Out of all possible variations of tattoo designs, the text-based ones are still favorites. They provide many possibilities and abilities to reflect highly personal meaning. However, choosing the perfect texts to showcase on your skin can be challenging. Aside from so many inspirations, you can risk a “tattoo regret” when you choose wrong.
This guide will help you choosing a great text-based tattoo design; from inspiration and font recommendations to strategies to avoid tattoo regret.
The straightforward nature of a text-based tattoo opens many possibilities for you to communicate your sentiment, feelings, personal story, or philosophy. Here are some common prompts to help you start creating your design:
Names are the most obvious choices for text-based tattoos. You can tattoo the name of your loved ones or someone that made a great impact on your life.
Quotes can come from anywhere, from a book or movie character to song lyrics. You can also tattoo a famous quote from a great figure. For something more personal and less predictable, you can use a personal quote from someone in your life who made a meaningful impact on you.
Scriptures and other forms of religious or spiritual texts often have great sayings for tattoo designs. They can be something that create a strong impact to you, reflect your philosophy, or a line with a more personal connection to you.
Affirmative words that are meaningful to you would be a great reminder of your struggle, dream, or life goal. They can be just one word, a short phrase, or a full sentence.
Now that you get some basic ideas for your tattoo, here are several strategies to avoid possible tattoo regret.
Ideally, a tattoo should only contain a single narrative to create a strong impression. Putting too much on one design will cause a confusing design. Stick with a clear phrase, word, of sentence from one source, with one story behind it.
Size and placement play big roles in how your tattoo will look like. For example, a short affirmative word or poetry quote can be placed on your neck, thigh, or chest, while long texts are ideal for arm or back.
Avoid choosing an artist simply based on money. Every artist has their own style and specialty, and you should consider how your design plan would work. To find the best tattoo artist, narrow down your options to the closest ones, and look up their portfolio. Contact them to find out the style they usually work best.
Before choosing a tattoo design based on your life, consider any possibilities of life changes. This is especially true if you tattoo, for example, the name of a boyfriend/girlfriend or an “edgy” quote. Will it be relevant or even troublesome in the future? Will you have any regret if your circumstances and life outlook changes?
Choosing the right tattoo font is crucial to get a beautiful tattoo design.
In general, there are no limits about which font you should choose. However, consider the size and placement of the tattoo. If you use a large or bold font to tattoo a long sentence, especially on narrow skin area, you risk bleeding and blurry parts.
Script fonts come in a lot of styles, and while they are great tattoo fonts, some have poorer readability level than others. You should have enough skin area to tattoo with script font, or stick with more standard, readable font.
Which fonts should you choose to make a text-based tattoo? While you have many choices, these recommendations can help you deciding the best style.
Angella is a sweet and pretty script font to make a text-based tattoo. While it has some small details to make it interesting, it has thin strokes, which can reduce the risk of bleeding. Angella is ideal for tattooing an area that provides enough space for your words, such as the back, belly, chest, and arm length.
Louis Bright combines classy elegance of serif font with signature-style capital characters. It is a great tattoo font to create a sophisticated look, but in a modern way. The strokes are thin so you reduce the risk of bleeding, and it has a good readability factor. You can use it to tattoo various parts of the body, such as the side of the neck, under the ear, upper or lower arm, and many more.
Another thin serif font ideal for tattoos, Camiro showcases subtle quirk without reducing clarity. Some characters have slight curls that make them distinctive, and the capital “O” has a variation with little star accent in the middle. It adds a unique style to your otherwise quite standard serif font.
Camiro is great for making statements on visible skin parts, like neck, arm, wrist, back of the hand, calf, and ankle. The capital letter with the little star accent adds a modest twist to your tattoo.
Aworm is a unique serif tattoo font inspired by Art Deco style. While the look is understated, there are subtle quirks that add a dynamic to this font. The “M” and “W”, for example, has a loop at the point of their “mount” and “valley”. This adds an extra spice to your text-based tattoo. The font is also ideal for almost all skin areas, although the loop is not recommended for small tattoo since it risks bleeding.
Gorgeous Cultural is a perfect font for a minimalist style text-based tattoo. This sans serif has a clean, no-fuss style, but without looking too serious. It has subtle asymmetrical, dynamic elements that keep it alive with good flow. This font is ideal for a medium to large tattoo design, with placements on the length of arm, chest, back, thigh, or belly.
Creating the perfect text-based tattoo design requires careful planning and consideration. Make sure to choose the most suitable artist, meaningful idea, and proper font to create an eye-catching tattoo that you will cherish.
