25 Best Free Quality Fonts
» Oct 15, 01:00 AM
Recently I’ve been browsing through the Net searching for the best license-free fonts which would fit as a serious heading for a serious online-presentation. Fortunately, I wasn’t the first web-developer, who was trying to find such fonts. One of the best resources I’ve found was Gerrit van Aaken’s essays collection “Freie Schriften im Portrait” (free fonts in a portrait) in German language. Before reading this article any further I strongly suggest you to visit Gerrit’s site and add it to bookmarks, for it is regularly updated and contains great links and a great fonts library. Besides, I’ve found some collections, created by freelancing typo-artists, such as Manfred Klein’s Fonteria, Designer In Action: Fonts, Typemotion.de, Apostrophic Laboratories’ Collection, Identifont – Free Fonts and others. [Update: Following my statistic data, I’ve found another great resource, which inlcudes links to license-free fonts and is updated regularly. Take a look!]
So I’ve decided to create the Top 20 Best Free Quality Fonts, which are likely to be used rather for official, serious presentations (such as business sites) than a colourful teenager’s homepage.
Most fonts presented below are absolutely license-free which means that you can use them for both private, personal and commercial purposes without any limitations whatsoever. Nevertheless, the disclaimers are changing from time to time, so you better first take a close look at disclaimer before using the font in a commercial project.
If you have any comments or suggestions, please let me know (or just comment on this article).
Update: Delicious and Fontin. I am speechless.
Update (04.03.2005): NeueSans was added.
Update (23.10.2006): Some more beauties can be found in the article "More Free Quality Fonts" I've published in the Smashing Magazine.
Almost a year ago I’ve posted an article called “20 Best Free Quality Fonts” in my blog - a list of fonts, which are likely to be used rather for official, serious presentations (such as business sites) than a colourful teenager’s homepage. I didn’t expect something unusual, I didn’t think about any traffic problems, provider complaints and negative users’ feedback. But, actually, I should, I REALLY should.
Over this year my personal pick on free quality fonts popped up in dozens of discussions about web-typography and led dozens of thousands of web-developers and curious users to my blog. The page still remains popular today, and it is instantly updated. However, over the last few days I’ve decided to revisit the old sources, take a look at new fonts and choose the most beautiful ones, which aren’t included in my old fonts’ collection. In fact, many new fonts occured - some of them just weren’t available for download one year ago, some of them were created over the last 12 months.
20 25 Best Free Quality Fonts
(compiled by Vitaly Friedman)
0.1 Delicious: Description
0.2 Fontin: Description
0.3. Few months ago OurType presented a free quality font NeueSans, available for download as the bonus font of the month. Every month OurType company offers free quality fonts as bonus fonts for download.
To download Bonus fonts of the month, click on the “Download bonus font of the month” star, which appears after the page is loaded.
0.4. AUdimat (freeware, via fontleech): Description & Download
0.5. The Share Font (freeware, via Herbe Kauffman): Description, Download
1. Gentium: Description, Download
2. Lido STF: Description, Download
3. Cardo: Description, Download and Description (English)
Image from
http://praegnanz.de/essays/435/cardo
4. Day Roman: Description, Download
5. Yanone Kaffeesatz: Description, Download
6. Union: Description | The link was removed due to copyright infringement.
7. Pigiarniq Inuktitut font: Description, Download
8. New Media: Description and Download
Image from
http://www.designerinaction.de
Bill Davis let me know that Sylfaen is licensed by Microsoft as commercial font software. Thanks, Bill!
10. JustOldFashion: Description and Download
11. 078MKSD Medium Condensed: Description and Download
Image from
http://www.designerinaction.de
12. PetitLatin: Description and Download
13. Lacuna: Description and Download (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)
Image from
http://www.typemotion.de/_typographie/lacuna.php
14. ATF Antique: Description and Download
15. SlabTallX: Description and Download
16. Vera Sans Mono: Description and Download
17. ClassizismAntiqua: Description and Download
18. HopeRound: Description and Download
19. Blue Highway: Description and Download (only 4 images are license-free!)
Image from
http://www.typemotion.de/_typographie/lacuna.php
Update: 20-25. Peter Saville Graphic Design Fonts Collection
Wolfgang Hartmann has informed me that the font Order 1981 is licensed. Apparently, other fonts presented in the Peter Saville Graphic Design Fonts Collection are the illegal copies of licensed, copyrighted fonts, too. Thanks, Wolfgang!
Update: 26. Baskerville Old Face: Description and Download
Update: 27. Maiola and Ronnia Sans are licensed now.
You’d like to thank Vitaly Friedman? ;) You can support the project and the author, donating money via PayPal (EUR):
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