Memes are social information hybrids: part image, part text. Sometimes they have other parts, but they almost always have these two.
The images are instantly recognizable, but what about the text style? Font and text style have a large role in the memes we know and love. I’ll give you a brief guide to the most common meme fonts, how they’re used, and the easiest ways to make your meme text pop.
Get Started Now: Open an Editable Meme Template or Kapwing's Meme Maker to make any meme with Impact, Comic Sans, Arial, Montserrat, and hundreds of other meme fonts.
The Original: IMPACT
Impact font is the “classic” meme font. The first globally viral meme, Happy Cat, was simply *said cat* with “I CAN HAS CHEEZBURGER?” blazoned across the top of the photo in white, all-caps Impact. Ever since, the font has defined the mainstream meme style, from “Y U NO” to the captions of your favorite SpongeBob image macro.
Impact is by far the most popular font used on Kapwing's meme maker (surprising, since Arial is the default).
Comic Sans MS
Comic Sans is a meme of its own, really. It evokes the simpler internet culture of the early 2000’s, when the casual, fun font was once acceptable for non-ironic usage. Now it’s a sort of “Boomer” font. But Comic Sans also has some special, specific roles in meme culture.
The Doge Shibe meme family, for instance, is immediately recognizable for its use of brightly colored Comic Sans floating text. To use another font in a Doge meme would be as sacrilegious as correctly using its intensifying adjectives and adverbs correctly.
Animated Text/WordArt
While abstract or surreal memes also occasionally use Comic Sans, they're more often associated with with animated text or WordArt features, in obscure, almost unintelligible meme canvases.
What once occupied strange, sparsely populated corners of the internet has now approached the mainstream, and these types of absurdist memes are becoming more and more recognizable.
Cursive or Calligraphic Scripts
Over the last two years, two separate meme families have grown in popularity using various “fancy” fonts. The “Galaxy Brain” meme sometimes uses fancy fonts for the most big-brained ideas, and the “Fancy Pooh” meme requires cursive or calligraphic fonts for its sophisticated variants. Is the font you're using extremely elegant? Would it require years of training to write by hand? Is it nearly illegible? The more effort required to read it, the better.
Try fonts like Dancing Script or Satisfy to get the fancy effect. Or, just add an Italic styling to Arial or Times New Roman.
Arial
When in doubt, use Arial. Really. Impact may seem like the go-to font for memes, but you should avoid it if you don’t want your meme to feel like a 2006 image macro. Other plain, unassuming fonts have their hang-ups, as well. Times? Too corporate. Helvetica? Too hip. Courier? Almost a plaintext meme of its own. Arial is the way to go, if you want your picture and caption to be the center of attention in your meme.
Montserrat
Modern meme makers are naming Montserrat as a favorite font. Montserrat is thinner and more square than Arial, giving your memes a more modern vibe. It has become popular because it's very similar to the Twitter font so that it blends in with Tweet reposts and screenshot memes.
Making Memes With Custom Fonts
Now that you know the most important meme fonts and when to use them, you need to know how to use them. I recommend using Kapwing – it was designed as a streamlined meme maker, and it gives you hundreds of font options to choose from!
The easiest way to create your own version of a specific, popular meme with Kapwing is by using an existing meme template.
Head to our Meme Templates library and use the search bar to look for that specific meme you have in mind.
Select your meme template of choice from the options, then click the "Edit This Template" button to start customizing.
The correct font for that meme format will already be preloaded into the template. Just edit the text and export!
You can also make your meme from scratch. Go to Kapwing.com and click "Get started." You'll be prompted to sign in.
Once you're in your workspace, click on the "Create New Project" button to open the editor.
In the editor, you can upload any image, video or GIF from your device or any web location.
Once your file is uploaded you may want to click one of the “Expand Padding” options in the right side editing menu, depending on the type of meme you’re making. For this example, I added padding to the top, where I'll add the text.
If you don't see the "Expand Padding" section, make sure you have the canvas selected, not the image. Just click anywhere on the dark background of the editor to select the canvas.
To add a text box, select “Text” from the left sidebar. Choose from popular fonts and styles in the Text tab, like the Meme Font which is the classic Impact font.
Your text box will automatically display that font style. Click and drag the corners of the text box to adjust the size of the box.
You can also choose a custom font by clicking on the "Add Text" button in the text tab.
A text box with default font and sample text in it will be added to your image.
Use the Font dropdown to change the font to whichever meme font best suits your project. There are also tools to adjust color and size. You can even add custom animations to your text by clicking “Animate.”
Above all, memes should showcase your creativity! So if you want your memes to have a specific tone, attitude, or character, playing with you fonts can be a good way to stand out.
If you're interested in more tips and tutorials on creating great memes and social media trends, check out the Kapwing YouTube channel, where we post multiple new videos every week. And while you're here, take a look at some related articles on making memes online:
• Meme Maker for Facebook
• Cat Memes
• The Most Popular Meme Pictures in 2021
• How to Edit a Movie Trailer
