How it works
This candy cane font generator fills your word with red and white stripes leaning 35 degrees. It opens in Mountains of Christmas, a thin serif whose letters tip off the line and end in curls, on a green chalkboard.
Read the full guide
Thin stems look like canes
Stems in Mountains of Christmas and Emilys Candy are about a tenth of the type size, so one band crosses at a time and each stroke reads as a candy stick. Titan One and DynaPuff are nearly three times as thick: three bands cross at once, like striped wrapping. New look deals one of 16 looks.
Stripe width and outline
Strength of the look widens a red band from 3% of the type size to 13%, and the outline with it. It opens a third of the way along, to suit thin stems. The outline is near black for Red and white for Hot pink and Black. Outline colour, under More options, takes any other: white gives a red cane a sugar edge.
Tips
- The white bands are paint, not holes: on Transparent they stay white on a red card.
- Writing ł or š? Only Titan One, Lilita One and Emilys Candy have them; elsewhere they drop to another font.
Questions and answers
How old is the striped candy cane?
Wikipedia cites an 1844 recipe for straight peppermint sticks, white with coloured stripes. It first finds the words candy cane in an 1866 short story, with no colour mentioned, and calls the 1670 tale of a Cologne choirmaster likely apocryphal.
Do the stripes wrap round the letters?
No. They are one flat sheet showing through every letter, so they ignore the hook of a J. On Arch and Wave the sheet turns with each letter. Fredoka's capital J, a plain hook with round ends, is an upside-down cane anyway.
Can I make green and white stripes?
Yes, by hand. Letter colour is hidden on Candy stripes, so set Look to Plain, pick a holly green under More options, then switch back. New look keeps your green; choosing from Colours clears it. Slime green in Colours is a lime.
Can I sell cards or shirts made with it?
Nothing in the fonts' licences stops you. Mountains of Christmas and Chewy are under the Apache License 2.0 and the other seven under the SIL Open Font License; both set conditions only on passing on the font itself.