The Best Fonts for Silhouette and Cricut
Love crafting with a Silhouette or Cricut but confused about which fonts are the best to use? This post will lay out what you need to look for when choosing a font and the best fonts for Silhouette and Cricut.
I absolutely love crafting with my Silhouette machine. When I first started to use my Silhouette, I had no idea what I was doing when it came to choosing fonts to work with. I spent so many hours wasting vinyl because the fonts that I chose did not cut well. I finally figured out the best fonts to use with a Silhouette or Cricut and I’m sharing a few easy tips with you today so you can choose correctly! I’ve also got a list of Silhouette and Cricut-friendly fonts.
Before we get started, here are a few posts on fonts:
- How to Pair Fonts Together – The Right Way
- The Easy Guide to Installing Fonts on Your Computer (PC)
- The Best Places to Find Commercial Use Fonts
HOW TO CHOOSE FONTS FOR SILHOUETTE OR CRICUT
When you are creating a cut file that contains text, you’ll want to choose a font that is not too difficult to cut out. Here are the qualities you should look for when choosing fonts.
Choose a font that isn’t too thin.
Super thin fonts are difficult to cut cleanly because the cut lines are so close to each other. It is also very difficult to weed thin fonts. For example, Illusias is a beautiful font but has very thin upstrokes.
Choose a “smooth” font.
When choosing fonts, make sure that you use fonts that don’t have texture or rough edges. While these fonts look good in print form, they are difficult to cut out and you will end up with tears in your vinyl and/or paper. A smooth font has minimal nodes when brought into Silhouette Studio or Cricut Design Space. The lower the number of nodes, the better the font will cut. The font shown below is Northwell. See all the texture within the letters? That’s a no-go when it comes to cutting.
Choose a font with thick connectors and PUA encoded
Thin connectors on script fonts are a recipe for disaster. When choosing a script font to use in Silhouette or Cricut, look for thicker connecting strokes for easier cuts. Also, look for fonts that are PUA encoded. PUA stands for private use area. PUA fonts allow you to access all the fun extras like swashes and alternate characters that come with some fonts. Hint: if you want a fun hand-lettered PUA encoded font, check out my font, Happy Hour.
HOW TO EDIT FONTS IN SILHOUETTE STUDIO
THIN FONTS
If you absolutely HAVE to use a thin font, there are ways to adjust it in Silhouette Studio so that it cuts cleanly. The easiest way to do this is to create an offset around the font. An offset will make the font a bit thicker. To create an offset, click on your text and open the offset panel. Click on “offset” and enter the desired width of the offset that you want. The offset width will vary for every individual font.
SCRIPT FONTS
I use a lot of script fonts with the Silhouette. When working with script fonts, you need to make sure that you weld the letters together before you cut them. If you don’t, the letters will cut out separately instead of in one big piece. Frustrating doesn’t even begin to explain it when this happens. This post will walk you through how to use the weld tool.
Now that you know what type of fonts work best with Silhouette and Cricut, here are some great fonts to use with cutting machines. Some of these fonts come with a commercial use license so you can use them to create items to sell.
BEST FONTS FOR SILHOUETTE AND CRICUT
- Childish Treats
- Succulent
- Miss Magnolia
- Happy Hour
- Garlic Butter
- Meddling Kids
- Blackheart
- Madgue Script
- Montauk
- Bonfires & Beaches
- Cotasia
MORE FONTS YOU WILL LOVE
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