Excellent Free Fonts

[jesse_the_k]

Font Squirrel is a great place to go when you're looking for a new font for a project, website, or reading application.

Like many font sites, you can browse by style like "serif" or helpful tags like "corporate" or by language like "Hebrew."

But you don't even have to search for "FREE" because all the fonts on the site are ready to download, most of them with webfonts as well as desktop, application, and ereader licenses. Many are as lovely as the ones I pay hundreds for at commercial foundries.

They also have an "almost free" section listing bargain fonts.

https://www.fontsquirrel.com

Comments

[luzula]

Do you often pay hundreds of dollars for fonts? *boggles*

Or maybe you do website work or something where that kind of thing is what you do--it is just not a part of my daily needs. : )

I wish I set prices in the font market

[jesse_the_k]

...but I don't begrudge foundries their due.

Font design is a very laborious process, and in many case, fonts are raw material in the creation of hundreds of products. A $4000 purchase for two font families* may seem high, but when it's used to convey all the information in a magazine for two decades, I think it's reasonable.

* A font family generally has six or eight "weights," (ultra-light, light, regular, book, medium, bold, ultra-bold, black) as well as styles like italic and bold, and "Pro" features like small caps, ligaments (ornamental letter joins), and so on.

I've personally only spent a few hundred: I've been a letter lover all my life, and I want the stuff I stare at all day to look nice!

Re: I wish I set prices in the font market

[luzula]

Oh, I understand that making fonts is probably a lot of work! It's just that the thought "maybe I'll buy a font today" is something that would never occur to me. But I appreciate that it must be an art and a subject of geekery, just one that I know nothing about!

Although now that I think of it, I do have a preferred font that I use when I write a document--it is Constantia.

Re: I wish I set prices in the font market

[jesse_the_k]

indeed, the suite of screen-optimized fonts beginning with the letter "C" was the very best thing about Windows 7.

I stole some of them from I don't know where and I've always been too cheap to buy them because I have Microsoft issues but it seems a good day to do it.