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Great graphic design is powered by great font selection. But picking great fonts is a challenge for most people. Luckily, Canva has made adding great fonts to your designs much easier. In this tutorial, our team of design experts will cover the best Victorian fonts in Canva.
What are Victorian Fonts?
Victorian fonts, popular during the mid to late 19th century, are known for their decorative, ornamental design and complexity. Here are some key characteristics of Victorian typefaces:
- Complexity and Decoration: Victorian fonts are known for their complexity, with lots of decoration and ornamental elements. This could include flourishes, outlines, shadows, and embellishments.
- Variety of Styles: The Victorian era saw a lot of innovation and experimentation in typography, so Victorian fonts can range from very ornate and decorative scripts to bold, slab serifs, and everything in between.
- Three Dimensional Effects: Many Victorian typefaces include shadowing or outlining to create a three-dimensional effect.
- High Contrast: Victorian fonts often have high contrast between thick and thin strokes, particularly in more script-like designs.
- Tuscan Serifs: A common characteristic of some Victorian typefaces are Tuscan serifs, which are serifs with decorative elements or that split and fan out into multiple points.
- Layered Typefaces: Victorian fonts often have a layered design, with different elements of each letter designed to be layered on top of each other to create a single, cohesive, decorative piece.
- Bold and Heavy: Victorian era also saw the advent of bold, heavy typefaces, which stood out on printed posters and advertising.
Best Victorian Canva Fonts
1. Bauer Bodoni
Bauer Bodoni is a specific version of Bodoni font that was released by the Bauer Type Foundry. It maintains the high contrast, vertical stress, and geometric design of the original Bodoni typeface. Although it predates the Victorian era, the Bodoni font and its variations were frequently used during this period due to their high contrast and refined aesthetics.
2. Goudy
Goudy is one of several typefaces designed by Frederic Goudy, a famous American printer and type designer. His typefaces are known for their readability and elegance. Goudy is based off of Goudy Bookletter 1911, which was inspired by the lettering on an old Victorian-era poster. This font is known for its ornate serifs and distinctively rounded letterforms.
3. Bookmania
Bookmania is a font designed by Mark Simonson. Bookmania is a revival of Bookman Oldstyle and Bookman typefaces, and it includes a full range of weights and styles. It is a serif typeface that has a bold, ornate style that was popular in the late 19th century. It’s known for its large, swooping lower-case ‘a’ and ‘g’.
4. ITC Century Handtooled
ITC Century Handtooled is a bold and decorative version of the classic Century typeface. It features prominent serifs that have a “hand-tooled” or etched appearance, giving the typeface a distinctive and highly decorative look.
5. Caslon #3
Caslon is a group of serif typefaces inspired by the work of William Caslon I. The Caslon #3 variant has more contrast and finer details than other variants, and is often used in larger print. The original Caslon font is a serif typeface that was very popular during the 18th and 19th centuries.
6. Didot LP
Didot is a high-contrast, modern serif typeface popular during the Victorian era. Didot is still often used today for fashion magazines and high-end luxury branding. The LP variation is simply another version of Didot, with slight design tweaks to update the appearance of the font while still maintaining the same overall aesthetic.
7. Century Expanded
Century Expanded is a serif typeface designed in the early 20th century. It’s highly readable, making it popular for body text in books, newspapers, and magazines.
8. Broadway
Broadway is an Art Deco-style typeface. It was designed in 1927 and is often used in newspaper headlines and advertisements to evoke a sense of nostalgia or a retro aesthetic. While Broadway is a decorative typeface that captures the glitz and glamour of the 1920s, it still embodies some Victorian era’s typography essence.
9. Old Standard
Old Standard is a serif typeface known for its classical proportions and high contrast between thick and thin strokes, typical of the fonts used in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It was created by Alexey Kryukov and is available through the Open Font Library.
10. Limelight
Limelight is a display typeface that was designed by Nicole Fally and released through Google Fonts. It’s an open-source font, which means it’s free for everyone to use. Limelight has a unique and striking look. It was inspired by the showcard lettering of the 1920s and ’30s, which was typically seen in advertising during this era. The letterforms have a high-contrast design, meaning there is a significant difference in stroke weight between the thickest and thinnest parts of the characters.
Conclusion
I hope you found this guide covering the best Victorian fonts in Canva, useful! Be sure to check out our blog for more article covering the essential tips, tricks, and advice for Canva! Also, if you haven’t already tried CanvaPro, you can try it for free for 30 days!