OneBrandSpace.com is continually searching for ways to make your life as a designer easier. That’s why we decided to get together a whole bunch of free font resources we’ve found on our travels around the web. There’s nothing worse than being in the middle of designing an awesome brand, then having to go searching to see whether the fonts you are using have the right licences. With these resources, we’ll tell you what they offer and what you need to look out for.
If you’re already using a font and want to know what the font licence means, our handy Confused about Font Licences? article will let you know what it all means. Remember, always double-check the licence before using any font. You can usually find this published online, with the font download and also in the readme file when you download it. If in doubt and you can’t find the license/author info, to be safe, don’t use it.
We’ll continue to update this article as and when we find new places to find great fonts, so check back soon!
Font Squirrel is a great resource for finding commercial free fonts that are professional looking. When asked whether all the fonts on their site are actually free they say “As far as we know, yes. Please read the license on each font before you use them to be sure…Some licences may allow more uses than others. We have tried our best to mark fonts for different common uses.” We’ve used this site a lot and found some great fonts on there.
Dafont.com has a wide variety of font styles. The key to finding the Free Commercial use fonts on there is: 1) Choose a font style from the choices in the red outlined box at the top of the page, then 2) There are choices underneath with boxes for preview and font sizes, right at the end of that row, click small link with arrow that says “more options”, then 3) Tick the “100% Free” and “Public domain/GPL/OFL” shown in the image above. There are a few on there that are unprofessional looking so if you are looking to put together a high end logo design for professional services such as accountants and property developers, then you may need to look a bit longer until you find something. It’s great for novelty and quirky fonts.
1001 Fonts has a “Free Commercial Use Fonts” category which has over 3,500 fonts for you to search through! The fonts are a mixture of both professional and novelty fonts.
Know of any other free commercial font resources? Share away in the comments below, we’re always eager to hear of other new and exciting resources that are out there that make our lives easier.
