Free fonts are highly useful among designers. The typography trends keep changing with time, and people are always excited to use the most creative ones. You will find many reliable resources online to download the latest fonts that can make your projects truly impressive. While some of these resources offer a paid collection of fonts, many are available for free.
Before we talk about the best resources from where you can download free fonts, it is important to know about the latest typography trends and styles in the market. Many of these are suitable for personal projects; however, many others can be used for commercial applications to impress clients.
Personal Vs. Commercial Use Fonts
Futuristic, modern fonts can help you lead an impressive graphic design and web design project. Moreover, if you design a logo, a creative font can create a remarkable appeal for the brand in the competitive market. There are generally two types of licenses: personal use license and commercial use license. The first category includes fonts suitable for student projects, wedding invitations, personal blogs, or other creative projects. On the other side, commercial-use fonts are for commercial purposes: brochures, advertisements, logos, merchandise, business websites, portfolio sites, etc.
Users also should be aware of the free-to-use or licensed fonts. Free-to-download fonts are not always free to use as well. Note that you do not buy fonts; instead, you license them for a particular use. It can be to install them on your computer, desktop publishing, embedding on apps, installing on web servers. Many foundries also provide access to trial fonts that enable users to try typefaces with limited capabilities. However, if you are willing to use it for an actual commercial project, you may need to get the license first.
Best Inventories for Free Fonts
The internet world can provide you with a handful of attractive and free font collections. However, choosing the most trusted inventories to download free fonts from is always good for your projects.
Google Fonts
Google Fonts platform has been a game-changer in the design and development fields since 2016. Owned by Google and distributed by SkyFonts and Adobe, Google Fonts is one of the most popular open-source directories containing over 800 fancy and attractive fonts. The Google Font’s website has a user-friendly UI that allows reviewing fonts by typing and categorizing by style and language.
FontSquirrel
FontSquirrel also provides fonts for commercial use, free of charge. They do not guarantee that the license is for commercial use, but they invest great effort to validate fonts offered for download from their site.
Font Squirrel offers fonts download directly from the website for some fonts, offsite downloads for others. You should carefully read the license, terms, and conditions before moving ahead. These open-source directories allow the use of fonts for commercial, non-commercial, and personal projects as well.
FontsSquirrel also has a few nice features, such as a font generator that allows you to upload regular font file and download it in web font format.
It also has the font identifier that allows you to upload an image of text and identify the font used on the image or find similar fonts.
There are other tools such as this online, but most present only paid fonts (and, of course, offer them for sale); FontSquirrel identifies the most similar ones, even if they are free.
1001Fonts
1001 font website offers above 16,000 font families, categorized by styles and dates added. Each font has an indicator that shows whether it is free for commercial or for personal use. Some of the non-commercial fonts allow donation to the author, and by that, they get the privilege of commercial use. In these cases, you can find instructions and PayPal addresses on the fonts’ pages.
DaFont
DaFont is one of the most trusted sources for downloading the latest collection of fonts, and that too for free. You can initiate a search for fonts by alphabetical listing, by author name, by popularity, or by style as well.
Most of the fonts have the type of license mentioned above the download button. It is just an indicator, and some fonts do not have this indicator at all. Therefore, reading each license before using a font downloaded from the DaFont website is recommended.
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