What Is a Display Font?
By Maya Chen, lettering designer and type educator · Checked by Jordan Hale · · How we review content
A display font is a typeface designed for large sizes. Where a text face works hard to be invisible, so that a reader can finish a chapter without noticing the letters, a display face is meant to be noticed: its job is to give a headline, a poster, a book cover or a logo a voice. The category is defined by intended use, not by letter shape. A display font can be a serif, a sans, a script, a slab or a blackletter.
What display design allows
Type designers can optimise for either small or large sizes. At large sizes, three things stop being problems:
- Hairlines. Very thin strokes, as in Didone faces such as Bodoni Poster, look elegant at 72 points and disappear at 9.
- Tight spacing. Letters can sit close, because the eye sees the gaps proportionally. Kerning and tracking are tuned for large size.
- Unusual shapes. Decorative alternates, extreme proportions and strong contrast are acceptable when a word is read as a picture.
Some type families come in optical sizes: a text cut with sturdier strokes and looser spacing, and a display cut with finer detail. Source Serif 4 is one example of a family that ships optical-size cuts.
Examples by style
| Style | Display examples |
|---|---|
| High-contrast serif | Bodoni Poster, Playfair Display |
| Heavy sans | Impact, Bebas Neue, Bungee |
| Script | Lobster, Pacifico, Great Vibes |
| Blackletter | UnifrakturMaguntia, Old English Text |
| Decorative and stencil | Sedgwick Ave Display, Stencil |
The graffiti, calligraphy alphabet and block letters hubs show several of these designs rendered as real letters.
How to use one well
- Use one display font per layout. Two competing personalities cancel each other.
- Pair it with a plain text face. A neutral sans-serif or classic serif gives the display face space to stand out. See serif vs sans-serif for pairing principles.
- Keep the text short. A few words, a name or a title. Long runs of display type tire the reader.
- Check the smallest size. If the headline will shrink on a phone, test it there. A display font that is graceful on a poster can be unreadable in a thumbnail.
- Mind the x-height. Many display faces have small x-heights, so they look smaller than the nominal size.
Display fonts and lettering
The line between display typography and lettering is thin. Many display fonts are digitised from a lettering artist’s drawings and hold the quirks of hand drawing, while custom logo lettering is often built from a display font and then redrawn. If you need a one-off result, what is lettering explains how lettering differs from choosing a font. The lettering image maker lets you set short text in several display fonts and save the image.
Display fonts and fancy Unicode text
Unicode fancy text is not a display font. It substitutes characters that look like styled letters, and the font is chosen by the app that shows them, so you cannot count on a particular design. If a headline in a real display font matters, make an image, rather than relying on copy-and-paste text. Images keep their design everywhere, though they are not searchable or readable by screen readers unless you add alt text, as described in fancy text accessibility.
Common confusions
- Display is not a style category. It is a use category that cuts across the styles.
- “Decorative” is not the same as display. Some decorative faces are meant for text, and many serious display faces are plain.
- Display does not mean bold. Display faces include hairline and light weights.
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between a display font and a text font?
Can I use a display font for body text?
What are examples of display fonts?
Is fancy Unicode text a display font?
Related terms
- What Is a Script Font?A script font is a typeface whose letters imitate handwriting or pen calligraphy, usually slanted and often joined. Formal scripts follow calligraphic models; casual scripts imitate brush or marker handwriting.
- What Is Blackletter?Blackletter, also called gothic script, is a family of dense, angular writing styles used in Western Europe from the 12th century. Textura, Rotunda, Schwabacher and Fraktur are its main branches; Old English is a trade name for blackletter type.
- What Is a Slab Serif?A slab serif is a serif typeface with thick, rectangular serifs and little contrast between thick and thin strokes. Rockwell, Clarendon and Courier are well-known examples, and the style is also called Egyptian.
- What Is a Swash in Typography?A swash is an ornamental extension of a letter, such as an exaggerated tail, entry stroke or flourish. Swash capitals and alternate letters appear in italic and script typefaces and are usually switched on through OpenType features.
- Typography & Lettering GlossaryThe Typography & Lettering Glossary defines twenty terms that type designers and letterers use every day, from kerning and x-height to serif, ligature and blackletter. Each entry gives a precise definition, then shows what the idea means for hand lettering and for the styled Unicode text our generators produce.
- What Is an Ampersand? Origin of the & SymbolThe ampersand is the symbol & meaning "and". It began as a handwritten ligature of the Latin word et, its name comes from the old schoolroom phrase "and per se and", and many typefaces draw it in strikingly elaborate ways.