r/typography • u/Various_Flower_8679 • 2d ago

Fake text font

What would be a font that looks like text but is actually gibberish?

1 Upvotes

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5

u/ngkasp 2d ago

Christian Naths' Redacted Script. It doesn't really look like text, more like scribbled handwriting, but it is completely illegible.

There's also P22's Da Vinci Backwards that's based on Da Vinci's own handwriting. It's not illegible but is harder to read than normal text.

2

u/Punchkinz 8h ago

Gonna add the "Flow" typefaces to this list. You can also find them on Google Fonts and they're just blocks (or rounded rectangles/pills) instead of letters

They work great as placeholders if you need something that doesn't convey the look of handwritten text.

3

u/pancaketimelord 2d ago

the Doctors Notes is a good one imo

2

u/nostalgic_dolphin 2d ago

Assuming we are talking about the Latin/Cyrillic paradigm, it's not easy to devise letter forms that are not already in use while still looking like part of that set. This is because that paradigm historically spread far away from its natural origin, so many languages had to fit into it, devising local solutions for phonemes that are not part of the Western Latin zone. And most of the tipographically elegant solutions are already taken :)

You could probably devise a few more nice ones, but rely on the mixture of others like Russian /Я for example. I am not sure I have seen mirrored /C or /F anywhere. I would start with rotating existing forms, and then developing from there.

Anyway, the right mix of straight/round/diagonal elements is what makes Latin look like Latin.

1

u/Capybarely 2d ago

ፕⶴቹ ዓ፱ጎርኡ ፪ዪዐሠክ ነዐፏ -this is Sous Cheffe - definitely doesn't look like a Latin alphabet, but obscured the letters quite a bit.

What sort of purpose will the font serve? If you're just trying to make nonsense words, that's a different challenge, but there are lots of bots out there to handle that.

1

u/Livid_Effective5060 1d ago

I don't know what it would be, but it could be called "charlatan" :D

1

u/jenfoolery 1d ago

Blambot has a few alien/horror comic fonts like this. Dark Arts, Miskatonic, Roswell Wreckage, a few more.