How it works
Type in Your text and this pirate font generator draws it in one of 4 fonts on old paper, in the Rough print look, which wears the ink down. New look deals 14 designs. Download picture (PNG) saves one.
Read the full guide
The four fonts
Pirata One is the heavy blackletter a pirate poster expects; its makers call it a simplified Gothic textura. IM Fell English SC digitises type Bishop John Fell collected for Oxford around 1670, lumpy ink included. Meddon copies an eighteenth-century legal hand and sets twice as wide as Pirata One. Jolly Lodger is crooked signboard lettering, named as a motel joke: a lodger, not a Roger.
Ink, lines and flag
Near Strength 10 the ink is almost clean; near 90 the sea has eaten it. Press Enter for a new line: Every line full width sizes each line to reach both edges, so a short first line becomes the headline. For a flag, open More options and set Colours to White and Background to Black.
Tips
- In IM Fell English SC the 1, 2 and 0 of 1720 stay small and the 7 hangs low.
- WANTED in capitals is close to unreadable in Pirata One, so type Wanted. Meddon's capital X reads like DC.
- IM Fell English SC lacks ł, š, ž and ğ; Jolly Lodger lacks ğ. A system font patches the hole.
Questions and answers
Did pirates really letter things like this?
Two of the four fonts are from their time. Wikipedia puts the Golden Age of Piracy between the 1650s and the 1730s. Fell's type reached Oxford around 1670, and Meddon's source is eighteenth-century. Pirata One and Jolly Lodger are the poster idea of a pirate.
Can I add a skull and crossbones?
No. Decoration has only Frame and Underline swash. The skull ASCII art page has one made of characters. Wikipedia says pirates before 1700 flew a plain black flag with a red one. The skull and crossbones became the most common pirate flag during the 1720s.
Is this a pirate font text generator I can paste from?
No. It makes a picture, because a font does not survive copy and paste. For blackletter that pastes as text, use the gothic text generator.