Getting Graphic Design Fonts to Look Like Ads

The 86 best free fonts for designers

Best free fonts: Streusel Kuchen
(Image credit: Kellie Jane Studio)

The best free fonts can really add to your creative arsenal, offering a rich variety of types for all kinds of projects, from branding to graphic design and personal work. Of course, there are many not so great free fonts out there, and it takes a lot of time and effort to sift through different websites and platforms to find the kind of font you're looking for. We've done just that to make things easier for you, compiling an extensive list of the best free fonts you can find.

We've divided the free fonts below into eight categories to make it easier to find what you're looking for. You can use the quick links to jump straight to the style you're after, from serifs and san serifs to retro fonts and graffiti. The fonts listed are all available immediately without paying a penny (in some cases you might need to provide your email address). Just note that although many are free for both personal and commercial use, some are free fonts for personal use only. We've mentioned the conditions for each at the time of publication, but always double-check the terms because permissions can change.

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For a great range of fonts available at the touch of a button, we recommend checking out MyFonts, which has both paid for and free fonts. See below for a direct link to MyFonts, or scroll down for our full list of the best free fonts.

If you're sure how to use your font once you've got it, see our post on how to add fonts in Photoshop. We also have lists of the best free retro fonts and free script fonts, while our guide to font design offers tips for how to create your own. We also have advice on font pairings and on how to use font terminology accurately in our piece on font vs typeface.

The best free fonts: Serif fonts

01. Young Serif

best free fonts: Young Serif

Young Serif offers heavy old-style letterforms with bracketed serifs (Image credit: Uplaod)
  • Free for personal and commercial use
  • Get Young Serif from NoirBlancRouge

Available in a single, medium weight, Young Serif consists of 348 glyphs, supporting many different languages. It offers heavy old-style letterforms with bracketed serifs, taking its initial inspiration from fonts like Plantin Infant or ITC Italian Old Style. Some of the letters have interesting axis tilts – see the lowercase E, and the lowercase b and f have generous rounded curves. This free font was created by Bastien Sozeau and originally distributed by the creative studio Uplaod. It's open source, licensed under the SIL Open Font License, which allows the fonts to be used, modified and redistributed freely as long as they're not sold themselves.

02. Cormorant

Best free fonts: Photo of cormorant

Add a touch of class to your design with this most elegant of free fonts (Image credit: Catharsis Fonts)
  • Free for personal and commercial use
  • Get Cormorant from Google Fonts

Developed by Christian Thalmann of Catharsis Fonts, Cormorant is one of the most elegantly formal of free fonts. It's inspired by the 16th-century typefaces of Claude Garamont, but it's by no means derivative. Indeed, most glyphs have been drawn from scratch, and strike a lovely balance between formality and expressiveness. This open source display font comprises 45 font files spanning nine visual styles and five weights.

03. Alegreya

Best free fonts: Alegreya

Alegreya is one of the best fonts for long text passages (Image credit: Juan Pablo del Peral )
  • Free for personal and commercial use
  • Get Alegreya from Google Fonts

There aren't so many great free fonts created for specific purposes, but here's a strong exception. Alegreya is an award-winning typeface by Argentinian designer Juan Pablo del Peral crafted with book design in mind. With a dynamic and varied rhythm aimed at facilitating the reading of long texts, it provides a fresh and approachable take on the calligraphic style.

04. Restora

Best free fonts: Sample of Restora

Restora is one of the best free fonts for bringing your editorial designs to life (Image credit: Nasir Udin)
  • Free for personal and commercial use
  • Get Restora from pixelsurplus.com

In our experience, the best free fonts take a classic style and give it a twist, and here's a great example. Designed by Nasir Udin, Restora offers a masterful combination of bright and friendly letterforms and old-style embellishment. This versatile font is suitable for book covers, editorial text, branding and more. The free version includes Restora Extra Light & Restora Thin Italic.

05. Emberly

Best free fonts: Sample of Emberly

Emberly is ideally suited to fashion-related design projects (Image credit: Rajesh Rajput)
  • Free for personal and commercial use
  • Get Emberly from Rajesh Rajput on Gumroad

Emberly is another free font that feels both modern and classic. Inspired by the Didone style, this display font was created by Rajesh Rajput. It's also available as a variable font, and would be a great option for a wide range of design projects, including logos, headlines, magazine covers and posters.

06. Rude

Best free fonts: Sample of Rude

Rude is one of the most beautiful free fonts we've seen in a long while (Image credit: Masha Chuprova)
  • Free for personal and commercial use
  • Get Rude from pixelsurplus.com

The best fonts feel both familiar and original, and this beautifully handcrafted serif achieves that. Created by Masha Chuprova, Rude is ideal for logos, titles, magazines, headlines, apparel, posters and more.

07. Grenze

Best free fonts: Sample of Grenze

Grenze is as punchy as it is readable (Image credit: Renata Polastri/Omnibus-Type)
  • Free for personal and commercial use
  • Get Grenze from Omnibus-Type

Inspired by Roman and blackletter font styles, Grenze offers serious visual punch without sacrificing readability. It was created by Renata Polastri and Omnibus-Type as a font for magazines, but it would work for a far wider range of design uses too.

08. Libertinus Serif

Best free fonts: Sample of Libertinus

Libertinus is a classic-looking free font that can really lift your projects (Image credit: Font Squirrel)
  • Free for personal and commercial use
  • Get Libertinus from Font Squirrel

Looking for the best free font to add a touch of class to your project? Libertinus is a classic-looking serif that comes in 14 styles. It's a fork of the Linux Libertine and Linux Biolinum fonts that address some of the bugs in those designs. It's available under the SIL Open Font Licence.

09. Free Saint George Stencil Font

Best free fonts: Sample of Free Saint George stencil font

Free fonts needn't be boring! Check out this fun and playful serif based on Georgia (Image credit: Vedran Vaskovic)
  • Free for personal and commercial use
  • Get Saint George from Behance

Free Saint George Stencil Font is an experimental font by Vedran Vaskovic inspired by the Christian story of Saint George, and based on the classic font Georgia. It's one of the best free fonts to add a sense of energy and fun to your designs thanks to its wild and playful stencil shapes.

10. Colus

Best free fonts: Sample of Colus

Colus is one of the best free fonts for headlines (Image credit: Stan Partalev on Font Fabric)
  • Free for personal use
  • Get Colus from fontfabric.com

Colus is a free display font inspired by carved letter inscriptions in stone and wood. It has a classical, almost noble appearance, which makes it great for creating imposing headlines, for adding a touch of class to logos or for introducing sophistication to poster designs.

11. Amagro

Best free fonts: Amagro

If you're looking for all-caps serifs, check out Amagro (Image credit: Fabio Servolo)
  • Free for personal and commercial use
  • Get Amagro from Font Squirrel

Amagro is an all caps serif typeface from Fabio Servolo. It has strong angular serifs that lend themselves to imposing headlines. A classy ampersand and neat easy-to-read numerics make it ideal for designs that need to get noticed.

12. Poly

Best free fonts: Sample of Poly

Poly is legible on the web even at smaller sizes (Image credit: Nicolás Silva)
  • Free for personal and commercial use
  • Get Poly from Font Squirrel

Poly is a medium-contrast serif font for web use. It was designed by Nicolás Silva to offer better legibility than other web serifs, even at smaller point sizes. It achieves this through a vertical emphasis, using short ascenders and a very high x-height for greater clarity.

13. Bitter

Best free fonts: Sample of Bitter

Bitter is a serif font designed to work well on screens (Image credit: Huerta Tipográfica)
  • Free for personal and commercial use
  • Get Bitter from huertatipografica.com

Sans-serif fonts tend to work better for screen use, but this free slab serif typeface has been designed specifically to provide a comfortable reading experience on screens. Bitter was designed by Sol Matas. It's available through Argentinian type collaborative Huerta Tipográfica.

14. Playfair Display

Best free fonts: Sample of Playfair

This free font family is an open source project (Image credit: Claus Eggers Sørensen/Font Squirrel)
  • Free for personal and commercial use
  • Get Playfair Display from Font Squirrel

Designed by Claus Eggers Sørensen, this free display font takes inspiration from the 18th century Enlightenment and the work of John Baskerville. Its high-contrast letterforms have delicate hairlines, reflecting the rise of pointed steel pens, which took over from broad nib quills during the period. Functionally and stylistically it can be accompanied by Georgia for body text.

15. Lora

Best free fonts: Sample of Lora

Brushed curves contrast with driving serifs in this free font (Image credit: Cyreal/Font Squirrel)
  • Free for personal and commercial use
  • Get Lora from Font Squirrel

Lora was originally designed for type foundry Cyreal in 2011, with a Cyrillic extension added in 2013. Brushed curves contrast with driving serifs for a well-balanced, contemporary feel. Although technically optimised for use on the web, it's one of the best fonts for print projects too. It comes in four styles.

16. Butler

Image 1 of 2

Free font Butler brings a sense of modernism to the serif

Free font Butler brings a sense of modernism to the serif

Image 2 of 2

  • Free for personal and commercial use
  • Get Butler from Fabian De Smet

Inspired by both Dala Floda and the Bodoni family, Butler is a popular free font designed by Fabian De Smet. His aim was to add some modernism by working on the curves of classical serif fonts and adding an extra stencil family. He suggests Butler would work well for "posters, very big titles, books and fancy stuff".

17. Crimson Text

Best free fonts: Sample of Crimson

Crimson Text is a free font family inspired by old-time book typefaces (Image credit: Sebastian Kosch)
  • Free for personal and commercial use
  • Get Crimson Text from Font Squirrel

Not many free fonts are created specifically for book production, but here's a great exception, inspired by old-time, Garamond-esque book typefaces. Crimson Text is the work of German-born, Toronto-based designer Sebastian Kosch, who says he was influenced by the work of Jan Tschichold, Robert Slimbach and Jonathan Hoefler. It's a favourite free font of Taylor Palmer, a senior UX designer based in Utah, USA. "Crimson is a sophisticated serif that makes a nice alternative to traditional Garamond-esque typefaces," he says. "It also has a very expressive italic, which pairs nicely with strong, geometric sans-serifs like Futura or Avenir."

18. Aleo

Best free fonts: Sample of Aleo

Aleo is one of those rare free fonts that perfectly balances personality with legibility (Image credit: Graphic Pear)
  • Free for personal and commercial use
  • Get Aleo from Graphic Pear

Aleo has semi-rounded details and a sleek structure, creating a strong sense of personality while maintaining balance with a good level of legibility. This family of free fonts was designed by Alessio Laiso, a designer at IBM Dublin, as the slab serif companion to Lato.

19. Libre Baskerville

Best free fonts: Sample of Libre Baskerville

Free font Libre Baskerville is optimised for body text on screen (Image credit: Impallari Type)
  • Free for personal and commercial use
  • Get Libre Baskerville from Google Fonts

Libre Baskerville is a web font optimised for body text (typically 16px). It's based on the American Type Founder's Baskerville from 1941, but it has a taller x-height, wider counters and a little less contrast, allowing it to work well for reading on screen. This open source project is led by Impallari Type. Taylor Palmer also recommends its sister font, Libre Franklin, which is also free.

20. Slabo

Best free fonts: Sample of Slabo

A modern serif font tuned to pixel perfection (Image credit: Google Fonts)
  • Free for personal and commercial use
  • Get Slabo from Google Fonts

Designed by John Hudson, Slabo is a growing collection of size-specific free fonts for the web, fine-tuned precisely for use at those specific pixel sizes. The blocky feel of its ligatures gives a modern twist to the serif font, making Slabo perfect for online designs.

21. Merriweather

Best free fonts: Sample of Merriweather

Merriweather is featured on more than 3,000,000 websites, according to Google Fonts (Image credit: Google Fonts)
  • Free for personal and commercial use
  • Get Merriweather from Google Fonts

A hugely popular open-source serif font, Merriweather has its own project on GitHub. It was designed by Sorkin Type to be easy to read on screens. It features a very large x-height, slightly condensed letterforms, a mild diagonal stress, sturdy serifs and open forms.

22. Woodland

best free fonts: Woodland

(Image credit: Pangram Pangram Foundry)
  • Free for personal use
  • Get Woodland from PangramPangram Foundry

This beautiful curvy serif typeface has six weights, and the bold and ultralight versions are offered for free for personal use. It features strong, squared serifs and wide terminals. Touches like the rounded crossbar in the lowercase E give a soft quirkiness to its personality. You'll need a licence if you want to use the other weights or if you want to use it in work for clients.

23. Streusel Kuchen

Best free fonts: Streusel Kuchen

(Image credit: Kellie Jane Studio)

Serif fonts aren't all serious. Kellie Jane Studio injects a lot of fun into this cute serif font that creates a natural handwritten look. It's a nice addition for crafty projects or for the branding of homemade produce.

  • Free for personal and commercial use
  • Get Streusel Kuchen from fontbundles.net

Next page: Free sans-serif fonts

Current page: Serif fonts

Next Page Sans-serif fonts

Tom May

Tom May is an award-winning journalist and editor specialising in design, photography and technology. He is author of Great TED Talks: Creativity, published by Pavilion Books. He was previously editor of Professional Photography magazine, associate editor at Creative Bloq, and deputy editor at net magazine.

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Getting Graphic Design Fonts to Look Like Ads

Source: https://www.creativebloq.com/graphic-design-tips/best-free-fonts-for-designers-1233380

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