Holy cats, folks! Where would we be without letters, without typography? Deciphering pictographs on this screen?!? Emoji everywhere?
As fun as that might be, I love a good, sexy capital Q or lowercase g and you won’t find those in pictographs. But you will find them in typefaces. There are so many typefaces (including dingbats!) out there, but where are the best places to find them?
I’ve talked about the different font categories in several other posts, so go check those out for my specific font recommendations:
Serif | Sans Serif | Script | Display+Novelty | Dingbats
If you’re going to dabble or go deep with this graphic design stuff you gotta have a killer library of typefaces!
- When you need that perfect handwritten but legible script face, where do you look? (Honestly, these are falling from the sky these days, but most of them are hard to read and should be avoided)
- When you need a kid-friendly face, where do you look?
- When you need a classic serif, where do you look?
- When you need a contemporary geometric sans serif, where do you look?
- What if you’re on a super tight budget and want to find something for free?
This post (part 1) will cover where to get all these fabulous fonts — for free!
Part 2 covers the best sites for paid fonts.
Part 3 covers the best sites for bargains and deals.
In this post I cover 4 sites to get awesome free fonts. To download all of the info for free (plus a couple more not available here), click the graphic below.
OK, let’s get started …
Where to find free fonts
Free fonts: Dafont
It’s not an attractive designerly (is that a word?) site, but it gets the job done.
- Search by name or alphabetical at top right
- Search by type categories (fancy, techno etc.) and sub categories (handwritten, brush, graffiti etc.)
- Check out all those dingbat types!
- Quick link to new fonts and top fonts
- Large examples with easy-to-find download button
- Free for personal use
Free fonts: Font Fabric
This site doesn’t offer a ton o’ fonts, but the ones it has are quite nice and very well documented as far as what all the letter forms look like in alphabetical order and in use.
- Simple, elegant site that is not overrun with ads
- Very attractive graphics for each font listed on the home page
- Some demo weights are free to download with options to pay for other weights
- Each detail page does a thorough job showing the letterforms and how it looks in use
Free fonts: Font Squirrel
There’s a lot to look at here, but take your time and don’t get overwhelmed.
- Hot and Recent links are at left of navigation bar
- Easy search box at top center if you know what you’re looking for
- Large sample fonts on the home page with download links (some are offsite)
- Right column, scroll down to look at the classifications (serif, novelty, stencil etc) and tags (casual, heavy, rough, etc)
Free Fonts: The League of Moveable Type
https://www.theleagueofmoveabletype.com
This site stands out as the most fresh and clean of the free sites. And it has beautiful typography! Look at all that white space at the top!! Swoon …
- Each typeface gets a large, beautiful graphic showing it off
- There are not a lot of typefaces here, but wow, they are very well done
- Each detail page covers the weights and shares a short, clever bio
- Download button is easy to find
Are we done yet??
Would you believe I have more to recommend, but don’t want to knock you over with this stuff, so I’ve put these and the others in a nice PDF you can download by clicking on that big graphic below. The PDF has links to all the sites (free, paid and deals & bargains). So get the PDF and keep it in a handy place for the next time you need that perfect retro font, or handwritten font, or techno font, or …
Do you love a good typeface as much as you love a good dark chocolate bar, or is that just me? What are your favorite FREE sources for fonts? Because free is a very nice price. Comment below with your go-tos. I’m always anxious to scour new font sites 🙂