The fonts you use can make or break your design. Different styles can create different impressions of your business, but if you lack the confidence and experience to choose anything other than the standard system fonts like Arial and Times, then your business could end up looking a bit bland.
But where can you find better fonts?
This post was first published in 2014 and I’ve updated it with some handy new places to find awesome fonts.
There are many type foundries and marketplaces to choose from. The quality, styles and prices of fonts can vary wildly between them so today I’m going to share some of my favourite places to find great free or inexpensive fonts.
First a quick note on font licensing: free fonts are great but some fonts are free only for personal use, meaning you can use them to make a birthday card to give to your mum, but you can’t use them to create your company’s logo. Always look for fonts that are ok for commercial use.
Any links marked with an asterisk (*) are affiliate links, which means if you buy through them I might get a small commission (that will probably be spent on pretty fonts). This is at no extra cost to you and I only share products and services that I use and love.
Now let’s get started!
1. Font Squirrel
Font Squirrel has a great selection of fonts that are all free for commercial use, which means they are fine to use for your business. They’re all hand-picked so you can trust the quality, and you can search for fonts by style, popularity, and type of usage allowed – desktop, websites, ebooks etc.
You might also like: How to install a font
2. Google Fonts
Google Fonts is a great resource, full of free fonts that you can either download and use on your computer. Or grab a bit of code and easily use them on your website – plus there’s a WordPress plugin to help with that 😉
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3. Creative Market
Creative Market* has some really awesome fonts that are totally affordable. Prices tend to be around $10 – $20 for a font family, plus you can often snap up bundles of fonts as designers add special offers. Don’t forget to sign up to the Creative Market newsletter as each Monday you get access to free products, including things like fonts, WordPress themes and graphics.
4. GraphicRiver
GraphicRiver* is a marketplace selling fonts as well as inexpensive stock graphics, vectors and templates. You should also regularly check out their “Free File of the Month” section in case they’re offering fonts there.
5. Behance
Behance is a showcase site for designers, photographers and other creatives. Search the site for “font” and as well as browsing through some awesome portfolios, you can find plenty of fonts – both free ones and pretty affordable premium ones.
6. Lost Type Co-op
Lost Type Co-op is a collaborative type foundry selling quality fonts from a variety of designers. Fonts can be bought on a “pay what you want” basis for personal use and a commercial license can be bought pretty cheaply. A lot of the fonts have a retro or vintage feel to them so this can be a brilliant place to pick up an inexpensive font full of character. As a bonus, 100% of the fee goes directly to the font designer!
7. DesignCuts
DesignCuts is a curated marketplace of gorgeous design goodies. You can find patterns, textures and brushes, and of course, fonts. You can buy products individually, or buy more than one and get a discount. And they regularly offer bundles of products with massive savings.
8. MyFonts
MyFonts has a huge collection of fonts, ranging from very affordable to very expensive, so it’s worth searching through the site. They also offer some fonts for free and have an incredibly useful font identification tool called “What the Font.”
So there you have 8 places to find the perfect font for your design. If you come across any other great sites please feel free to share them in the comments.
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