Top 73 Tattoo Lettering Ideas [2020 Inspiration Guide]

The truth is, all words spoken come with a cost. Mankind’s great power, the gift of speech, can inspire just as easily as it can destroy.

When it comes to the thought of tattoos, the concept is no different.

All designs can invoke a recreation or message without so much as needing to communicate anything vocally at all. The display of art work speaks for itself; telling a story that pokes at our own sense of curiosity.

However, the traditional form of lettering still applies to lists of the 50+ best tattoo ideas, even with realistic designs that can paint a thousand words in a single picture. From names to quotes, every character you’ll find inscribed within these top 75 best lettering tattoo designs comes together to form some seriously cool body art.

Sure, readability can be a bit weak at times with all the creative fonts, scripts and decorative touches, however, the meaning behind these words remains as strong as it is when spoken. With that said, I’m going to show you how to bring your words to life below.

Tattoo Lettering Ideas

Not a huge fan of the first word’s unclear black font but the ‘blue’ is etched brilliantly. The cursive style is clear and crisp. The internal letter fill is the standout, with the artist adopting a chunky dot work hybrid in transition from fat black line work for each letter.

This script mashes cursive with an italicized B . It’s not dissimilar to the beginning of a Once Upon a Time story. The filling gray is well applied, although the B could use some white ink highlights to make it pop more from the rest of the tattoo font.

Slick tattoo font. The line work is sharp, fine needlework in black for the major letter.  From there it shifts to a clean cursive using mostly black, with just a hint of gray near the top of each letter. Utilizing negative space as an alt fill color demonstrates excellent technique and helps the piece show nicely.

This full chest tattoo features a killer font but is too hard to decipher. In a lot of examples it’s just as important to be able to read the script cleanly as it is for the script to look epic – as it does here. The tattooist shows great technique in creating a lively 3D font tattoo that almost leaps from the subject’s skin, and it’s well placed curving along the chest rather than laying flat.

A tightly packed script tattoo the subject is either remembering the loss of someone close or he supports Liverpool F.C. Pretty certain there’s more futbol ink on this guy should the latter is the case. This is a nicely done, cleanly delivered chest tattoo that uses flow well. The fact that the longer you look at the piece the easier it becomes to read is also advantageous.

Another hard to read font that’s bold, black, and chunky – the side makes a good spot for larger writing and hurt less than getting tagged across the ribs. The fat black script is a lot harder to read than the upper font, however the patterning and solidity of the writing looks better balanced.

This is a very cool minimalist tattoo font. Like the use of street art style block lettering to convey the die trying message. It’s the type of cool art you can border up with negative space or put inside a badge and add to easily.

Okay, so this font tattoo is the rare heavy duty bible bookmark. When you read the following passage you get to understand why: “And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow–not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love.” It’s a bible passage that works for both the gentle and the hardcore, with this hardcore subject getting seriously dark script tattoo for his Romans 8:38 reference point.

 “Take and make” is often used in basketball regarding shot attempts, but now extends to many areas where elements of risk, reward, and bravery are involved. This tattoo uses slightly different fonts delivered with gray scale shading, a minimal banner, then negative space to create an interesting visual image.

This large size rolling vertical cursive looks epic. The all black line and fill gives it a sense of solidity that sometimes can’t be created in font tattoos for men, as there’s often not a lot of room to work with. Like the flow of each capitalized letter, they’re very strong without needing to be delivered in a different font to the other letters.

Spent too long trying to read this but it’s quality 3D black line work. This chest piece offers great cursive that can fit in a more compact, well defined space. The artist’s delivery here is exceptional, down to the neg space alt highlights and sharpie like flourishing curls.

This is next level font tattoo. Forgive but don’t forget writ large in ink on skin. If the subject does forget, it’s his own fault because you can;t miss this prompt. The cursive forgive is the standout writing in this piece. The effortless curve and flow, even on a massive scale looks brilliant. The image doesn’t show it well, however the fat black script of forget also looks clean and sweet, and would play nicely against the rest when all is shown. Only quibble would be to simplify the ‘but don’t’ part, it’s a bit too overdone with fancy block letters when Times New Roman could work just as well.

This is an almost flawless example of Chicano style font tattoos for men. The flowing cursive is simple and easy to read and excels in the detail of negative space alt fill and internal gray scale shading for the letters themselves. The piping/underlines are also beautifully etched and create a useful border for any future forearm art.