curlz

Curlz refers to a term used across typography and popular culture to describe decorative, curly styling. The best-known use is in display typefaces that feature exuberant curls at the ends of letters. The most familiar representative is a font commonly called Curlz MT, a playful display face that gained prominence in the 1990s and early 2000s. It is frequently used for headings, logos, greeting cards, and children's materials, where its whimsical character is desirable but where legibility for long passages is limited.

In typography and design, fonts labeled Curlz or Curlz MT are deliberately ornate. They are generally used sparingly for emphasis rather than body text, and licensing varies by vendor. They can add a retro or humorous mood to a design but may clash with modern minimalist aesthetics.

In other contexts, curlz also appears as a casual term for curly hair or curl patterns, used in fashion and social media to describe hair styling or design motifs.

Because of readability concerns, designers often pair Curlz-type fonts with clean sans-serif for body text. The term curlz thus spans both a specific stylistic category in type design and broader informal usage referring to curly ornamentation in graphic work.