
Taking a second look at free fonts - thefutureisfake
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2014/03/12/taking-a-second-look-at-free-fonts/
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joveian
My favorite is still DejaVu (I mostly use the Bistream Vera portion) that
strangely the article doesn't even mention. I like it enough and hate the way
that most websites use fonts enough that I just use it for everything (I use
it under urxvt also). I also set a minimum font size wich breaks a lot of
things but is still a net benefit IMO. [http://dejavu-
fonts.org](http://dejavu-fonts.org)

~~~
pawelk
After every HN article about the next best programming font I go back to
DejaVu Sans Mono, so you may be on to something here.

~~~
kendalk
I used DejaVu Sans Mono until Ubuntu released their Ubuntu Fonts. Ubuntu Mono
is a nice programming font! Sorry to tempt you...

The font grass is always greener in the next pasture. :)

~~~
jebblue
Same here, always sought out DejaVu fonts until Canonical ? came out with the
Ubuntu font. Now I literally even use it on Windows, not my preference to use
Windows but Ubuntu fonts and Cygwin make the limited time I have to spend on
it bearable.

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atulagarwal
On a quick read, the article doesn't talk about the licensing for the free
fonts. Several free fonts I've liked are free for personal projects or
websites, but are chargeable for commercial projects - and one should be
careful about selecting them.

Secondly, fonts are very easy to pirate. The commerical fonts (eg. TypeKit
fonts) can be copied and reused with a bit of HTML+CSS knowledge. Anyone know
of a way to enforce the font licenses?

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bitwize
We need a font DRM standard for the web! Quickly, to the W3C!

~~~
thefutureisfake
Ha!

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johnvschmitt
It really varies widely depending on how you use fonts:

Fonts for PRINTING: You need tons of sizes, really high definitions, as it can
be printed 4" high at 300dpi. 3MB for a TTF? OK.

Fonts for iPad Games: You need TINY file size. <200KB, & won't need as high-
res at all, esp. variations. You're fighting hard against the size for your
game download, to get under the 50MB limit for mobile vs. wifi-only with most
US carriers.

Fonts for Web: You need to ensure browser compatibility, size (for download
times, which kill UX if it's slow). Too often, devs forget their homepage
assets are cached, & don't see the critical first time user experience with
their site as slow.)

~~~
mistercow
>Too often, devs forget their homepage assets are cached, & don't see the
critical first time user experience with their site as slow.)

I always consider running PageSpeed Insights to be a mandatory final step
before making any significant change (that is, anything that loads new assets)
live. That helps to avoid this issue.

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Vaskivo
Typefaces are a new passion of mine.

Wanting to start a blog, one of the things I focused were the presentation. I
wanted something medium and svbtle like (big and serifed body typeface, clean
and responsive design). I found here in HN the site [1] . It is a great read,
very newbie friendly and sparked my love for typefaces. While the author, like
the OP's writer, mostly scorns free fonts, it gives a lot of insights on the
"other stuff" like line height and width, when to use bolds and italics and
smallcaps.

Later I found out about google fonts and lost hours in there. I'm a big fan of
serif typefaces. My favourites are Vollkorn, Merriweather, and Gentium Book
Basic. I'm in love with Vollkorn, but I find that it's hard to pair it with
others when used in the body.

For a monospace typeface, either for display or programming I use DejaVu Sans
Mono everywhere.

I have a certain fascination for slab-serifs, but I dislike most os the
typefaces I find, or can't pair it correctly with other.

I'm still procrestinating, and my blog keeps being delayed, but here's a
sample of it, if you want to take a look: [2]

It was made with pelican and I adapted the theme "storm". You can check it
here [3]

If you want some suggestions of font combinations, my "experiments" can be
found in this source file: [4]

I'm still learning a lot (what the hell is a "humanist typeface"?), but I find
it a lot of fun opening a website and going to the source to see the typefaces
used.

[1] [http://practicaltypography.com/](http://practicaltypography.com/) [2]
[http://web.ist.utl.pt/~ist155461/blog/posts/2013/Jan/25/moai...](http://web.ist.utl.pt/~ist155461/blog/posts/2013/Jan/25/moai-01/)
[3] [https://github.com/Vaskivo/v-storm](https://github.com/Vaskivo/v-storm)
[4] [https://github.com/Vaskivo/v-storm](https://github.com/Vaskivo/v-storm)

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theandrewbailey
On my blog, I use Noto Sans for text and Questrial for headings. On the rare
occasion that I require a monospace font (anywhere, blog, programming or
otherwise), I go for Cousine.

[http://www.google.com/fonts/specimen/Noto+Sans](http://www.google.com/fonts/specimen/Noto+Sans)

[http://www.google.com/fonts/specimen/Questrial](http://www.google.com/fonts/specimen/Questrial)

[http://www.google.com/fonts/specimen/Cousine](http://www.google.com/fonts/specimen/Cousine)

[http://theandrewbailey.com/](http://theandrewbailey.com/)

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stevejohnson
I paired Playfair with Lato for my personal site. I'm happy with the results,
particularly given that my web site is pretty much just unadorned text.

[http://steveasleep.com/](http://steveasleep.com/)

~~~
Noxchi
It looks kind of cluttered, like you're using too many fonts. I would limit
where you use the serifed font to mainly the headline.

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kendalk
I am working on a MVP and am going for an elegant look. I have the <p> in
Georgia 22px but would like something a little less common. Georgia is a nice
font but it is everywhere.

My current main fonts are:

    
    
          p { font-family: Georgia, Palatino, "Palatino Linotype", Times, "Times New Roman", serif; 
              font-size: 22px; }
    
          h2 { font-family: "Open Sans", "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; 
              font-size: 22px; }
    

Has anyone found a font combination with an elegant, "classical" look?

Edited: for spacing

~~~
leephillips
Have a look at this book:

[http://practicaltypography.com/](http://practicaltypography.com/)

~~~
ScottWhigham
But it says in the opening salvo, "The fastest, eas­i­est, and most vis­i­ble
im­prove­ment you can make to your ty­pog­ra­phy is to ig­nore the fonts that
came free with your com­put­er... and buy a pro­fes­sion­al font". Not quite
"in the spirit" of the OP!

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CGudapati
I was a typesetter for sometime(never released a typeface officially) and
during another recent discussion on typefaces, I heard about source code pro.
I swear I told many people that consolas is the best mono-space font. But
source-code pro changed it. It became my main coding font now and it is simply
amazing.

I request everyone to try it.

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danieltillett
Do you have a link?

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pseut
It was announced here: [http://blogs.adobe.com/typblography/2012/09/source-
code-pro....](http://blogs.adobe.com/typblography/2012/09/source-code-
pro.html)

the last paragraph of that post has links for the source, web fonts, etc.

DL link (from sourceforge):
[http://sourceforge.net/projects/sourcecodepro.adobe/files/la...](http://sourceforge.net/projects/sourcecodepro.adobe/files/latest/download)

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elwell
We went with the free version of Sofia Pro for our event titles/etc. Seems to
display more smoothly than most free fonts.

[http://wesawit.com/events/imagine-dragons-at-the-staples-
cen...](http://wesawit.com/events/imagine-dragons-at-the-staples-
center-2014-02-25-5181b316218dd)

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pom
I have been digging Karla recently and was pleased to see it mentioned. A few
that I didn’t know look interesting as well.

