The Barbie font has become ubiquitous in all Barbie advertising and marketing materials. The font used for the Barbie logo has undergone various transformations over the decades, as the company has changed the logo from time to time.
A lot of people have tried to replicate the Barbie font over the years, and there are various fonts that were released which are quite similar to the Barbie font.
In this article, we will be focusing primarily on the 1975 version of the Barbie font. I will be discussing its characteristics, tips for using it properly, fonts that are the most similar, and more.
The short version: The 1975 Barbie font is bold, featuring a white fill and a pink border. That sets it apart from all the other Barbie fonts. Read on to learn more and to find similar fonts!
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Understanding the 1975 Barbie Font
Mattel, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Let’s start with an introduction to the 1975 Barbie font.
The 1975 Barbie logo, which is displayed above, was a big change from the original Barbie font, which was first released back in 1959.
The original Barbie font from 1959 is shown here:
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Mattel, Inc., Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
You may notice that it looks like the current Barbie logo, and that’s correct! In 2009, the company brought back the original Barbie logo, going back to its original roots.
The original Barbie logo was a soft, cursive script. It was entirely pink, with gentle curves and a fancy look.
The 1975 update was a pretty big change. Instead of a pink font, the company transitioned to a font with a bold and thick pink border and a white inner fill.
The company also did away with the fancy and gentle curves. Instead, the new font was a lot harsher, with more pronounced edges.
The idea was probably to present a more modern look, in style with a lot of the marketing materials at the time. The uppercase B still had curves, but the other letters mostly lost the poetic, flowery typeface.
The 1975 Barbie logo really pops out, whether you’re seeing it on screen or on physical marketing materials. It is the only logo out of all the Barbie logos that has white letters with a pink border; the other Barbie logos have a complete pink fill.
Most of the Barbie fonts are cursive and flowery. The 1991 version of the Barbie font is also bold, just like the 1975 version, but it’s entirely pink.
You can see the transformation of the Barbie logo over the years in the following image:
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Image credit: LogoMyWay
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Why is the 1975 Barbie logo suddenly garnering so much interest?
In 2023, the Barbie brand came out with a new Barbie movie. What a lot of people don’t know is that this particular movie used a font primarily modeled after the 1975 Barbie logo.
Barbie (film), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
This was not only used for the actual film’s logo but also on various marketing materials for the Barbie movie promotion.
For example, in the following image, we see a display for the Barbie movie at the Regal Transit Center in Buffalo, New York. Pay extra attention to the font used, and compare it to the 1975 Barbie font.
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Countessluann, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
While it is not the official current logo of Barbie, the movie has become so famous that many people are starting to associate this particular logo and font with the Barbie brand.
Barbie (The Movie) is the first Barbie film released. The Barbie brand, owned by Mattel, primarily focused on children’s toys, particularly the famous Barbie and Ken dolls.
Meanwhile, the first Barbie movie’s film rights (originally owned by Sony) were signed over to Warner Bros.
Since it’s the first Barbie movie, it made headlines all over the world, and it also penetrated meme culture around the time of its release.
Many people showed up in cinemas wearing pink outfits – including people from all genders and ages – and filmed themselves doing so, posting the videos on TikTok and social media.
As you can see on Yahoo Finance, Mattel’s stock saw a significant price increase since the Barbie movie was released. In fact, there are still additional movies to come, so the long-term implications of the Barbie movies on Mattel are still unknown but are likely to be positive.
As for why they decided to go with the 1975 Barbie font instead of the current Barbie logo, that is a matter up for speculation. Nobody knows the real answer, but here are my thoughts:
- They wanted something different from the current Barbie logo, as the first Barbie movie was meant to be something groundbreaking and unique. The 1975 Barbie font is the most unique of all the Barbie fonts, as it is different from all the other ones.
- The 1975 Barbie font stands out a lot. It is bold and in your face, making it perfect for the type of awareness campaigns the Barbie move was trying to run.
- The Barbie movie is geared towards young kids and teenagers, and this font is particularly easy for kids to read. Other Barbie fonts are less bold and more flowery, which can be harder for young children to read.
- Of course, kids are not going to the cinemas themselves. Who is taking them? Their parents, obviously. The age range of the parents of kids who are currently 5–10 years old is – you guessed it – 30–40. That means these parents grew up in the 1970s and 1980s, when the 1975 Barbie logo was still used. The 1975 logo gives them some nostalgia and an incentive to sit through the movie themselves.
As people started realizing that the Barbie movie uses the 1975 font, there has been an increased interest in this font, with lots of designers using it.
Now that you have a good understanding of the 1975 Barbie font, its characteristics, and why it’s suddenly so popular, let’s discuss some tips for using it in design projects.
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Tips for Using the Barbie Font in Design Projects
When using the Barbie font in design projects, it’s important to first consider the context and purpose of the project.
What are you trying to convey? What is your goal?
First, figure out the goal and scope of the project. If you are creating design materials for a wedding, the Barbie font might be appropriate – especially if you have an overall pink theme planned for the wedding.
Other examples of events for which the 1975 Barbie logo would be appropriate may include baby showers and gender reveal parties.
A gender reveal party is an event held to reveal the gender of an upcoming baby. This party reveals the gender of the baby to the friends and relatives of the expectant mother.
Meanwhile, a baby shower is planned as a celebration for the expectant mother. Friends and family members bring gifts – often gifts that could help with child raising, such as a crib for the new baby.
A gender reveal party might be held before a baby shower, so that friends and families can bring appropriate gifts, such as a pink crib instead of a blue one.
In any case, these are situations in which a Barbie-themed event is appropriate.
However, you should still use the Barbie font sparingly. The last thing you want is the 1975 Barbie font to be displayed all over, at every chance you get.
Since the 1975 Barbie font is quite bold and brash, it’s important to use it with tact. You can also use it with complementary fonts, including other versions of the Barbie logo, to take away some of the harshness of the 1975 Barbie font.
For example, the 1975 Barbie font could be used for the main title of your marketing flyers, while other fonts – either other Barbie fonts or other flowery fonts unrelated to the Barbie franchise – could be used for subtitles or the main body of your marketing materials.
Using the 1975 Barbie font for everything on your flier (or email banner) is a bit too much, in my opinion.
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Examples of the Barbie Font in Action
There are other situations in which you can use the Barbie font.
For example, it’s perfect for invitations and greeting cards for pink-themed or female-oriented events. You can even use it for business cards, depending on the type of business you run!
Marketing materials and advertisements are also perfect places to use the 1975 Barbie font. That goes for both physical and digital marketing advertisements.
You can also use the Barbie font to create clothing and accessories! Your main target audience will be young girls – children and teenagers.
You can use a print on demand platform like Printify or Teespring to create t-shirt designs that you can sell. You don’t need to store actual stock.
Instead, you create the design of the t-shirt, and the platform will print it on the actual shirt and send it out to the customer once an order is made.
You can do the same for mugs, caps, and other accessories, such as tote bags.
I just want to add a legal note about copying the actual Barbie logo and putting it on a shirt. While I’m no lawyer, I would assume that would be illegal under copyright laws, so I would not advise you to do that.
Instead, what I am talking about is taking a font similar to the Barbie font (more on that in the next section) and using that for your own slogans and logos.
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Similar Fonts to the Barbie Font
A common misconception – one that I really want to clear up – is that there is a “Barbie font.”
Actually, there’s no Barbie font. It doesn’t exist – the typeface for the Barbie long is a proprietary logo that was created exclusively for the purpose of the Barbie logo.
They didn’t use an existing font that you can find in Google Docs, Microsoft Word, or any other word editing document.
However, there are many scripts that were inspired by the Barbie typeface and which are very similar. Remember that the Barbie font has changed over the years, so the level of resemblance these scripts have to any particular Barbie font may vary slightly.
Also, the Barbie logo itself only includes certain letters, so the designers of fonts similar to the Barbie font may have had to use their own imagination and creativity to come up with the designs for other letters while maintaining the resemblance of the letters contained in the word “Barbie.”
Nevertheless, they are all distinctively similar to at least one Barbie font, and are usually recognized as such by most people.
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Retro Barbie Font
This font is available for download on Etsy and is very similar to the 1975 Barbie font. Actually, the package contains three different Barbie-like fonts, but the first one is the one you will be interested in if you are looking for something that resembles the 1975 Barbie font.
The best part is that it’s available for less than a buck and includes all of the uppercase and lowercase letters.
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Retro Dolly Font
This font is also available from Etsy. The font bundle contains a font that resembles the 1975 Barbie font, as you can see in the screenshot above.
In addition to the actual letters, the bundle also includes logos that you might want to use. They include the actual Barbie and Ken logos written in this font as well as other logos, such as a heart with the capital letter B in it.
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Barbie Medium
The Barbie Medium font, also called the Barbie MediumItalic font, bears a lot of similarity to the Barbie font released in 1975 as well as the Barbie font released in 1991.
The difference between the Barbie Medium font and the Barbie font of 1975 is mostly that the Barbie font of 1975 has an inner white fill with a thick pink border, something that the Barbie Medium font is missing.
Another major difference is in the capital B, which in the Barbie Medium font is missing the curves on the bottom left. The lowercase letters bear more similarity, though.
Dollie Script
The first font we will be looking at is called the Dollie Script. Dollie Script, created by Mans Greback from Sweden, is strikingly similar to most Barbie fonts over the years.
It is pink and cursive, with flowery letters that are cute to look at. You may download the script from Dafont.
However, do note that when you download the script from Dafont, you only get a personal use license. That means you can use it for your personal designs.
A small party for you and your friends most likely falls into this category.
However, for commercial uses, you will need to purchase a commercial license. That would include using it for t-shirts that you sell, for example, for advertising materials, or for a website you use to make money.
You can purchase a license on the Mans Greback website. Various licenses are available at different price points.
For example, if you are using it for a nonprofit, you can get the nonprofit license, which is significantly cheaper than the standard commercial license.
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Barbie Font by FG Studios
The Barbie font, created by FG Studios, is designed to imitate the Barbie logo. In particular, it resembles the original Barbie font released in 1959, which is also the one currently in use today.
It is free to use for personal use. A commercial license is also available for purchase, which would allow you to use it for marketing materials, on products, and for other commercial purposes.
Brush Script
Brush Script is a font that was created in the 1940s, so it is actually older than the Barbie franchise. This script, created by Robert Smith, is nevertheless pretty similar to the Barbie font.
This script is available on Adobe Fonts, so it is easily accessible. It has a lot of fancy and flowery curves, making it similar to the original and current Barbie font, and the lowercase letters are connected to each other as well.
It’s great for greeting cards or fliers announcing events like baby showers or gender reveal parties.
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Bartex
Yet another font that is pretty similar to the 1975 version of the Barbie font is Bartex. This font is free for personal use, and a commercial license is also available.
It’s a flowery script with pronounced curves. The capital B is very similar to the capital B in the 1975 Barbie logo, but one thing that sets the Bartex font apart from other Barbie-like fonts is that the other uppercase letters also have very flowery serifs.
Explore the best alternatives to Helvetica & Helvetica Neue here.
Conclusion
The Barbie logo is quite iconic, and the font is particularly beautiful.
There is no surprise why it has inspired so many copycat fonts, especially after the release of the Barbie movie, which significantly increased awareness of this font.
Whether you like the 1975 font or other Barbie fonts, I have provided plenty of sources for downloading and using the font, and most of them are free to use for personal purposes.
I hope you enjoy them!
