Type a word, pick a style, download a PNG. That is the whole thing, and it takes about ten seconds.

Eight versions of the words Death Note: scratchy white letters over a skull, orange blackletter on a tattoo pattern, bloodied serif, white letters with a red edge on stone, grey gothic carved letters, spiky red horror letters, black letters with skulls and a blood splash, and red dripping letters on white

All of them come from the same Death Note font generator, with a different style picked from the list. Nothing to install, no account.

About the Death Note font

Death Note is a Japanese manga written by Tsugumi Ohba and drawn by Takeshi Obata, serialised in Weekly Shonen Jump from 2003 to 2006. A high school student, Light Yagami, finds a supernatural notebook: anyone whose name is written in it dies, as long as the writer knows their face. His campaign to cleanse the world of criminals turns into a chase with a detective known only as L. The anime followed in 2006, then live action films in Japan and a Netflix film in 2017.

Several letterings were used across the covers and the posters, which is why "the Death Note font" means different things to different people. The title lettering is custom hand-drawn work, thin, scratched, uneven, and it was never released as a typeface. Two free fonts recreate the look: Death Font by joshua1985, close to the manga cover, and Death Note by Rebirth Organization, closer to the film poster. And the letter L signs with is set in Cloister Black, an Old English blackletter.

One thing to know before you type: Death Font only has capitals, so you need to type in capitals to get the cover look. The generator does not have that limit.

How to make Death Note text

Step 1. Type the word

Open the generator and replace the sample text with yours: a name, a channel name, a video title, a line for a Halloween invite. The letters redraw as you type. Upper and lower case both work here, and the mix of the two is what gives the title its uneven, handwritten look.

Step 2. Pick a style

The classic is the thin white scratched lettering on black, with the skull behind it. The Styles tab lets you change the fill, the outline and the shadow separately, so you can keep the letterforms and take the colours somewhere else: blood red, or a faint grey on white for a notebook cover.

Step 3. Pick the shape

The same lettering shown in two mock-ups: as a video thumbnail with a play button, a round avatar and title bars under it, then as a channel header with the round avatar sitting on the edge of the banner and a subscribe button

Set the shape before you export and nothing gets cropped afterwards. A 16:9 for a video thumbnail, a square for an avatar or an icon, a wide strip for a channel header. The two mock-ups above are what those three shapes become once they are in place.

Step 4. Download

The same lettering shown twice: first over a dark checkerboard meaning a transparent background, then as the wallpaper of a phone lock screen on a deep red gradient

In the Download tab, take the transparent PNG if you plan to put the title onto your own image. This is the option most people miss, and it is the one that matters for a thumbnail or a wallpaper: your own picture behind, the title on top, no black box around it.

Long names fill the width fast

A three-letter name and an eleven-letter one in the same scratched white letters, the longer one visibly tighter

The more letters there are, the tighter they sit. Character spacing is a slider in the Text tab: open it up a little and a long name stops looking cramped. The same tab holds zoom, line height, curve and rotation.

The logo look, or the L look

The same words shown twice: first in thin scratched white letters over a skull on black, then in heavy orange blackletter with a dark outline over a tattoo pattern

The logo look is the title itself: thin white strokes that look scratched into the black, uneven heights, a skull fading in behind. That is what most people picture when they say "the Death Note font".

The L look is the blackletter of the detective's signature, the single Old English L he leaves on screens and letters. In the series it is Cloister Black. Heavy, dense, gothic, it reads from across a room, and it is the one to reach for when the scratched title is too thin for a thumbnail. The blackletter tattoo font generator has it as a preset, in orange with a dark outline.

Which font, if you want to install one

A card listing three fonts with their licence: Death Font by joshua1985 as the manga cover lettering, free; Cloister Black as the letter L signs with, free; and Grenze Gotisch on Google Fonts as the open licence option

The title itself is not a font. It is hand-drawn lettering, so any file named "Death Note font" is somebody's recreation of it.

Death Font, by joshua1985, is the recreation everyone uses for the cover look. It is on DaFont, listed as 100% free, with over four hundred thousand downloads. Capitals only: type in lower case and you get nothing.

Death Note, by Rebirth Organization, is the other one the font sites list, closer to the poster of the live action films than to the manga cover. It is a distressed display face, worth a look if you want the eroded, weathered version rather than the scratched one.

Cloister Black is L's letter. The design goes back to Morris Fuller Benton at American Type Founders in 1904, and the digital version most people install is Dieter Steffmann's, on DaFont, listed as 100% free, past five million downloads. It is the most useful of the three, because it is a complete, well-made blackletter you will use again.

For client work, where the licence has to be clean, the honest options are the open licence blackletters on Google Fonts: Grenze Gotisch by Omnibus-Type, a whole family with weights, and UnifrakturMaguntia, closer to a traditional Fraktur. Neither is a Death Note font. Both give you the L look with a licence nobody can question.

What people actually make with it

The font sites list "best uses" and they are right about what shows up: video thumbnails and channel banners for anime commentary, Halloween party invitations, notebook covers for cosplay, phone wallpapers, and edits of a character's name in the title style. All of them work better with the transparent PNG than with an installed font, because the effect of the title is not the letterforms alone: it is the white on black, the scratches, the skull. A font file gives you the outlines and nothing else.

How to make Death Note text in Canva

Canva does not carry Death Font, and nothing in its library reads as the scratched title. Make the lettering as a transparent PNG and upload it: it drops straight into a Canva thumbnail or story and stays sharp.

If you work in Canva often, you can also use TextStudio effects inside Canva and skip the upload.

How to make Death Note text in Photoshop

Install Death Font, type in capitals, then build the treatment with layer styles:

  1. Colour overlay in an off-white, never pure white: the title is slightly grey.
  2. Inner shadow, tight, to rough up the edges of the strokes.
  3. A black background with a faint skull or a soft grey vignette behind the text.

No outline, no glow. The whole look is thin strokes on black, and anything you add around them takes it away.

How to make Death Note text in Word

Install Death Font, type in capitals, and set the page background to black or the text on a black shape. Word can do that much, and the look survives it because there is no effect to rebuild. For anything you will publish, an exported PNG on your own background will still look better.

On your phone

You cannot install a font and use it in most apps, on iOS or Android. The generator runs in the phone browser: make the PNG on the phone, save it to the gallery, and set it as a wallpaper or add it in whatever app you were using.

Is the Death Note font free?

The title lettering is not a font at all. Death Font and Cloister Black, the two downloads that matter, are both listed as 100% free on DaFont. Grenze Gotisch and UnifrakturMaguntia are open licence on Google Fonts.

And there is a second question underneath, which gets conflated with the first constantly: a font licence is not a trademark licence. Even a font you may use commercially says nothing about Death Note, which belongs to Shueisha and its licensees, Viz Media among them. Making a thumbnail for your own commentary video or a Halloween invite is the sort of use nobody has ever objected to. Selling merchandise that trades on the series is a different matter, and no font licence will cover you there.

Open TextStudio and type a word to see it in the style straight away.

More fonts and styles to try

If you came here for a character font, these cover the same ground:

Frequently asked questions

What font is the Death Note logo? None. The title is hand-drawn lettering that was never released as a typeface. Death Font by joshua1985 is the closest free recreation of the manga cover, and Death Note by Rebirth Organization of the film poster.

What font does L use? Cloister Black, an Old English blackletter. Dieter Steffmann's digital version is free on DaFont.

Why does Death Font only show some letters? It has capitals only. Type in capitals.

Is the Death Note font free? Death Font and Cloister Black are listed 100% free on DaFont. For client work, Grenze Gotisch and UnifrakturMaguntia on Google Fonts are open licence.

Can I use the Death Note style on things I sell? The font licence and the trademark are separate questions. Death Note belongs to Shueisha and its licensees, so a permissive font licence would still not cover merchandise trading on the series.

How do I get a transparent background for a thumbnail? Choose the transparent PNG in the Download tab, then place the title over your own screenshot or photo.

Why does my text look flat next to the real title? Usually the background, not the font. The title is thin off-white strokes on black with a skull fading in behind. On a white page, or with an outline added, it stops reading as Death Note.