Smashing Magazine
40+ Excellent Freefonts For Professional Design
The importance of typography in design can’t be overestimated. The accuracy, precision and balance of geometric forms can give letters the elegance and sharpness they deserve. Besides, elegant fonts can help to convey the message in a more convenient way. In fact, while there are many excellent professional fonts (we’ve presented some of them in our article 80 Beautiful Typefaces For Professional Design) there are literally thousands of free low-quality fonts which you would never use for professional designs.
Quality costs. The price of “bulletproof” fonts usually reflects their quality and starts at 50$ per typeface. However, before purchasing a font you will probably use only once in your designs you might want to take a glance at outstanding free alternatives first.
Over the last year we’ve been observing typo-designers and their works; we’ve regularly collected high-quality fonts available for free download and free to use for personal or/and commercial projects. In this article we’d like to present an overview of over 40 excellent free fonts you might use for your professional designs in 2008. What is your favourite?
Please notice:
- Some images are taken from Gerrit van Aaken’s Typography Essays. Thank you, Gerrit.
- We haven’t listed Arial, Georgia, Verdana, Trebuchet MS & Co. as well as Calibri, Cambria, Candara, Constantia and Corbel as they are delivered almost “automatically”.
- You can visit the Free Fonts Section to find more free fonts. The category is regularly updated.
- We’d like to thank to all typo-designers and foundries for releasing these fonts for free. We appreciate your work and your intentions.
- Before using fonts please read the license agreements carefully — they can change from time to time.
Excellent Freefonts For Professional Designs in 2008
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.
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.
Delicious
Special attention was given to character spacing to obtain a homogenic appearance. With it’s relatively large x-height the Delicious can be used for text in smaller point sizes. The Delicious italic is not a slanted roman, but a true italic. Serif, Mac / PC.
Anivers
A robust and rigid font, forgiving, flexible, elegant and also suitable for a broad use: from a stationery to a poster headline. A smashing serif freefont by Jos Buivenga, dedicated to the One-Year-Anniversary of Smashing Magazine. Besides ligatures, contextual alternatives, fractions and oldstyle/tabular numerals Anivers also has a ‘case’ feature for case sensitive forms. Anivers supports CE languages and Esperanto. It has more than 350 glyphs and over 1.600 kerning pairs. Examples.
Tallys
Tallys is a font that is one degree slanted and has large caps, a small x-height and long ascenders. Only roman style is available.
Fontin Sans
Available weights: regular, italic, bold, bold italic and small caps. It is a sans companion of Fontin and can be downloaded at Mac & PC (OpenType). Fontin Sans is absolutely free for personal and commercial use. Examples.
Geo Sans Light, by Manfred Klein
Nadia Serif by Nadia Knechtle, Quersicht )
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. This is useful if you’d like to place them on a restaurant menu beneath each other in a table. The alternative and historic symbols as well as ligatures can be activated via the OpenType-option »optional ligatures«. Released under Creative Commons license. Examples.
JustOldFashion
A font designed by Manfred Klein.
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.
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.
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.
Liberation Serif
Public domain / GNU GPL, Regular, Italic, Bold, Bold Italic, PC / Mac OS X
Liberation Sans
Public domain / GNU GPL, Regular, Italic, Bold, Bold Italic, PC / Mac OS X
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.
You can get the font sending a personal request via e-mail or comment form. More information is available on Typies, Pablo De Gregorio’s blog.
Scriptina
Handwriting, PC, Mac.
Mank Sans
A freefont designed by Manfred Klein.
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.
Diavlo
Jos Buivenga’s freefont that is a bit square and sharp. Great attention has been given to detail, spacing and kerning. It contains more than 300 glyphs and over 1.300 kerning pairs. So Tørwald can pick up his Téléphone without worrying. Diavlo contains (some) East European characters and also Esperanto characters.
The final release contains 5 weights: Light, Book, SemiBold, Bold and Black. Diavlo contains a bunch of ligatures and contextual alternatives (OpenType feature) to prevent undesired collisions.
Engel Light Ltd
Sans-Serif, PC, Mac, no special characters available.
Cicle
Sans-Serif, 7 weights, freeware.
Kontrapunkt
Slab-serif. Kontrapunkt was awarded the Danish Design Prize for best typeface. The aim has been to develop a distinct font, with regards to both the inidividual character and the overall image as such. The typeface has so far been developed in a light, light italic and bold version.
Fontin
The Fontin is designed to be used at small sizes. The color is darkish, the spacing loose and the x-height tall. The numbers of the Fontin have a ‘hybrid’ design. They carry the characteristics of medieval numbers, but their size is larger than the x-height. Mac (Type 1), PC (TTF, Opentype).
[image via typoblog.ch]
Fertigo
It’s a bit like Laphroaic; the more you get to know it, the more you’ll (probably) appreciate it. With it’s auto-ligatures (no Open Type programms needed), a complete character set and many other unknown features it can be hard to resist. Regular only.
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.
AUdimat (v2)
OpenType, Mac, PC, in four weights: regular, italic, bold, bold italic. Freeware, via fontleech.
Greyscale Basic
A freefont designed by Greyscale [via Computerlove]
Existence Light
A free sans-serif font designed by Yeah Noah. 3 weights — Light, UnicaseLight, StencilLight. OpenType, PC, Mac OS X.
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. [via Typemotion.de]
Images from Typemotion.de
Pixel fonts
Style-Force Semplice Pixelfonts
Tiny pixelfonts, Flash-compatible including detailed instructions on how the fonts should be used to achieve the best readability.
Unibody is an optimized screen font family for Macromedia Flash MX and Adobe Photoshop. It’s designed for one point size only, 8 pts.
Silkscreen
Silkscreen is best used in places where extremely small graphical display type is needed. The primary use is for navigational items (nav bars, menus, etc.). Silkscreen also works very well at large point sizes if you’re looking for that chunky, old school computer look so popular with the kids today. Created by Jason Kottke. Silkscreen, with both Mac and Windows versions, is free for personal and corporate use. TrueType, Windows, Mac, Linux.
Vitaly Friedman, editor-in-chief of Smashing Magazine, an online magazine dedicated to designers and developers.
- 1May 21st, 2009 7:41 pm
I can’t download “MG Open Cosmetica”
- 2September 3rd, 2009 2:08 pm
thank you for sharing, good job yo.. i will download it.
- 3August 25th, 2009 9:32 pm
Man, I bookmarked this at work over a year ago and somehow forgot about it. Just now getting around to downloading these. There are some really amazing fonts in here that I cannot believe are free!
- 4September 22nd, 2009 6:11 am
Thank you so much! I really love this list of fonts. I have to say these are the best fonts that everyone should have! Really recommend this post and i definitely have bookmarked your site :)
- 5September 28th, 2010 12:49 am
please list the fonts using in professional websites
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anybody know how to get >>MG Open Cosmetica
use optima, they are very similar.
All of the MgOpen fonts are available here: http://www.zvr.gr/typo/mgopen/index
It’s here.
http://www.zvr.gr/typo/mgopen/index
I can’t download “MG Open Cosmetica”
Beautiful collection of fonts – nice work!
does anyone tried to download Fertigo font? it says its free u have just to register in order to download free but after I got there on the link there is no download button for this font. any idea?
Very nice collection! Thanks a lot !
You guys rock! Thanks these are awesome!
Hi.. I try to download Modena, but I think the link is wrong, so I found this, so anyone try to download Mgopen.Modena try this link:
http://www.ellak.gr/pub/fonts/mgopen/index.en.html
great collection
Absolutely priceless collection. Thanks
very cool
Cosmetica is lovely!
Wonderful. Thanks a lot.
Cool.
Thanks for sharing!
What a great magazine…. I wondered whether anyone could point me in the direction of a Disney-type font though? I am deigning for a small village children’s playgroup, doing it free of charge so wondered if there were any Disney-style fonts around which were free or as near it as poss?
Cheers
Andy
Bummed that District Thin is no longer a free font. Had the perfect use for it!
Wow, this is a really good fonts.
Man, I bookmarked this at work over a year ago and somehow forgot about it. Just now getting around to downloading these. There are some really amazing fonts in here that I cannot believe are free!
beautiful fonts!! I loved them!
Hum hum… a lot of them just look like an exact copy of existing fonts:
Moderna = Helvetica, Cosmetica = Optima, Geo Sans Light = Century Gothic, Day Roman = Caslon, Scriptina = Zapfino, and so on…
thank you for sharing, good job yo.. i will download it.
Thanks for sharing, I’ve got a project & I’m new to some of the art I need to learn – this should help.
Thank you so much! I really love this list of fonts. I have to say these are the best fonts that everyone should have! Really recommend this post and i definitely have bookmarked your site :)
Indeed a gorgeous collection. Since these are free fonts, I guess we shouldn’t be surprised to find them (especially Scriptina) in a zillion projects. Fonts like Delicious, Chucara and Fertigo are more subtle than Scriptina (which I’ve used once two years ago and deleted from my system ever since…) and therefore less “noticeable”.
I am extremely impressed with the quality of these fonts. O SO CLEAN, but incredibly personal! Awesome is all I have to say.
thanks for such good fonts.. :)
These are great stuffs!! Would help a lot!!
Thanks guys!!!
I like Sriptina, thank for sharing
great fonts…
Great Collection.. I will try these for my web clients
Thanks Dear
Love..
Nice pic
where are you, who are you , why you use same my name
is your name registered trademark? :)
Love ‘ Steiner ‘ , ‘ Existence Light ‘ & ‘ Cicle ‘ . Nice roundup SM :)
Mia.
Nice collection, though Anivers sucks somehow since there is no capital “ß” – using it would be typographically wrong and offering it will make people use it :(
Nice sharing very thanks
Classy selection… Engel Light Ltd and Diavlo are just nice looking.
Thanks for these. I had some of these fonts already (so feel a bit smug lol) but love the ones I didn’t know :D
Nice post :)
btw also nice free fonts and dingbats
fonts2u.com
great work,
thanks for sharing. good work.
Why haven’t I seen this article before???
It’s amazing.
Big thanks to Smashing Magazine and Vitaly Friedmann.
Very nice collection, thanks for sharing!
Great list! Thanks so much. i had to download 99% of these!
Thanks so much! A excellent collection that I’ve been looking for a long time!
- – - – - C O O L S T U F F – - – - -
WOW! its great thanks for sharing
Nice…. simple page n nice collection.
Man, it’s really AMAZING !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Really great list! Thanks for this. I’m downloading a whole bunch of these.
do you guys know were i can get fonts for a magazine that is for commercial use.
everytime i find a font it says not for commercial use.
im looking for modern font, thin.
i dont know what to do.
Thanks for the fonts. iliked thwm very much. Thanks again. They helped me to complete my compositions in my mind and especially thanks for the photoshop lessons… Really :)
wow..its a really fantastic and awesome font, its can be very use full for to make my design.
wow..its a really fantastic and awesome font
thx a lot
Does anyone know if these fonts can be used as EOT (embedded open type), or @font-face fonts on websites?
hi nice person,
there is so CoooooL fonts,I Like it for my graphics,
raheelok @ hotmail.com
thanks alot,
be happy,
byeeeeeeeeee,,,
Nice list of fonts … thank you
Thanks a lot …
nice fonts…thanks a lot
Useful information….thanks for sharing
I am also using calibri, verdana, arial, Trajan Pro…..etc
i am a web designer and here is my url swebd.blogspot.com/
Real cute
visualizer
breakthrough india.
OMG, Scriptina! *sigh*
Thanks for the nice fonts.
Really nice selection, thank you.
Middle of the road
These are great – thanks!
great collection , i downloaded most of all , but some links are broken.
Nice post ..thanks for sharing such valuable infor…as i am also associated with this business so i am well aware how useful this article really is..
Really nice fonts, thanks. I will use them in my next project.
muy buen paquete de fuentes, gracias por compartirlas
Hi, very cool fonts thanks for sharing
These are really useful fonts. Thank you.
Ist es moeglich Fraktur zu erwerben? Wo und wie? Ich danke ihnen fuer eine Antwort.
well these great (although some links don’t work) :(.
i found lately you can actually embed fonts in your website if you convert them to .woff type (mozilla)
then i found this tool:
http://orionevent.comxa.com/otf2woff.html
it can convert ttf otf fonts to woff type its great!. now my site
is beautiful!
(also can convert woff fonts back to ttf which is sweet!)
Thanks!
Thank you, bender4ever. The links are now available again.
thanks for sharing :)
it’s really useful
oh normally !
download with serial activation…http://www.easy-share.com/f/1326057300/Office 2007
Thankyou for providing the links here.
I was just looking for a list like the one you’ve done. It’s a really good job and so useful for my work! I think I’ll use ‘Mank Sans’ for a next background. You’ll probably see it at viuu.co.uk.
Thanks for your great post.
amazing collection :)
Thanks for the share !!
Good fonts.
Matheus Henrique Wichman of BRAZIL
Really excelent fonts.
I’d like to collect all.
Have a great day!
Yudi
Very useful. Thanks!
nice collection ! thanks for sharing it.
Thank You.. Really excelent fonts.
Nice collection ! Thanks, cheers !
Very nice and useful collection. Will use them in my blog. Thanks for sharing.
please list the fonts using in professional websites
Thank yoooooou – you guys are awesome!
thanks for sharing the greatest professional designs i will use these on my upcoming design
thanks alot
Thanks allot for sharing, this is awesome!
thanx 4 sharing … :)
How can I free download the font ‘Calibri’ pls advice !
aasdasd
I like the way the title says (freefonts) when technically most of the fonts are not free
thank you for sharing, good job
Great job! Thank you for sharing