Design Resources: Free Fonts

Being a graphic designer, one of the magazines that I read regularly is How, a wonderful place to go for stimulation and resoureces. This last copy that I picked up spent quite a bit of time talking about fonts, and then listing some free quality typefaces. Since professional faces can cost a pretty penny, I thought it would be nice to share the How resources with my fellow bloggers.

In the extended section, I've listed 13 sites that carry at least a few fonts that are free for download. Generally, the fonts are what could be termed display. That is, you wouldn't want to try to read a large body of text in any of these faces, but they all work well for banners, ads, and, sometimes, logos. Unless noted, all of the downloads have PC and Mac versions.

Enjoy.

One Way Out Fonts.
Download Banshee Bold for free after registering on the site. The face is a brash, painted face that is emailed to you following your registration.

T.26 Digital Type Foundary.
The free font for How readers is a five-pixel, block font that has an old-school digital feel. Not terribly useful to me, but you might have different needs.

Fonthead.
Fonthead has a nice selection of free fonts and even a dingbats-style face called The Font Heads--cartoon faces and heads. I will probably be using one of their free faces for the upcoming (and slightly delayed) new ResurrectionSong look.

Astigmatic One Eye Typographic Institute.
Not only will you find a ridiculously long name, but also has a great selection of faces. Dingbats style, various kinds of display type, and ornamentals are all represented. Fun stuff and high quality.

Font Diner.
Font Diner has an old jukebox feel, and is filled with funky, stylish fonts. I happen to love the design of this site.

Fountain.
Fountain actually has a really quirky set of "pro-bono" fonts. It's worth strolling through their catalog to find some faces that have a really unique feel.

MiniFonts.
MiniFonts designs fonts that are designed to be viewed on computers. That is, instead of having print application in mind, these are designed to be legible at smaller sizes on screen. The suggested use is for things like menus or any other screen-delivered typography.

TypeBox.
TypeBox offers a small selection of slick ornamental and dingbat faces.

Fontshop.
You will only find a few free faces, but one of them is Pushkin, a really wonderful handwriting style font.

Larabie Fonts.
Larabie Fonts has the widest selection of free fonts available, which is sort of a mixed blessing. Some of the faces are great, but a lot of them are precisely what you would expect for free, if you take my meaning. Wading through to find the face that you're looking for can be quite a trick, but there really are some gems in here.

Love Design.
The free fonts here are funky and definitely pop oriented, and are only to be used for non-commercial purposes, but they might be precisely what you needed to spice up that blog banner.

Posted by zombyboy at March 2, 2004 11:10 AM | TrackBack