptional projects.
Drawing inspiration from calligraphy, Hastron embodies elegance and panache, making it a fantastic option for invitations, branding materials, and business cards.
With a range of distinctive features like Stylistic Sets, Stylistic Alternates, Contextual Alternates, SWASH, and Ligatures, the font offers a refinement that’s hard to miss.
Its versatility makes it work seamlessly across various operating systems (OS X & Windows) and software applications (Microsoft Word, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe InDesign, Corel Draw), making it a valuable asset for designers.
A lifetime license with no limitations will cost you $4.
16. Summer Blues
Summer Blues presents a nostalgic neon font evoking the ambiance of summer nights. Its retro aesthetic blends itself perfectly to enhance your store’s appearance, establishing a unique brand identity.
The font accentuates quotes and titles within magazines, films, and product designs.
With its versatile features, including uppercase and lowercase characters, symbols, punctuation, numerals, ligatures, alternates, and comprehensive multilingual support, this font is a versatile tool for various creative endeavors.
The package includes the Summer Blues font files in OTF, TTF, WOFF, and WOFF2 formats.
Summer Blues’ price starts from $12, depending on the license type.
Final Words
Your retro designs can be top-notch using designs from the 1980s with a selection of vibrant synthwave fonts. These fonts capture the era’s retro charm, from the neon glow of Alien Encounters to the versatile appeal of Miami Beat and Outrunner.
The handcrafted nostalgia of Endless Sunrise and Last Dance adds an old-school touch, while Action Hero and Bayshore offer specific design solutions.
Revive 80 encapsulates the decade’s spirit, and Hot Rush, Neon City, Stacker, Redsun, Walneo, Horsemen, Hastron, and Summer Blues infuse modernity with a touch of nostalgia.
Elevate your projects with these fonts, celebrating the timeless aesthetic of the 1980s.
