If you are creating your first design or website or a seasoned pro, do you look for fresh and new fonts?
In today’s video, we will discuss a few websites that I share with my students, and I think it would great to share that with you.
If you are creating anything, you need to read the readme.txt file or the information on the font’s usage. For example, if the font says free for personal use, that means you can use the font to make a birthday card. If you decide to sell the birthday card to the public or online to make a few bucks, you can’t use it because it becomes commercial use product. One way around is contacting the creator and maybe buy the font outright. Or use free commercial ones. This video will share both, as some fonts are available for personal and commercial use. Just read the fine print, even if it says it’s free to use!
The list that you have been waiting for:
- Dafont was and still one of my go-to websites. It is one of the oldest and the best sources for downloading fonts. Dafont features more than 50,000 fonts on its website.
- FontSquirrel is different from the other websites on this list because it compiles fonts from other websites and links out to them. All the fonts are free for commercial use and come in either OTF or TTF format.
- Fontspace has nearly 79,000 free fonts. They are all legally licensed and ready for you to download from different styles of fonts.
- Fontasy is a free font archive featuring selected fonts for the MAC and PC available for free downloads.
- FontStruct is one of those websites that you build your fonts to downloading free fonts.
- FontSpring offers worry-free font licenses for desktops, websites, apps and ebooks.
- Abstract Fonts: Download more than 10000 free fonts from unique categories to narrow down your choices for desktop and mobile use
- Urban Fonts reminds me a little bit of Dafont, except Urban Fonts is a modern, user-friendly website to use. The core structure is the same.
- Befonts, you can download the best fonts, free fonts for personal or commercial use.
- Pixel Surplus is your source for high-quality font freebies and other amazing freebies for creative professionals.
- Fontsly an extensive collection of free fonts for download (the only issue is the questionable pop-up windows, which isn’t safe for work or school!)
- Awwwards: Beautiful web fonts for inspiration. A massive selection of Awwwards winning web fonts for websites
- Graphic Design Freebies: Designers around the world offer freebies such as fonts to be used commercial-free and personal use
- 1001 Fonts. You think the name of the website says it all. That’s not the case. They have more than 10,000 free fonts.
- Google Fonts – Google Fonts has one of the largest collections of web-ready fonts. It offers more than 1,000 different font families, which can be used in commercial or personal works.
- Behance is a creative social media platform owned by Adobe that offers thousands of creative designers — including tons of free fonts.
- Dribbble is a similar platform to Behance. Although the collection is not as extensive as Behance, you’ll find plenty of modern scripts and serif fonts here.
- Adobe Fonts, formerly known as TypeKit, is free as long as you have a plan with Adobe!
- Font Freak: Discover new fonts suitable for your computer regardless of your operating system from a Mac or PC from a bank of 90,000 fonts.
- FontShop is another top option for free fonts. Some of their foundries offer single styles of their best typeface families at no charge to try out.
- Font Fabric is like others on this list, offers paid fonts, but there are plenty of free font options.
- FontZone: Search a library of over 50,000 free fonts? FontZone lets you preview the options directly on their website before you download anything. That way, you can see exactly how your content will look before wasting time downloading something you won’t use.
- Fawnt has over 10,000 different font options for designers, developers, and anyone appreciating the web’s highest quality fonts.
- The League of Moveable Type is the first open-source type foundry, providing a range of high-quality fonts that were carefully picked for strict standards for the fonts catalogue.
- Creative Fabrica: All fonts have a free commercial license. Meaning it’s ready to go for commercial use, at no additional cost
- FontM: A wide variety of free fonts for commercial use
- FFonts: It has over 14,000 free fonts available for commercial use and a library of over 100,000 fonts for personal use.
- Free Typography is a place to share your typography with others to use and download for free.
- Hype for Type: All the fonts you could want to be categorized by style to either buy or free downloads with a library of 25,000 fonts
- Font Bundles: All of their fonts are available to download after you have signed up for an account, and they add a new font every week to their free fonts collection.
- Free Fonts Project can use a designer’s effort to make quality fonts accessible to everyone for commercial and personal purposes.
- Neogrey another designer’s effort to make quality fonts accessible to everyone for personal purposes. Can use fonts for commercial use, do read the commercial usage file.
- Type Depot a small collection of original fonts. This free font site has some fantastic options to offer.
- GlukFonts is quite different in that English is not the primary language displayed. But, with its rather interesting selection of free fonts available. There are some fonts here you can’t find anywhere else on the net—worth a look.
- Lost Type features non-standard fonts of various sorts on a digital type foundry.
- UX Free: User experience designers recommend UX Free. It’s guaranteed to meet your needs.
- SpeckyBoy offers a list of 100 good fonts for websites. Fonts are displayed with a large image that shows off the font in an actual design, making it a lot easier to select one that meets your needs.
- Simply the Best Fonts most of the fonts are free, while some require a small donation or purchased outright.
- Free Script Fonts. In need of script fonts, the Free Script Fonts website is an excellent solution.
- Fonts Arena has fonts that are available for personal use only and others for commercial purposes as well. You can also read articles on font-related topics and get the latest typeface news.
- Pinspiry Fonts has an extensive collection of free fonts for download for these types of fonts, serif, sans, slab, script and display fonts.
- Unblast is organized in serif, sans serif, display, script, condensed, vintage, and more available free and premium fonts.
- Fonts in Use: I have to say this site is quite slick with examples of fonts used in real-world posters, ads, and websites with the ability to enter meta tags in the search box
All of these websites are slightly different based on what you’re looking for and personal preferences—a great source of all types of fonts and typography inspiration, so don’t be afraid to try something new and fresh in your work.
*NOTE: Don’t forget to make sure you’re downloading and installing fonts that are free for commercial use if you’re planning to associate them with your brand and company. The worse thing you want is to spend all this money on branding and later getting a letter from a legal team to cease using the font!