Best Movie Fonts for a Cinematic Effect

We are told never to judge a book by its cover but, when it comes to movie posters, teaser trailers and opening credits, that’s exactly what directors want us to do. Movie fonts can provoke a psychological reaction: some tell us to expect a fast and furious action-packed blockbuster; others make it clear the audience is in for a child-friendly comedy. 

Fonts (and families of fonts, known as typefaces) are visual cues that immediately convey a movie’s genre, meaning designers don’t have to worry about crowding their poster, Instagram image or YouTube channel art with extra (unnecessary) information. 

From the typewritten title of a crime thriller to the blue glow that signals it’s a sci-fi film, many movie posters follow a tried-and-tested formula. Why? Because it’s worked for decades.

Tapping into recognisable styles (serifs for crime, sans serifs for sci-fi, for example) is a guaranteed win, but there are a few recent font trends that can boost your design – like retro fonts (Once Upon A Time in Hollywood), handwritten fonts (Us) and pop culture fonts (Birds of Prey, BlacKkKlansman). Get the latest Hollywood look with a great font.

Finding the right font for your creative project can be a bit of a juggling act. Ultimately, you want to come up with an eye-catching design that showcases your creative talents, while making it easy for the audience to understand what the movie is about. To get you started, here are our cinema font nominations available with an Envato Elements subscription…

Beamed down from outer space or genetically engineered in a laboratory – wherever it came from, there’s a creature out to get you. Like the typefaces chosen for Alien, Moon and Ex Machina, this sparse, wide-spaced, futuristic font screams sci-fi.

Welcome to a land of make believe. This flexible font comes in lower case, upper case, bold and regular, and has all the twists and turns that views have come to expect from a tale featuring dragons, giants and a hero about to embark on a fantastical quest. Discover more fantasy movie fonts.

If you want a font that feels hand-drawn, trust your inner compass and opt for Adventure. The brush-style characters add an outdoor element to personal or commercial projects.

There’s a reason why horror films often call upon jittery, scratchy hand-written styles like this, and that’s because they are utterly unnerving. Resembling something that’s been carved on a wall while in captivity, Horror’s lower and upper case letters, numbers and punctuation marks are the stuff of nightmares.

The kind of font that looks like it would be squishy (or make a hilariously rude noise) if you accidentally sat on it, this chubby, all-capitals font is ideal for cartoons and children’s films.

The typeface equivalent of being whisked to Paris for a romantic weekend, Romcom’s perfect pair – brush-style Raselina and uppercase-only Raselina Sans – will make sentimental cinema-goers week at the knees. Cool, curly and ever so slightly quirky, it’s a romcom winner.

Give large-scale projects and movie titles some swagger with Savath Regular, Rust and Rough (or The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, if you prefer). This bold and blocky typeface will have audiences thinking of saloons, shootouts and cowboys slinking off into the sunset. Download more Western-style movie fonts.

Making an independent, arthouse film? Then anything goes. Keep things looking artisan and authentic with this casual brush script font that – like your movie – doesn’t need special effects or A-list talent to have an impact.

Courtroom battles, tales of espionage, revenge plots – with a storyline this serious, you need a font that shows just how high the stakes are. This towering typeface also comes with a compressed sans serif version, which is perfect for movie poster credit blocks.

From The Godfather to The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, criminal underworlds, supersluething detective stories and murder mysteries have been shared via impactful serif fonts like this for decades. 

Because cinematic fonts can communicate so much in so few words, it’s important to find the right typeface for your next video project. Take a look at our collection of movie-inspired typefaces with an Envato Elements and remember to subscribe to the Envato YouTube channel for more creative inspiration.