In this article tripwire magazine presents an overview of more than 75 excellent free fonts you should consider using for your designs. Not all free Fonts are worth using but the Fonts listed in this article have all been picked out because they are better than the rest.
Introduction
The importance of typography in design can’t be underestimated. The right choice of fonts can really help to deliver the message in a more direct and suitable way. In this article some of the very best Free Font available are just a click away!
Just be sure to carefully review the terms and conditions included with each font whenever acquiring them from such sites, because the included legal docs are often eye openers for anyone intending to use them for client deliverable. And using fonts with no included terms and conditions is really setting yourself up for legal issues, as they were most likely stripped away at some point.
Make sure you maintain records of where fonts were acquired and keep the original archive file with the legal terms to prove permission of use.
The Fonts
Lacuna
To download the font enter the Flash page, click on “Glashaus Fonts” in the navigation menu at the top, in the opened page click on [MAC] or [PC] in the left menu to download the font.
Union
Echolot
To download the font enter the Flash page, click on “Glashaus Fonts” in the navigation menu at the top, in the opened page click on [MAC] or [PC] in the left menu to download the font.
PetitLatin
Advent Pro
A fresh, modern typeface coming in 7 weights — bold, bold extra, regular rounded, regular, regular oblique, light and light extra. Commercial work containing this typeface must include the reference to the author; personal projects don’t neccessary need to have a reference. The advanced version of the font can be purchased.
Ambrosia
This font is free to use for personal purposes only. This version doesn’t contain kerning, accented character and foreign currency symbols.
Medium Condensed
Telegrafico
Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License. TrueType (.ttf).
Synapse
176MKSD
Fonce Sans Regular
A sans-serif typeface that includes old style (hanging) numbers, a number of english and non-english lettering, some additional symbols and complete punctuation. This typeface is considered a Trial Version, in which certain letterforms have been replaced. Available only for non-commercial use as .otf. The advanced version of the font can be purchased.
SlabTallx
Pigiarniq Inuktitut font
Have you ever known about the existence of Nunavut? A small region in Canada with one of the lowest population rate of the world? Probably not. Only 0,01 people live there per km2, mostly Eskimo. The citizens of Nunabut speak four languages — French, English, Innuinaqtun and Inuktitut. Nothing spectacular so far, right?
Few years ago the government of the region has decided to design a new typeface to enable its 28.000 citizens to use all four languages in a uniform manner. The result is a beautiful, rich and professional sans-serif free font. The family includes a bold, heavy, italic, light and regular weights. Examples.
MUSEO
Delicious
Twenty one
Museo Sans
Museo Sans is based on the well-known Museo. It is a sturdy, low contrast, geometric, highly legible sans serif typeface very well suited for any display and text use.
Tallys
Tallys is a font that is one degree slanted and has large caps, a small x-height and long ascenders. It comes (see also Fontin) with hybrid numbers and a complete character set.
Anivers
The name Anivers derives from the word anniversary and was originally designed to celebrate the anniversary of Smashing Magazine. See some examples here.
Kontrapunkt
On October 22 2004 Kontrapunkt was awarded the Danish Design Prize for best typeface. The awarded typeface is our own corporate typeface ‘Kontrapunkt Light’, used in headers on this website and our printed material. The award was handed over by Crown Prince Frederik to creative director Bo Linnemann at a ceremony in Danish Design Centre.
Aardvark Cafe Font
Reminga
FF MT
Employing obscure but powerful techniques like vwl mmssn and cap reduction, FF Mt uses up to 50% less paper, screen, and wall space than other text faces without a single condensed letter.
Diavlo
Diavlo is a free font that contains 5 weights: Light, Book, Medium, Bold and Black.
Fertigo
Fontin Sans
With a nice classical appearance it will be a perfect match.
Mido
Kapitza Pop (decorative)
A free version of Pop contains 8 graphic elements in 4 weights (Pop10, Pop20, Pop30, Pop40). When repeated, each Pop element creates a unique pattern which can be combined into an infinite variety of patterns. This font is not free to
use commercially, please read the Licence Agreement.
Goudy Bookletter 1911
Faustant
Comfortaa
Fontin
The Fontin is designed to be used at small sizes. The color is darkish, the spacing loose and the x-height tall.
bankrutt
Heretica
Steiner
This typeface is ideal for logos and general design. It isn’t very suitable to be used with word-processors as it lacks some symbols and letters. Sans Serif, free for personal use only.
Mg Open Moderna
Patronne
Geo Sans Light
AUdimat (v2)
OpenType, Mac, PC, in four weights: regular, italic, bold, bold italic.
alusine
consume more
Megalopolis extra
stigmate
Liberation Sans
Public domain / GNU GPL, Regular, Italic, Bold, Bold Italic, PC / Mac OS X
Liberation Serif
Public domain / GNU GPL, Regular, Italic, Bold, Bold Italic, PC / Mac OS X
Enfer
JustOldFashion
Lido STF
The typeface is suitable for all periodicals wishing to abandon inconspicuously the hideous system typefaces with their even more hideous accents and to change over to the contemporary level of graphic design. It is also most convenient for everyday work in text editors and office applications. It has a fairly large x-height of lower case letters, shortened serifs and simplified endings of rounded strokes. Lido STF examples. For professional use you need a valid license which means purchasing the font.
Watch tv
Mg Open Canonica
Yanone Kaffeesatz
This “coffee”-font is supposed to be used in headlines and brief text passages; it shouldn’t, however, be used for body copy. The numbers and currency signs are monospaced, which means that they have the same width. The alternative and historic symbols as well as ligatures can be activated via the OpenType-option »optional ligatures«. Released under Creative Commons license. Examples.
Mg Open Cosmetica
Audimat mono
Geronto bis
Cicle
Sans-Serif, 7 weights, freeware.
Cardo
Cardo is a large Unicode font specifically designed for the needs of classicists, Biblical scholars, medievalists, and linguists. This font is free for personal, non-commercial, or non-profit use. Examples.
Mg Open Modata
Telerysm mono 2
OHmygod
Day Roman
In digitizing this typeface, attention was mainly given to duplicate the technical imperfections of 16th century printing, which have been lost with today’s technologies. In order to accomplish this, some digital type design conventions have been avoided – things like the uniformity of the serifs, overall stroke precision, vertical proportion exactitude. This digitization should work nicely when used anywhere from 10 to 30 pt. Some design oddities, appealing or otherwise, may appear in 30+ pt usage. This serif-font is available in PC Type 1 and PC True Type formats. Examples.
Gentium
Gentium is a typeface family designed to enable the diverse ethnic groups around the world who use the Latin script to produce readable, high-quality publications. It supports a wide range of Latin-based alphabets and includes glyphs that correspond to all the Latin ranges of Unicode. Gentium examples.
District Thin
A very calm, serious and impressive sans-serif free font from GarageFonts’ District family. The font is available as Mac Postscript, Mac TrueType, PC Postscript, PC Truetype and OpenType.
Romeral
Romeral offers aside from optimal legibility an elegant style, rounded forms and sharp geometric structure of its letters. Romeral is designed to produce a noticeable visual impact that invites the audience to the reading due to its sizable thickness. Interestingly enough, the basic idea of this OpenType-font was to find a way to fill the color titles zone in order to create a comfortable atmosphere for the reading experience. It can be used for body copy and headlines. Free to use in personal and commercial projects.
Chúcara
To get the font, contact the designer Juan Pablo De Gregorio or add a comment to the post, explaining, who you are, why are you willing to get the font and how do you intend to use it. The author sends the font via e-mail.
Redevance
Scriptina
Handwriting, PC, Mac.
Engel Light Ltd
Sans-Serif, PC, Mac, no special characters available.
Mank Sans
justice
Greyscale Basic
Trottoir
Based on the most trampled typeface in the world: the Pont-à-Mousson’s sewer covers font.
Qlassik
Existence Light
A free sans-serif font designed by Yeah Noah. 3 weights — Light, UnicaseLight, StencilLight. OpenType, PC, Mac OS X.
Venturis ADF
20 weights.
COM4t Fine Regular
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March 13th, 2009 at 1:07 am
Thats a very nice collection fonts…!!!
Looking forward to use them…
March 13th, 2009 at 8:20 am
GREAT job! Love the Aardvark Cafe Font.
March 13th, 2009 at 12:38 pm
I’ve seen the same copy used for the Pigiarniq Inuktitut font in another ‘free fonts’ blog post. First of all there’s a spelling mistake; it’s Nunavut and secondly it’s racist to refer to the residence of Nunavut as Eskimo.
March 13th, 2009 at 3:45 pm
thanks for sharing
March 15th, 2009 at 9:04 am
Each of these fonts is better than the other.
Simply stunning collection.
March 15th, 2009 at 10:01 am
Some of those fonts are stunning, thank you.
March 15th, 2009 at 1:21 pm
Can someone zip all this up for a download?
March 16th, 2009 at 6:58 am
Excellent set of fonts, thanks so much
)
March 17th, 2009 at 9:25 am
Best free font list ever
March 17th, 2009 at 9:38 am
thanks thanks thanks thanks
March 17th, 2009 at 4:44 pm
[b]Have a good time.
Thanks ![/b]
March 19th, 2009 at 12:12 am
Thanks a lot. Keep up the good work
March 19th, 2009 at 4:46 am
Hello,
Please add your site at http://www.sweebs.com. Sweebs.com is a place where other people can find you among the best sites on the internet!
Its just started and we are collecting the best found on the net! We will be delighted to have you in the sweebs listings.
Regards
Kris
March 20th, 2009 at 6:01 am
Thanks so much for this site and the list above, it is being of greta help!!!
March 22nd, 2009 at 8:35 am
Excellent list! Thanks for compiling it. You’ve given me some ideas for a new site I’m working on – especially in the area of a logo.
March 22nd, 2009 at 11:51 am
Thanks for a great font round-up. It’s good to see that none of the usual free fonts made it in for a change. I have downloaded several of these fonts for my web projects.
March 23rd, 2009 at 2:43 am
>>>Can someone zip all this up for a download?
Hey Justin you lazy shit. You want that delivered to your bedside on a CD-ROM, too?
March 23rd, 2009 at 10:32 am
really usefull fonts here, great collection. It’s nice to see the others typo works of these many designers
March 23rd, 2009 at 4:51 pm
[i]Great fonts! Thanks![/i] =D
March 30th, 2009 at 7:38 am
Molte molte grazie!
March 30th, 2009 at 10:37 pm
really i like much the mayority of the tipografy and is a great that this page have much things for design
THANK YOU
March 31st, 2009 at 2:56 am
Bonjour
Je m’appel Mademoiselle Coulon Carole-Anne, J’ai une petite fille de 22mois qui se prénome Johanna Coulon et mon copain qui est aussi son papa se prénome Monsieur Kaltenbach Yoann nous résidons au 10 Rue De La résistance 54 300 aLunéville
je voudrais pouvoir télécharger des polices gratuite.
En vous remerciant par avance
Mademoiselle Coulon Carole-Anne, Monsieur Kaltenbach Yoann et leur fille Mademoiselle Coulon Johanna
April 1st, 2009 at 3:52 am
Thank you.
Ambrosia is terrific !
April 1st, 2009 at 4:31 pm
the best
April 5th, 2009 at 5:01 pm
Thank you very much for this wonderful list of fonts.
April 6th, 2009 at 1:11 pm
je ne parle pas anglais et ne le lit pas non plus
.0
April 7th, 2009 at 1:15 am
Help! SOS!!!
Comment il faut faire pour télécharger le pack: 75+ Excellent Free Fonts For Professional Design ????????
April 7th, 2009 at 1:47 am
Dans l’intéret de notre fonction,
Comment faire pour télécharger vos polices gratuitemen?
Salutations
April 7th, 2009 at 10:44 pm
Thank you SO much!
April 8th, 2009 at 1:49 am
pour repondre à la question “comment télécharger”
il suffit de cliquer sur le titre
pour les licences, attention: toutes ces fontes ne sont pas forcement libres. certaines sont réservés à un usage personnel (pour un usage professionnel, une licence peut être nécessaire).
pour” Mademoiselle Coulon Carole-Anne”: il est généralement déconseillé de raconter sa vie sur un site internet….
April 21st, 2009 at 4:03 am
Nice colection, thanks for sharing
May 3rd, 2009 at 8:12 pm
nice! i’m gonna make my own blog
Regards, link
May 6th, 2009 at 7:52 pm
A nice font can change plain text into artwork!
May 18th, 2009 at 1:11 pm
Great list! Is there a zip file somewhere, or is this a one-by-one download kind of deal?
May 18th, 2009 at 1:30 pm
Hi Karl
It is important for me to respect the font designers and give them the attention and traffic related to a download. I agree though that an all-in-one zip download would be nice.
May 18th, 2009 at 1:36 pm
Great collection – thanks.
June 12th, 2009 at 6:43 am
great list. i didn’t know most of them before.
June 23rd, 2009 at 4:33 am
excellent recopilation! thanks
June 23rd, 2009 at 8:07 pm
thanks for an interesting list!
July 5th, 2009 at 8:34 am
Great fonts. I have wanted to make a design for my blog and this should be great reference.
August 12th, 2009 at 1:09 pm
This is a really great website. Fantastic fonts!
September 2nd, 2009 at 8:40 am
Just what I’ve been looking for! Thanks for this great list of fonts. I’m always looking for new sites to find free fonts and I will have to bookmark this because I will come back to visit each site.
September 7th, 2009 at 7:06 am
Where is the flash page? I feel silly asking, but I can’t find it…and I’d really love to have these beautiful fonts!
September 7th, 2009 at 7:13 am
Found the flash pages! Sorry for the lame question…
November 15th, 2009 at 6:47 pm
Excellent Fonts collections.
November 23rd, 2009 at 12:48 pm
75+excellent fonts are very helpful for the designers…… creative typical typographical thought and also a classic look for all the fonts… thanks for sharing…
November 23rd, 2009 at 10:11 pm
Great list. Will surely be using them in the future.
November 24th, 2009 at 4:10 pm
Excellent collection of really nice fonts. I posted to your page as one of my three daily links on my daily design blog:
http://designthoughtfortheday.blogspot.com/
Ted
November 24th, 2009 at 4:13 pm
@Ted, Thanks a lot for the mention!
November 28th, 2009 at 11:47 pm
check out »fracmetrica black« a modern and geometric blackletter – it’s open-type and for free!
-> http://gestaltung.fh-wuerzburg.de/blogs/werk_statt_villa/?p=462
December 20th, 2009 at 12:57 pm
Thanks to the Information, I really need.
December 26th, 2009 at 7:49 am
Nice collections thanks for sharing……………..
December 28th, 2009 at 1:18 pm
If you are looking for free fonts, check http://www.fonts2u.com. Discovered it just few days ago. Their
character map search is awesome! Saved some time when looking for specific character maps supported.
February 3rd, 2010 at 10:01 am
ust what I’ve been looking for! Thanks for this great list of fonts. I’m always looking for new sites to find free fonts and I will have to bookmark this because I will come back to visit each site.