

Ask HN:  Where to find good free fonts? - jraines

The site Mark Pilgrim linked to in his Fuck the Foundries article had just about fuck-all on it, and you have to click through from the main listings to see the fonts, which seems like an idiotic design choice for a fonts aggregation site.<p>So where can one find these alleged just-as-good or even nearly-as-good free fonts?  Googling "free fonts" is like visiting Internet Archive pages.
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dot
I tend to use Dafont.com. It's free, fast and works really well.

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ja2ke
agreed dafont is a great resource. it's one of the few free font sites which
is actually well thought out (including things like letting you filter whether
or not a font set includes just English language characters, accent characters
for EFIGS (english/french/italian/german/spanish), or a full character set,
and is generally more above board than most free font sites.

Also -- I like that the "Fuck the Foundaries" article is intended to be viewed
in Gill Sans.

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bendtheblock
Check my delicious bookmarks, I have a few stored for precisely this:
[http://delicious.com/search?context=userposts&p=fonts...](http://delicious.com/search?context=userposts&p=fonts&lc=1&u=iveheardpeoplesayit)

IMHO the best in that list is probably: [http://sixrevisions.com/graphics-
design/45-beautiful-free-fo...](http://sixrevisions.com/graphics-
design/45-beautiful-free-fonts-for-modern-design-trends/)

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tptacek
Be careful; there's been some confusion about which fonts are actually free in
the past. For instance, people were salivating over Olsen's "Union", which was
indeed published "for free" on a Danish government website --- but was only
licensed for use by the Danish government. (I think you can buy it from
FontFont).

A lot of "high quality" free fonts are also student projects, and can actually
be pretty raw setting lots of type.

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ZeroGravitas
Beware! Most "free" fonts are not licensed for use within a web page via
@font-face.

This is a new technology which most font designers probably haven't heard of
and taken account of in their licencing. Crucially it involves putting the
actual font on a public web server for users to download.

I followed a random link posted here and on checking the licence on a "free"
font found this:

"the consumer may use Harold's Fonts in any way EXCEPT redistribution of the
digital font itself in any form."

As with software, if they're not using a recognised licence (SIL OFL, CC, GPL)
then triple check that you and the copyright owner agree on definitions before
using it in a commercial setting.

The link from the article is sparse because they're not just "free", they're
open source. Which as software guys you know is a big difference.

Also, to the original poster: what's with the attitude? You're asking for
fonts and yet you haven't even specified what kind your looking for, or for
what purpose. It's almost like you're trying to prove a point about the lack
of quality free fonts rather than ask a genuine question or meet a real need.

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callahad
Exljbris: <http://www.josbuivenga.demon.nl/>

Make sure you read the licenses; most just require an attribution link if
embedded.

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GVRV
[http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/2009/04/24/30-sites-for-
fanta...](http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/2009/04/24/30-sites-for-fantastic-
free-fonts/)

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mstefff
check smashingmagazine.com for entries

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jraines
This has been my go-to first look in the past, and I've found some good ones
that I've used there. But it's a bit limited and some of the links are now
outdated (from their Free Fonts of the Week/Month series)

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mindhacker
<http://www.urbanfonts.com/free-fonts.htm>

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critke
Whatever you do, be careful. You can catch some nasty viruses looking for free
fonts if you're not careful.

