Fonts are indispensable tools for artists, graphic designers, and even programmers. Originating as typefaces during the use of printing presses, fonts come in all shapes, weights, slants, and ornamentations. Greatly influencing the feel and role of a piece or website, the first fonts involving various widths and designs of a base font evolved in the 1900’s. Today, digital graphic programs allow us to add to traditional fonts and design new ones incredibly quickly, greatly expanding design possibilities. Fonts with roots in all corners of art and design history are currently found online, including calligraphy, square pixel, handwritten, and street art fonts. The following 25 fonts are all free for personal and commercial use, and are sure to spice up your font library.
1. Sweetly Broken
Sweetly Broken is an elegantly simple handwriting font that doesn’t sacrifice legibility, or authentic look.
2. Urban Jungle
Urban Jungle is a thick sans-serif, graphic font. Where some graphic fonts look repetitive, the texture on this one keeps the letters looking fresh.
3. Clutchee
Clutchee is another graphic font with a smooth look. Whimsical, yet simple, this font can create a variety of looks.
4. Sybil Green
A playful font, Sybil Green is a good mix of childish and polished.
5. Slim Extreme
Slim Extreme is a great sans-serif option for a minimalist look.
6. Sick Capital Vice
Sick Capital Vice is a phenomenal urban font, complete with paint splatters.
7. Propaganda
A bold sans-serif font, Propaganda is particularly useful in graphic design projects.
8. Brushed
Brushed is another remarkable hand-written font that doesn’t sacrifice legibility.
9. Orange Juice
Orange Juice is another graphic font, this one mimics hand-drawn 3D letters. Another excellent font for graphic design settings.
10. Black Casper
Black Casper is designed to look like letters cut out of a magazine. A great font for many different applications.
11. Barcode
Doing just what the name says, Barcode effectively recreates the look of a UPC.
12. Wedgie
Wedgie is a playful 3D font, looking just like letters sitting on your paper.
13. Prisma
Prisma is a widely versatile, fun, retro font.
14. VTKS Animal 2
VTKS Animal is an impressive sans-serif font that recreates permanent marker strokes very nicely.
15. Jellyka Saint-Andrews Queen
Jellyka Saint-Andrews Queen is a detailed handwritten font, with nice, realistic strokes. Some cursive fonts don’t connect the letters together well enough, but this one succeeds admirably.
16. Scratch My Back
Scratch My Back is another nice handwritten font, this one recreating scribbled letters.
17. Friday Night Lights
Friday Night Lights is an impressive collegiate font, available in a variety of weights and textures.
18. Cinzel
Cinzel is an elegant serif font, also available in a variety of weights.
19. Toy Soldiers
This graphic font is a great option for industrial or army themed works.
20. Karmatic Arcade
When looking for a technological themed font, Karmatic Arcade is a good mix between pixellated and modern. This font also has a nice character width, something that can be rare with pixellated fonts.
21. Znikomit
Znikomit is another excellent minimalistic serif font with a clean, streamlined look.
22. Yellow Magician
Another fun font is Yellow Magician, which takes on graphic style from a few hundred years ago. This font also includes some graphic characters.
23. Chinese Takeaway
Another great themed font is Chinese Takeaway, which reproduces ink strokes quite well.
24. Transformers Movie Font
Based on the font used in the Transformer’s movies, Transformers is a crisp, futuristic font.
25. Gatsby
Gatsby is a classy sans-serif font, reminiscent of the 1920’s and 30’s. Another streamlined font that could be very useful in a wide variety of projects.
Featured photo credit: Ian Muttoo via flickr.com
