40+ Free Professional Fonts from Smashing Magazine

[Ralf Maximus]

Smashing presents a critique of over 40 free fonts, all professional quality.  Examples abound, so it's incredibly easy to spot the ones that really kern your descenders.  They even have some nifty monospaced fonts I haven't seen before.

Windows, Mac, and (sometimes) Linux formats are available, but since the article is a collection of links to the actual font makers, each has their own offerings.

[Lashiec]

There is some really cool stuff there I never saw before, thanks for the heads-up Ralf. It's nice to see you can use professional-looking fonts without spending a cent.

[justice]

Some amazing fonts.

[JennyB]

Overall the site looks a great resource for anyone involved in graphics or website design. 

[app103]

Do I really need more fonts?

hmmm...I already have 12,445 fonts!

no,no,no,no

* app103 resists the urge

no,no,no,no...YES!!

* app103 clicks to download more fonts 

[hamradio]

Added 35 more to my collection.

[Ralf Maximus]

Do I really need more fonts?

hmmm...I already have 12,445 fonts!

-app103 (November 15, 2007, 03:20 PM)

Gulp.  Twelve-thousand, four-hundred and forty five fonts?  Installed? 

How long does Office take to boot up?

I dare ya to use them all in a single document.  :-)

[app103]

Gulp.  Twelve-thousand, four-hundred and forty five fonts?  Installed? 

-Ralf Maximus (November 15, 2007, 07:20 PM)

oh those aren't installed at all, at least not in the normal way of having them in my Windows Fonts folder. That would be insane. I only have the necessary ones and a few I use often in there.

I used to just open the ones I wanted to use manually, and minimize them to get them to appear in the fonts list of an application I was using...till I won a copy of FontExpert in one of the software drawings here on this site. Now I use that when I need to view or temp install some fonts.

How long does Office take to boot up?

-Ralf Maximus (November 15, 2007, 07:20 PM)

Quite a long time, since I don't have it installed on this pc. 
I don't have much use for it and I prefer plain text.

I dare ya to use them all in a single document.  :-)

-Ralf Maximus (November 15, 2007, 07:20 PM)

Since I use them for graphics, that wouldn't be too hard to do...just very time consuming. 


40+ Free Professional Fonts from Smashing Magazine

[Ralf Maximus]

oh those aren't installed at all, at least not in the normal way of having them in my Windows Fonts folder. That would be insane.

-app103 (November 15, 2007, 08:12 PM)

Indeed.  That's why I wondering.  Come to think of it, what *is* the upper limit?  I imagine more than a few hundred would bring Windows to its knees.

I do what you do but on a much smaller scale: I have a few thousand fonts stashed away and use FontExplorer to browse/install the ones I need for any particular project.

My favorite "normal" typeface is Nubian.  I like the whimsical lowercase "g" and the descenders on the numerics.

[nontroppo]

I was going to link to that, thanks Ralf.

Fontin(Sans) is just wonderful, kerned with care and full of Opentype goodness. Most of the fonts by Jos Buivenga are equally carefully crafted. As a pixel font, unibody is unique, and the foundary that makes it, Underware, also make my favorite book font, Dolly:

http://www.underware...index.php3?id1=fonts

As a typographical aside, I was recently shocked that Vista's fonts (which are realy nice), are still so neanderthal - how can anyone that cares about typography continue to ignore opentype. But then, Windows typographical technology is still stuck in the dark ages...

As a launcher aside linked to that list, Enso uses Gentium for its UI typeface, and elegantly lovely it looks too. Gentium is just great, a flexible multilingual humanist renaissance font. Day serif on that list is also great, keeping the imperfections from the original 15th century version in tact unlike more modern digital Garamonds.

[tomos]

Smashing presents a critique of over 40 free fonts, all professional quality.  Examples abound, so it's incredibly easy to spot the ones that really kern your descenders.

-Ralf Maximus (November 15, 2007, 09:22 AM)

I came across this page again today via google
and thought -
that looks very familiar....

Recently I’ve been browsing through the Net searching for the best license-free fonts which would fit as a serious heading for a serious online-presentation...

25 Best Free Quality Fonts

-hamradio (March 20, 2007, 10:31 PM)

more bleeding ripoffs I was thinking ... until I saw it's from the same author

they really are a super collection
and there's a bitmap list which I havent really loooked at..

15 Best License-Free Pixel Fonts Some weeks ago I have written about 25 Best License-Free Quality fonts ... I decided to publish an article about the best quality pixel fonts: working on my last project (it’s not online yet), I needed something serious, official, good-looking and readable. The results can be found below. Actually, pixel fonts can be used in every project and fulfil different purposes. I prefer to use them for small buttons such as “sign-up” or “log-in” images together with marvellous FamFamFam Icons which can breathe a new life in a “too” official and serious text presentation. Nevertheless, pixel fonts are still a trend, so, i.e., most “Creativity-Inspiraion-Idea-Generation”-sites

(images are very small actually not sure when this was written - have screen resolutions gone too high for them )

[tomos]

Some new free fonts found by Smashing Magazine:

Beautiful New Free Fonts For Your Designs August 7th, 2009

Beautiful High-Quality Free Fonts For Your Designs June 5th, 2009

and if you just want to root around there:
Posts Tagged ‘typography’

[tomos]

New article (18th Jan 2010)
25 New High Quality Free Fonts

40+ Free Professional Fonts from Smashing Magazine

"PT Sans, FF Celeste Sans Offc Black, Secca STD, Cantarell and many other regular and experimental high-quality free fonts."
- some nice experimental stuff all right

40+ Free Professional Fonts from Smashing Magazine

[tomos]

Another 20 "Fresh High Quality Free Fonts"  (from May 11th, 2010)
a mixed bunch - !! not in quality, but in style


http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/05/11/20-fresh-high-quality-free-fonts/

[Eóin]

Not related to Smashing Magazine, but definitly related to free fonts, here's a link I came across recently:

6700 Free And Redistributable Fonts For Linux (All TTFs so actually for Windows and others too).