Find Free Quality Fonts (+ 10 Fonts Included)
Author: Stefan Vervoort | Please Comment!We have been talking about and introducing great CSS typography alternatives like sIFR3, FLIR or Typeface.js. They have given us more typography possibilities and options.
When we use a technique like FLIR, we face another problem: where to get fonts for your projects.
Many quality fonts are copyrighted and that means you have to pay to use them. I could understand that you don’t want to buy (could be for any reason), so you would like an alternative like free fonts. But do they have quality, and how do you know which one is in the public domain?
How and Where to search?
I have picked up a small little trick that made me browse fonts that were in the public domain or are free to use. We will use DaFont to search and download fonts. Here is small guide:
- Browse to DaFont.
- Choose your font category.
- Choose the options you would like to specify.
- Click “more options”
- Select Public domain / GNU GPL and Free
- Browse the fonts.
10 Quality and Free Fonts
To make things as easy as possible, here are 10 fonts that I think are really nice. You can use any of them in sIFR3, FLIR or Typeface.js as long as you don’t sell them.
Port Credit
Very nice looking font that you can use in many projects. The download comes with 2 font files, a normal and a bold version.
Prociono
Prociono is a font by Barry Schwartz. This font has a high quality and is very detailed. Looks great in headings and titles.
36 Days ago
36 days ago is a font that is pretty old but it remains very stylish. This font comes with 2 font files, a normal and bold version.
Goudy Bookletter 1911
The author has found inspiration for this font in the older font Kennerley Old Style. This font comes with one normal version and is released in the public domain.
Aubrey
Aubrey is a clean font that looks good for heading and titles. The download comes in a normal version.
Harrison
Harrison is a handwritten font that looks great as heading and maybe you can use it in a logo too. This font comes in a normal version.
Essay 1743
This font will look absolutely lovely in a grungy website. Essay 1743 includes 4 fonts (normal, italic, bold, bold-italic) and you can see the author has put much time in this.
Delicious
This is a font by Jos Buivenga and it looks awesome. He started with a normal font but after some time it turned out font family. You can use this font in personal and commercial projects.
Apantasia
Apantasia is a handwritten font that can work great in grungy websites. This font has almost every character included.
Lupinus
Lupinus is a good font that could be used for headings and titles and it works well. It has a bit “blocky” feel and that is nice here!
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1:26 am on November 17th, 2008
beautiful fonts there, thanks!
4:10 pm on November 17th, 2008
Forwarding these to my brother, designer. This is pretty cool.
4:11 pm on November 17th, 2008
@Tertius - You do that. Thanks
4:46 pm on November 17th, 2008
Awesome trick and fonts (been looking for good fonts, lately).
Stumbled and Delicious’ed.
PS: Can I request more font roundups like these? I’d promote them on social media as much as I can - in return.
5:13 pm on November 17th, 2008
@Sumesh - Great you like these kind of posts and I think I will write some more in the future. I hope others like these kind of posts too. Thanks for your Social media love!