What is the best font for a poster?

For the headline, a heavy one. Of the 388 fonts in the darkest fifth, Archivo Black, Bangers and Crete Round are the most used of their kinds, and Zilla Slab Highlight is the darkest pick, its letters 100% ink.

How do you measure how heavy a font is?

We draw its lowercase at the regular weight and count the share of each letter’s box that is ink, as how we measure describes. Half of all fonts fill 42.7% or less; every pick here fills 54.1% or more.

Can I sell posters made with these fonts?

Yes: prints, merchandise and client work are commercial use, which their licences allow: 19 come under the SIL Open Font License and 5 under the Apache License. What you may not sell is the font file itself.

What font should the small print on a poster be?

A plainer one with large, even letters: the presentation fonts are measured for reading at a distance. A heavy family can also do both, from headline to dates: Oswald and Teko come in four weights or more.

Which poster fonts fit a long headline?

The narrowest fit the most letters to a line: League Gothic is the narrowest pick here, 29.3% of the em a letter, then Cookie at 32.4%. The fonts for YouTube thumbnails are all narrow and heavy.

Best fonts for posters

A poster is read from a distance, so its headline wants heavy letters. We measure how much of each letter’s box is ink and keep the darkest fifth of the catalogue: Archivo Black, Oswald and Aclonica lead the sans serifs and Bangers and Lilita One the display faces.

Pass the rule: 388 of 2,035; of all the fonts we measured
Shown: 24; the most used first, one of a family
Commercial use: 24 of 24; every licence here allows it
In Google Docs: 24 of 24; most likely, under More fonts; Slides too

01 / The picks

24 fonts for posters

The darkest fifth of every font we measured: ink fills 54.1% of their letters’ box or more at the regular weight.

Sans serifs

84 pass · 6 shown

Set these 6 in your own words

Serifs and slabs

24 pass · 6 shown

Set these 6 in your own words

Display faces

203 pass · 6 shown

Set these 6 in your own words

Scripts and brush

77 pass · 6 shown

Set these 6 in your own words

02 / Questions

Poster fonts, answered

What is the best font for a poster?: For the headline, a heavy one. Of the 388 fonts in the darkest fifth, Archivo Black, Bangers and Crete Round are the most used of their kinds, and Zilla Slab Highlight is the darkest pick, its letters 100% ink.
How do you measure how heavy a font is?: We draw its lowercase at the regular weight and count the share of each letter’s box that is ink, as how we measure describes. Half of all fonts fill 42.7% or less; every pick here fills 54.1% or more.
Can I sell posters made with these fonts?: Yes: prints, merchandise and client work are commercial use, which their licences allow: 19 come under the SIL Open Font License and 5 under the Apache License. What you may not sell is the font file itself.
What font should the small print on a poster be?: A plainer one with large, even letters: the presentation fonts are measured for reading at a distance. A heavy family can also do both, from headline to dates: Oswald and Teko come in four weights or more.
Which poster fonts fit a long headline?: The narrowest fit the most letters to a line: League Gothic is the narrowest pick here, 29.3% of the em a letter, then Cookie at 32.4%. The fonts for YouTube thumbnails are all narrow and heavy.