Pointy Fonts

What are pointy fonts?

Pointy fonts are typefaces with letters that have tips, such as uppercase letters A, M, and N, and typefaces that have pointed corners, such as lowercase letters a and u.

Pointy fonts became popular in the late 1920s, when Futura, designed by Paul Renner, was published. Futura showcases the idea of the Bauhaus movement, a design concept that features modularity and simplicity. The letter forms are based on geometric shapes, such as circles, rectangles and triangles—triangles being the underlying form for the apex and vortex tips of letters A and V. In the collection above, the Apex font and Scal font emphasize the Futura-Bauhaus design with alternate letters that designers can use to customize a geometric logo design.

Pointy fonts can work best when used as display fonts—those designed for logo design, headlines, and poster layouts. This is because these fonts can be a little harder to read as long-form text. In fact, often, these sharp and pointy letter tips are meant to be emphasized and shown in big.

Our pointy font collection

Our pointy font collection features six fonts. Some typefaces are sharp with pointed corners, for example, Bauhaus Cut and Apex, and some are pointy, curved fonts with an edge, such as Nano and Quin. Most of the fonts from this collection are sans-serifs, but Bauhaus Mod is a serif font, and Nano—while coming across as a sans-serif type—has stylistic sets that create a slab serif look.

Pointy designs to represent brand character

Pointy designs, whether letters with pokey tips or letters that are cut and whose horizontal bars are sliced to look more architectural, apply a cooler look to any text.

Often, this applies to logo design, where a sharp form mirrors characteristics or the positioning of a brand.

Typical examples are:

• Tattoo studio logos (needle of tattoo machine)
• Nail design shops (stiletto nail style)
• Jewelry branding (cutting gems)
• Architectural firms (construction with bars and designing with lines)

Alternate letter designs

All of the fonts in our pointy font collection have stylistic sets. These are alternate letter designs that you can access with design programs such as Illustrator and InDesign to swap other letters. Common examples are changing a double-story a or g with a single-story a or g and replacing the first or last letter of a word with a swash version of the same letter to make it stand out more.

All fonts have nine weights, from thin to bolder, including Bold and Black.