Character map sheet of black tribal tattoo-style designs, including butterflies, hearts, dragons, suns and scorpions, arranged in a grid of labelled cells.

Tribal tattoo design font specimen sheet

Black and grey · Flash

This is a font specimen grid in which each cell shows a black tribal-style design, such as butterflies, hearts, dragons, suns, scorpions and spiders. The designs are solid black linework on white with no shading. The cells are arranged in alphabetical and symbol rows, with small labels in the corners of each cell.

Butterfly Heart Dragon Sun Scorpion Spider Turtle Bat Star Tribal Glyph

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Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The specimen sheet came back from the printer with the glyphs in the wrong order, which Mr Lusk said was my fault for not checking the proof against the cutting order. He wanted it right by Friday. Each cell held a single black design: a butterfly with its wings cut into points, a heart stacked with barbs, a scorpion curled over its own tail. Someone in Leeds had drawn them all by hand before the foundry ever touched a computer, and every one had a small numbered label in its corner, as if the sheet were an inventory of stolen goods.

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I spent two evenings matching codes to pictures. The sun went under the letter S, which made sense, and the bat sat under the B, which made less. Then the spider turned up under the full stop and would not move, however I dragged it. I rang the drawing office and a lad named Terry said it was always the spider that caused trouble, because it had eight legs and the old machine only had room for six.

On the Thursday I stopped at the Palais above the chip shop on the way home, mostly to get out of the rain. The band was playing the same waltz they always played. A woman I half knew was dancing with her coat still on, and nobody minded. I stood at the back holding my dripping umbrella and thought how the designs looked as though they wanted to move, the wings wanting to open, the turtle wanting to walk off the page.

On Friday I put the spider back under the full stop, where it had been all along, and sent the sheet. Mr Lusk rang to say it was perfect. I did not tell him that I had left the dragon one cell out of place, facing the wrong way, so that somebody would have to look twice.