The importance of typography is often underrated. Fonts give form and life to most creative projects and can mean the difference between ho-hum and killer. Poor font choices can result in the wrong look or feel, content with no personality, unforeseen technical issues that will drive you crazy or contrasting fonts that just don’t work together.
When you’re running on a tight budget, pricey designer fonts aren’t on the menu. Fortunately, there’s no shortage of websites offering free typeface downloads. Since font selection can be frustrating and time-consuming, we’ve compiled a list of the best free typography sites. Since most free font downloads are for personal use only, we searched for those offering free fonts for commercial use.
A Few Tips
- Above all, don’t forget that typography’s purpose is to effectively enhance and convey written content. Will your message be clear?
- Check license restrictions: Is the font limited to personal use or licensed for commercial projects?
- A fully functional font is critical. Test, test and test again for technical issues in ways suitable for your project.
- Check the font on different computers and mobile devices to ensure it always looks the same.
- If you really want to use a crazy unique typeface for impact and have it to look the same everywhere in the world, you’ll probably want it converted to a graphic.
- Check the look with text appropriate to the project and not just fake Latin.
- One font with different styles (italics, condensed etc.) and weights (light, bold etc.) might be all you need.
That being said, on to the good stuff…
The Best Free Typography Sites
- High quality fonts for commercial and personal use
- Can use tags and classifications to find fonts quickly
- Font Identifier lets you upload font image and tool will identify matching fonts
- Versatile font filters
- Weekly new high quality designer fonts for commercial and personal use
- Check frequently – fonts are free for a week and then sold at reduced prices
- Bargain font bundles for $1.00
- Free open source designer web and desktop fonts – use them however you like
- Fonts available in more than 135 languages
- Click on the red plus sign in upper right corner or font name to preview font in various ways
- More than 800 fonts
- Free high quality fonts for personal or commercial use
- Beautiful script fonts plus basic, display, symbols etc.
- Filter by recent, popular or featured
- Check licensing info on each font
- Category system makes it easy to find font types
- High quality fonts, most free for commercial and personal use (check before downloading)
- Extensive visual category system makes it easy to find what you’re looking for
- Designers website with a lot of shared, free content
- Check for licensing info
- Easy search of many fonts
- Many unique fonts not found elsewhere
- Simple, fun font building tool to create your own TrueType fonts
- Gallery of over 43,000 free fonts
- Can clone other fonts on site to use as basis for your own unique fonts
- Searchable by license type (commercial etc.)
At BXP Creative, we take pride in thinking outside the box, providing creative white label marketing services for agencies at a price that fits your budget. We provide all the creative services you don’t have the time or people to handle, leaving you free to relax and run your business.
Our entire process was designed with you in mind. Contact us to talk about what we can do for you.
