5 ms·
Ask HN: Where to find good free fonts?
The site Mark Pilgrim linked to in his Fuck the Foundries article had just about fuck-all on it, and you have to click through from the main listings to see the fonts, which seems like an idiotic design choice for a fonts aggregation site.
So where can one find these alleged just-as-good or even nearly-as-good free fonts? Googling "free fonts" is like visiting Internet Archive pages.
- dot 18y agoI tend to use Dafont.com. It's free, fast and works really well.
- ja2ke 18y agoagreed dafont is a great resource. it's one of the few free font sites which is actually well thought out (including things like letting you filter whether or not a font set includes just English language characters, accent characters for EFIGS (english/french/italian/german/spanish), or a full character set, and is generally more above board than most free font sites. Also -- I like that the "Fuck the Foundaries" article is intended to be viewed in Gill Sans.
- mstefff 18y agocheck smashingmagazine.com for entries
- jraines 18y agoThis has been my go-to first look in the past, and I've found some good ones that I've used there. But it's a bit limited and some of the links are now outdated (from their Free Fonts of the Week/Month series)
- critke 18y agoWhatever you do, be careful. You can catch some nasty viruses looking for free fonts if you're not careful.
- tptacek 18y agoBe careful; there's been some confusion about which fonts are actually free in the past. For instance, people were salivating over Olsen's "Union", which was indeed published "for free" on a Danish government website --- but was only licensed for use by the Danish government. (I think you can buy it from FontFont). A lot of "high quality" free fonts are also student projects, and can actually be pretty raw setting lots of type.
- GVRV 18y agohttp://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/2009/04/24/30-sites-for-fantastic-free-fonts/ http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/2009/04/24/30-sites-for-fanta...
- callahad 18y agoExljbris: http://www.josbuivenga.demon.nl/ http://www.josbuivenga.demon.nl/ Make sure you read the licenses; most just require an attribution link if embedded.
- mindhacker 18y agohttp://www.urbanfonts.com/free-fonts.htm http://www.urbanfonts.com/free-fonts.htm
- bendtheblock 18y agoCheck my delicious bookmarks, I have a few stored for precisely this: http://delicious.com/search?context=userposts&p=fonts&lc=1&u=iveheardpeoplesayit http://delicious.com/search?context=userposts&p=fonts... IMHO the best in that list is probably: http://sixrevisions.com/graphics-design/45-beautiful-free-fonts-for-modern-design-trends/ http://sixrevisions.com/graphics-design/45-beautiful-free-fo...
- ZeroGravitas 18y agoBeware! Most "free" fonts are not licensed for use within a web page via @font-face. This is a new technology which most font designers probably haven't heard of and taken account of in their licencing. Crucially it involves putting the actual font on a public web server for users to download. I followed a random link posted here and on checking the licence on a "free" font found this: "the consumer may use Harold's Fonts in any way EXCEPT redistribution of the digital font itself in any form." As with software, if they're not using a recognised licence (SIL OFL, CC, GPL) then triple check that you and the copyright owner agree on definitions before using it in a commercial setting. The link from the article is sparse because they're not just "free", they're open source. Which as software guys you know is a big difference. Also, to the original poster: what's with the attitude? You're asking for fonts and yet you haven't even specified what kind your looking for, or for what purpose. It's almost like you're trying to prove a point about the lack of quality free fonts rather than ask a genuine question or meet a real need.