36 Fonts tips, tutorials, techniques & resources
101 Awesome Downloadable Fonts for Designers
"Despite its prominence, Arial and other de-facto fonts just aren’t attractive enough for most designers. Fortunately, there are a number of foundries that create some truly impressive fonts, and are happy to share them with others. We’ve highlighted 101 of them here, but keep in mind that many request that you provide credit or at least ask for permission for commercial use."
Design Matters: Fonts
"Most of us are familiar with fonts, as far as using Arial for headings and Times New Roman for body copy. But there is so much more to fonts than that. In this section, I’ll try and explain all the different options related to fonts, from classifications (yuck! I know), to how best to use them on screen, and in print."
19 More Free Quality Fonts
"Here are the most beautiful fonts, created by the open-source community and free for personal, academic and (sometimes) commercial use."
My Favorite Free Fonts
15 Best License-Free Pixel Fonts
"So, now let’s take a look what the web-community has to offer for those looking for professional license-free pixelfonts."
OpenType
"The two main benefits of the OpenType format are its cross-platform compatibility (the same font file works on Macintosh and Windows computers), and its ability to support widely expanded character sets and layout features, which provide richer linguistic support and advanced typographic control."
Glossary of typography terms
Classifying Type
A glossary of typographic terms
"This section provides a small glossary of terms frequently used in the type world."
Expand Your Web Typography
"Most web designers know the common web-safe fonts, nearly all serif based sites are showcasing Georgia due to the inbred gag reaction most designers have to using Times because of its “default” status on the majority of computers."
It's About Legibility
"Typographic clarity comes in two flavors: legibility and readability. What’s the difference? Legibility is a function of typeface design. It’s an informal measure of how easy it is to distinguish one letter from another in a particular typeface. Readability, on the other hand, is dependent upon how the typeface is used. Readability is about typography. It is a gauge of how easily words, phrases and blocks of copy can be read."
Working with a limited font set on the web
"Typography and the web have never seen eye to eye - largely thanks to the limited type rendering capabilities of computers at the dawn of the web. Coupled with the academic (and non-design-oriented) bias of sites from this time, we're left with a legacy of a poor choice of fonts."
Typography: serif vs. sans-serif
"For years now, we've more or less accepted the unwritten rule of typography on the web: sans-serif is good for small(er) type on screens, whereas serif is good for such type on paper. Serif fonts for headings work well either way. But does this still apply? What about usability and, to an extent, accessibility? Is it time to seriously reconsider this?"
Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Typeface
"Those thousands of typefaces are still out there, but my recovery has required that I become more discriminating and come up with some answers to this seemingly simple question: why choose a particular typeface? Here are thirteen reasons."
25 Best Free Quality Fonts
"I’ve decided to create the Top 20 Best Free Quality Fonts, which are likely to be used rather for official, serious presentations (such as business sites) than a colourful teenager’s homepage."
13 typefaces every graphic designer needs
"With thousands of different typefaces on offer, it’s vital to have a select few that act as pillars in your collection. The following 13 typefaces (shown in alphabetical order) are ones that I believe every graphic designer should be familiar with."
Great Fonts for Web 2.0
"Fonts are an essential part of design - but there are thousands of fonts out there, so knowing which ones to use can be quite daunting. Here's a roundup of some fonts that have found popularity recently."
Most Popular Free Quality Fonts
60 Brilliant Typefaces For Corporate Design
"Below you’ll find over 60 first-class typefaces for corporate design. Please notice that they are not free; however, we’ve focused on typefaces which are definitely worth spending money on. So which typefaces are “bulletproof”? What fonts can be used effectively in almost every Corporate Design? And what are the options for unique, but still incredibly beautiful typefaces? Let’s find out."
12 Fantastically Free Graffiti Fonts
"Graffiti fonts are one of the most sought after free fonts available online, so below you will find a great collection of popular free graffiti fonts. All of the fonts can be downloaded for free from the great free font site dafont.com."
Common fonts to all versions of Windows & Mac equivalents
"Here you can find the list with the standard set of fonts common to all versions of Windows and their Mac substitutes, referred sometimes as "browser safe fonts". This is the reference I use when making web pages and I expect you will find it useful too."
Grunge Style In Modern Web Design
"Below we’ve collected everything you would ever need for a perfect design in a grunge style — design examples, free fonts, icons, textures, brushes and even few tutorials."
Our Favorite Typefaces of 2007
"Typographica’s fourth annual review showcases the best in new typeface design. Twenty-five of the world’s brightest graphic and type designers selected their favorite font releases of the year."
Dingbats Roundup: 16 Incredibly Detailed, Useful (and free) Dingbat Fonts
"Personally, I love dingbats because (most of the time) I convert them to vectors in Illustrator and use them as very large elements in some cases. Here are some dingbat fonts that I thought you might enjoy."
DaFont
"Archive of freely downloadable fonts. Browse by alphabetical listing, by style, by author or by popularity."
The Funkiest Ampersands You Have Ever Seen
"Looking through large collections of typefaces highlights some real creative representations of the ampersand, many of which revert back to the traditional method of displaying the word ‘et’, others head for a more abstract approach. Here is a collection of possibly the funkiest ampersands you have ever seen!"
30 Fonts That ALL Designers Must Own
"There are 15 serif fonts and 15 sans-serif fonts. These fonts will last you your whole career! A brief description of what each font is best suited for is provided however are not limited to this."
35 Designers x 5 Questions
"35 designers. 5 questions. 5 precise answers. Result: 175 professional suggestions, tips and ideas from some of the best web-developers all around the world."
40+ Excellent Freefonts For Professional Design
"In this article we'd like to present an overview of over 40 excellent free fonts you might use for your professional designs in 2008."
Screw Paying: The 10 Free Font Websites Every Designer Should Save
"These leading free font sites allow you to keep your wallet in your pocket and still have an impressive arsenal of fonts at your disposal."
Anivers
"The name Anivers – as you might have guessed – is derived from the word anniversary. Anivers celebrates the anniversary of Smashing Magazine."
Delicious
"Special attention was given to character spacing to obtain a homogenic appearance. With its relatively large x-height the Delicious can be used for text in smaller point sizes."
Fontin
"The Fontin is designed to be used at small sizes. The color is darkish, the spacing loose and the x-height tall."
Fertigo
"With its auto-ligatures, a complete character set and many other unknown features it can be hard to resist."
Tallys
"Tallys is a font that is one degree slanted and has large caps, a small x-height and long ascenders."
Diavlo
"Diavlo is a free font that contains 5 weights: Light, Book, Medium, Bold and Black."