: How to identify fantasy fonts I can clearly identify wacky fonts like this one: to be of the "fantasy" type, but some fonts look almost like regular serif or sans serif fonts only with some

@Martha945

I use Identifont.com. You can even enter in a specific set of characters.

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@Jennifer810

Like "fantasy," "wacky" is not in the Dictionary of Spiffy Type Terminology. :)

I get from your question, and the exchange with e100, that you're asking about decorative type rather than "typefaces that would be good when designing a fantasy MMORPG."

A decorative face is, for the most part, one that doesn't fit in any of the categories used to describe text or ordinary display faces, such as "transitional", "modern", "slab serif", etc.
Decorative faces are okay for headline or display applications, never for longer passages of text.

Your first example goes beyond "decorative" and is what's often called a "novelty" typeface. "Novelty" songs are basically musical jokes ("A Boy Named Sue" and the old Sonny and Cher "Rockefeller song are good examples) that you get the first time and don't find so amusing or interesting the second or later times. Novelty fonts are the same way. Use those dragons in a headline, everybody gets the dragon joke, then it's stale.

Blue Island is a decorative font. Toybox Blocks is a novelty font.

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@Sims5801359

I'm not 100% sure what you're asking for, but:

Serifs are a specific feature of a typeface; ModernAntiqua has serifs so it would definitely be considered a serif font. But you could also give it other classifications, such as "post-modern", perhaps.

"Fantasy" isn't really a very specific or commonly used classification, although it is defined as a generic font-family in CSS:


Fantasy fonts, as used in CSS, are primarily decorative while still
containing representations of characters (as opposed to Pi or Picture
fonts, which do not represent characters). Examples include:

Latin fonts Alpha Geometrique, Critter, Cottonwood, FB Reactor, Studz


This would only be used as a final fallback if none of the fonts specified are available.

I think "decorative" is more likely to be used.

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