Etsy, Big Cartel, and Shopify have made it easier than ever to print and sell your tattoo flash prints. The wide variety of 'Old School' tattoo-style fonts make it easy to test layouts and letter your projects. And after spending hours upon hours painting, it's nice to not have to worry about making a spelling error!

Looking to take your flash paintings to the next level? Here are the Top 30 Best Old School Tattoo fonts to help you dominate that Etsy, Big Cartel, Red Bubble, Society6, and Shopify marketplaces.

New old school tattoo fonts are being released all the time, and some of them shoot to the very top of the list very quickly. Check back from time to time and you may see a new font you've never seen or heard of before!

Tattoo Museum

What is there even to say about Tattoo Museum. Tattoo Museum burst on the scene in 2016 and essentially took over the game from every other traditional tattoo font that had been released until that time.

If you've ever seen a t-shirt and wondered what font it is, it's probably Tattoo Museum. A remarkable piece of work by Woodcutter.

Sailor Beware

Sailor Beware is one-of-a-kind when it comes to tattoo fonts, a hand-drawn oblique (angled) font with a center-line serif on the left side only. Sailor Beware gives any traditional flash piece a more modern flair. Little known fact: this font was inspired by a Title Fight tour poster.

Sailor's Fat Tattoo Script

There are many Sailor Jerry tattoo fonts available, but the vast majority are stiff and computerized. They just don't evoke the feeling of anything classic tattoo art. That's where the Sailor's Fat Tattoo Script comes in.

Sailor's Fat Tattoo Script is a hand-drawn (and now digitally drawn) half-filled and fully filled Romanesque nautical tattoo font with decorative center-line serifs, wavy arms and foot serifs, and flow-through cross-bars on the A and H.

The latest version now features some unusual non-English characters and ligatures, numbers, punctuation, and a whole host of accented letters. Finally a way to capture that nautical tattoo vibe without stiff and mechanical computerized letters.

Sailor's Fat Tattoo Script comes in Regular (half-filled), Italic (oblique), Black (filled), and Black Italic versions.

AZ Vintage Tattoo

AZ Vintage Tattoo is a rough-hand old school tattoo font. The font features a number set, a useful selection of common punctuation, and a small caps set in the upper case. Be careful - the small caps set features thinner lineweights than the full height letter set.

Brave Sailor

Brave Sailor is the real deal. This is an expanded hand-drawn rendering of classic tatto style with understanded serif detailing, dropped legs on the K and R, and a lot of style throughout. Featuring European characters like AE, Eth, Thorn, Long S, and German Double S, as well as a huge selection of accented vowels.

Fun fact: this font was created by tracing over Fette Egytienne.

Sailor Scrawl

Sailor Scrawl is actually a family of fonts, which is why it's on this list. Sailor Scrawl is a hand-drawn Romanesque tattoo font that comes in three different versions. Each version has a different infill pattern.

The standard Sailor Scrawl version has an open diamond in the center of the thick stem. Sailor Scrawl Black has no open diamond in the thick stem. Sailor Scrawl Fancy has an open infill on the thick stem with a diamond pattern.

Sailor's Diary

When Sailor's Diary came on the scene a few years ago, it was a breath of fresh air. A well-crafted smooth sans serif with an unbelievable number of alternates for letters AND numbers? It was something that really had never been seen before. And possibly never since.

Also includes scrolls with editable text? Bad Taste  has delivered, and then some.

Shipmates

Shipmates is an interesting entry into the list of best tattoo fonts. No decorative serifs or spurs, no decorative inline pattern, and yet found time and time again on many an Etsy store flash sheet. Clean, reliable, that hand-drawn authentic feeling, and a huge selection of stars and dots for filling open areas.

Bellfield

Bellfield is a hand-drawn old school tattoo typeface inspired by traditional American tattoo designs. The typeface includes an uppercase alphabet with a few heavily-flourished alternate capitals. Bellfield features a much thicker lineweight than most hand-drawn old school tattoo fonts, which means it will show up better on large projects like apparel. Overall, it's a welcome addition to our list!

Ink Master

Doffdog's Ink Master is a complete family of six (six!) monoline old fonts. Comes in three weights, each with an oblique (italic) version. Huge selection of accented characters as well for European language support. May be a bit busy in larger text, but this clean, well designed font would look great on larger designs like t-shirts and hoodies. Doffdog is also the designed of the "Old School Pro" tattoo font if you need something a little more modern.

Old School Tattoo Font

Richard Moore's Old School Tattoo Font is by far the best of the best when it comes to old school tattoo fonts. The monoline font features a hand-drawn feel, consistent line weighting and letter sizing, flourishes, decorative serifs, alternate uppercase size in the lower case, a full number set, and a good selection of punctuation.

Now if only we could figure out how to get the sans-serif font from his demo graphic...

Crazy Traveler Monoline

Crazy Traveler Monoline is a family of traditional tattoo serif font with a hand-drawn style and an extensive character set. It features plenty of accented and European characters, punctuation, and numbers, as well as a bold version.

Fun Fact: Crazy Traveler was named using the Wu-Tang Name Generator.

AZ Sailor Tattoo

AZ Sailor Tattoo does not mess around. A gritty, hand-lettered half-filled nautical font, AZ Sailor Tattoo truly captures the look and feel of pencil lettering. The rough edges and gradient fill combine to perfectly emulate pencilwork.

AZ Sailor Tattoo provides a small-caps version in the lower case, a full number set, and a partial punctuation set.

Sailor Tattoo Hand

Sailor Tattoo Hand is a bit of a strange one. It was created to be a workhorse for merch designs. However it because apparent it was too heavily ornamented to be used for smaller text, so Sailor Tatto Hand Modern was created to increase legibility at smaller sizes. Sailor Tatto Hand is a thinner line with plenty of ornamentation. Sailor Tattoo Hand Modern is a thicker line sans serif.

VTC FreeHand Tattoo One

VTC Freehand is an amazing hand-drawn old school tattoo by the prolific Larry E Yerkes of the Vigilante Typeface Corporation. Freehand Tattoo One was originally created as a freehand paint tool test with a tablet. It features thick stem weights on the uppercase letter set, and open stem bodies on the number set.
 VTC Freehand Tattoo One is free for personal use only.

True Mama

True Mama is a pair of exquisitely-made old school tattoo fonts. The typeface features the consistency of a font that's been constructed digitally, but adds the flourishes, serifs, and style of a hand-drawn font.

Captain Cook Tattoo

Captain Cook Tattoo is a fully featured old school tattoo font featuring both half-filled and outline letters. The font is named after Captain James Cook. Lots of style and class, a great additional to any old school tattoo project. At only $9, this one's a steal. 

Bad Sailor

Bad Sailor is a little rigid, a little stiff, but that makes is more legible from far away. Perfect for projects where too much ornamentation would distract from your artwork. It's a little condensed - great for fitting a lot of small text into an area.

Made by Bad Taste, it comes with a ton of alternates, accented characters, and even ribbons with editable paths.

Tattooed Sailor

Tattooed Sailor is a heavily ornamented monoline nautical tattoo font, with a hand-drawn vibe. Full selection of numbers and punctuation, and it even comes with a ton of vector merch designs that work well with the font.

Tattooed Sailor works best at large sizes. 

Tattoo Thinline

Tattoo Thinline is a hand-drawn old school tattoo font, with a modern slab serif flair. The font strips away many of the features of old school tattoo fonts, but adds a number of new termination serifs, including vertical termination serifs on the E, F, L, T, and Z. Tattoo Thinline blends seamless into any merch design or flash project you're working on. Tattoo Thinline is free for personal use only.

Dead Hardy

Dead Hardy is a natural feel hand-drawn thinline old school tattoo font with some special extras. The font features an uppercase letter set filled with embellished letters, numbers, and a good selection of punctuation. Dead Hardy is a great font for your production merch designs and flash pages. Dead Hardy is free for personal use only.

Rats Get Fat

Rats Get Fat is another stalwart of the band merch and Etsy flash painting scene. The hand-drawn font could never be mistaken for a computer-design typeface, blending seamlessly into any design.

Classic Tattoo Regular

Classic Tattoo Regular is a new entry into the diaspora of hand-drawn old school tattoo fonts. Classic Tattoo Regular is a single-case hand-drawn letter set with flow-through cross ties on the A, H, K, and N. termination serifs and a center-line spur on the left side only.

Sailors Tattoo Pro

Sailors Tattoo Pro skirts the line between computerized and hand-drawn fonts, in what is most likely the most flexible set of fonts. The Sailors Tattoo Pro set features open, filled, and half-filled letters (top or bottom), as well as two light versions and a set of gradients that can be applied as fills. The only drawback? Price: each font must be purchased separately, and prices start at $29...

Tattoo Ink

Tattoo Ink was originally created in 2003, and by now it's just about as cookie-cutter as you can possibly get on your old school tattoo projects. With incredibly consistent lettering sizes, and two types of terminations on the half-fill, it's no wonder Tattoo Ink has become the go-to font for everything from tote bags to cell phones to t-shirts and more. Tattoo Ink makes a great starting point for your first foray into old school tattoo fonts. But don't stop there! Tattoo Ink font is free for personal and commercial use.

Tattoo Sailor

Tattoo Sailor font is a scratchy hand-drawn old school tattoo font. Perfect for flash designs with a rough sketch feel. Got a client looking for a new label for the line of rums? This is the font for you. Tattoo Sailor font is free for personal use only.

Commercial use requires a donation.

Tattoo Sailor

Don't let the splash page fool you - Tattoo Girl is a highly usable old school tattoo font with a nautical flair. The original outline has been built from modular monolines, and then filled to create six different formats, including open (outline), filled, half-filled bottom, half-filled top, filled shadow, and filled with a heart pattern. Ships with small caps in the lower case, numbers, and common punctuation. Be prepared to pay $36 for each font in the Tattoo Girl family.

Hatchet Font

Hatchet is a hand-drawn font inspired by classic tattoos and vintage woodcuts. The thin monoline font is incredibly consistent across all letters, but will need some stroke to show up on your apparel. The letter set is limited to uppercase letters and a small selection of punctuation.

Sailor Marie

Sailor Marie describes itself as the 'best sailor tattoo font ever'. It's hard to disagree - Sailor Marie comes in filled, monoline, monoline bold, half-filled, gradient fill versions and more! Very consistent across all letters and styles, with expressive flourishes - it's surprising Sailor Marie hasn't caught on among designers. It might be the fact that each of the 10 Sailor Marie styles is sold separately, starting at $23.

Tattoo Lettering

Tattoo Lettering is a classic old school tattoo font. Although incredibly consistent across letters, it still retains its hand-drawn feel. The font comes in two formats, either open lettering, or filled. The font comes with a less ornate version of each letter in the lower case, and a full set of numbers. A small selection of punctuation and special characters round out the letter set. Version 4.1.5 of this font was released by Gaut Fonts in 2004!

Tattoo Lettering is free for personal use only.

Cute Tattoo

Cute Tattoo really pushes its hand-drawn lineage - no one would ever confuse this for a computer generated letter set! Rough edged, with more spurs and serifs than you can shake a stick at. Perfect for laying out your sketches, and it even comes with numbers and punctuation!

 Cute Tattoo is 100% free, although donations are welcomed.

Zeebonk

Zeebonk is Dutch slang for a well-worn sailor, and the Zeebonk tattoo typeface definitely has a nautical feel. Zeebonk comes with extensive language support, alternates for the upper case (and some lower case letters as well) and more.

Navigator

Navigator just barely made the cutoff. Not specifically designed as an old school tattoo font, Navigator still brings the heat on any old school tattoo flash sheet or apparel branding, but features a few versions that are obviously not intended to be used for old school tattoo projects at all. The font also features additional flourishes on the uppercase letter set. Each version starts at $15.

Santiago BTN

Santiago BTN is a monolline slab serif font that skirts the line of what will work for old school tattoo fonts. It was originally developed as a Wanted Poster font, but definitely fits into traditional flash paintings and apparel projects.

Jackham

Jackham is a loose and well-styled hand-drawn typeface by Ian Irwan Wismoyo. It has been out for a while, having originally been released in 2014, but as of yet has not found broad acceptance in the merch design community. That's a good thing - it means that it won't look recognizable to most people.

The crossbars on the A and H are a little smooth, so you may have to tweak them if you're adding Jackham to a flash painting print. But if you're designing t-shirts, this is a solid choice.

Sailor's Tattoo Special

Sailor's Tattoo Special is a well-designed old school tattoo font that makes it pretty clear that this is a computer generated font. It's a modernist re-interpretation of an old school tattoo style, such as having square terminations on all the serifs. 2007 was a much different time indeed.

Pinders

Pinders is a fantastic modern rendering of an old-school hand-drawn tattoo font. Lots of flowing lines and curled serifs.

Pinders features a full number set and a good selection of punctuation. A great addition to your merch and flash painting projects.

Honorable Mentions

Conclusion

There will always be a place for old school tattoo fonts in traditional flash painting and merch design. And not every font works with every design. Having a wide variety of fonts to choose from is the best option for anyone looking to sell their work as prints or on t-shirts.

We hope you've been able to find what you were looking for on our list of Top Old School Tattoo Fonts.

Need More Tattoo Fonts?

If you haven't yet had your fill of tattoo fonts, we're proud to offer this incredible collection of traditional (and non-traditional) tattoo fonts for all of your flash painting and merch design projects.

Our Tattoo Font Collection is made up of every tattoo font we offer. Not only that, but it's constantly being updated with every new tattoo font we release, and you will always have free access to future updates!