Wild Irish Rose is a hand-painted brush script font created with real acrylic paint, real brushes and the sort of mess that suggests something useful might eventually happen.
Every letter was painted quickly to retain the movement, texture and slight unpredictability of genuine brush lettering. It was then scanned at high resolution, cleaned up in Photoshop and turned into an OpenType-SVG colour font that lets you type with the original painted letters.
The result is energetic, imperfect and properly handmade. Not “handmade” in the sense that somebody selected a brush preset and moved a few Bézier points around. These letters began with wet paint, bristle marks and paper.
What is Wild Irish Rose?
Wild Irish Rose is a textured brush script font designed for headlines, logos, packaging, posters, book covers, editorial design, wedding stationery, fashion, beauty and other projects that need lettering with plenty of character.
It has the convenience of a font but retains the detailed brush marks, rough edges and transparent paint texture of the original lettering. You can type normally instead of manually placing hundreds of separate painted letters. Nobody needs that sort of faff in their life.
Is Wild Irish Rose an Irish or Celtic font?
No. Despite the name, Wild Irish Rose is not a traditional Irish, Gaelic or Celtic typeface. It is a contemporary hand-painted brush script with an energetic, slightly urban character.
The name came from the U2 song Wild Irish Rose. The song is romantic, scruffy and a little melancholy, which seemed to suit the lettering. So, no Celtic knots, medieval manuscripts or compulsory shamrocks.
How was the font made?
Every uppercase and lowercase letter was painted by hand using a real brush and acrylic paint. I worked quickly and deliberately avoided making everything too polished. Painting slowly would have produced neater letters, but it would also have removed the movement and energy I wanted.
The original artwork was scanned, carefully cleaned in Photoshop and converted into an OpenType-SVG bitmap font. That process preserves details that would normally disappear when lettering is converted into traditional vector outlines.
You can see the brush direction, changes in paint density, rough edges and individual bristle marks. Those imperfections are the whole point. Remove them and you are left with another smooth script font behaving itself.
What is an OpenType-SVG bitmap font?
An OpenType-SVG bitmap font can contain detailed colour artwork, textures and transparency inside each character. Wild Irish Rose uses this technology to place the original painted artwork directly inside the font.
Unlike an ordinary vector font, its characters are not simply flat outlines filled with a single colour. Each glyph contains high-resolution painted detail, giving the typeface a much more realistic handmade appearance.
You can learn more in my guide to OpenType-SVG colour fonts.
What can I use Wild Irish Rose for?
Wild Irish Rose works best when used prominently. It is a display typeface rather than something you would use for several pages of small text unless you actively dislike your readers.
It is particularly suited to:
- Brand identities and distinctive logos
- Beauty and fashion packaging
- Food, drink and lifestyle branding
- Posters, album artwork and book covers
- Magazine and editorial headlines
- Wedding invitations and stationery
- Advertising and promotional graphics
- Social media artwork
- Presentations and title graphics
The loose movement gives designs an immediate human quality, while the paint texture helps them feel less corporate and predictable. It is especially effective at larger sizes where the fine surface detail has room to show off.
Can I use Wild Irish Rose commercially?
Yes, Wild Irish Rose can be used for many commercial design projects under the standard font licence, including branding, packaging, clothing, posters and other finished designs, subject to the licence limits and restrictions.
Some uses require an extended licence, including very large-volume production, embedded webfonts, apps, editable templates, personalised products and certain broadcast or streamed content. Check the font licence agreement before purchasing or contact me if you are unsure. I would much rather answer a question beforehand than watch everyone become unnecessarily legal afterwards.
Can I use Wild Irish Rose in a logo?
Yes. The standard licence allows you to use Wild Irish Rose to create a company logo. However, the typeface design itself cannot be included in a trademark registration under the standard licence.
If you need to register a logo containing the lettering as a trademark, contact me before using it and I can explain the appropriate licensing options.
Which software supports Wild Irish Rose?
Wild Irish Rose is designed primarily for software that supports OpenType-SVG colour fonts. Current versions of Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign support the format, although individual applications can handle colour fonts differently.
Adobe lists OpenType-SVG support in Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign. You can read its current OpenType-SVG compatibility information for further technical details.
Because software support changes, I recommend checking that your preferred application supports OpenType-SVG bitmap fonts before buying. Installing an OTF file does not automatically mean every application will display all its colour and texture information correctly.
Does Wild Irish Rose work on Mac and Windows?
The OTF font can be installed on both macOS and Windows. However, the important question is whether the application you are using supports the OpenType-SVG artwork contained inside the font.
For the most reliable results, use a current version of Photoshop, Illustrator or InDesign. If your software does not display the font correctly, the included high-resolution PSD and transparent PNG files provide a practical alternative.
Can I change the colour of Wild Irish Rose?
Yes. Although an OpenType-SVG bitmap font behaves differently from a standard single-colour font, you can recolour the lettering in Photoshop and Illustrator using a few straightforward techniques.
The transparent background also means you can place the painted lettering over photographs, textures and coloured backgrounds without being surrounded by an unwanted white rectangle. Always helpful.
What is included with Wild Irish Rose?
- One OpenType-SVG colour bitmap font in OTF format
- High-resolution Photoshop PSD artwork
- High-resolution transparent PNG files
- Uppercase and lowercase characters
- Numbers and punctuation
- Separators, symbols and marks
- Approximately 350 glyphs
- One font weight
The font contains the standard Latin character set. If you need support for a specific language or character, contact me before purchasing and I will check it for you.
What if my software does not support colour fonts?
You can still use the included high-resolution PSD and transparent PNG artwork. Instead of typing with the font, you place the individual character images manually to build your words.
It takes longer than typing and can be a bit of a ball ache, but it gives you access to the original painted lettering in software that supports ordinary image files. It also gives you more control over the exact position, rotation and overlap of individual letters.
How do I install Wild Irish Rose?
Download and unzip the product folder, then double-click the supplied OTF file and choose Install. Restart your design application if the font was already open when you installed it.
Once installed, select Wild Irish Rose from your application’s font menu. In compatible software, it should appear with its original painted texture and transparency.
A brush script with actual brush marks
Wild Irish Rose was made for designers who want the energy of hand-painted lettering without having to cover the desk, floor and possibly the dog in acrylic paint.
It is loose, textured and deliberately imperfect. Every bristle mark comes from the original painted artwork, giving headlines, packaging and branding a human quality that is difficult to reproduce with clean vector lettering.