
Smashing Magazine we smash you with the information that will make your life easier. really.
Free Fonts of the Month: Geo Sans, OT Versa, Diavlo
April 2nd, 2007 in Fonts | 44 Comments
We continue to collect most beautiful high quality freefonts, which can be used for both private and professional projects without any restrictions whatsoever. They are hard to find, but the search is definitely worth it.
Over the last 30 days we’ve managed to find few oldies such as famous Geo Sans and Mank Sans by Manfred Klein, but also some newbies such as Jos Buivenga’s Diavlo. You might also be interested in further free fonts we’ve presented recently. Before using the font, don’t forget to read the legal agreement carefully. They change from time to time.
If you like this series of articles, please spread the word, so that 1) we know you are interested; 2) many designers as possible can improve the quality of typography on their web-sites.
Freefonts of the Month
1. Geo Sans Light, by Manfred Klein
2. Mank Sans, by Manfred Klein
3. OT Versa Condensed, by Peter Verheul
Ourtype offers a bonus font of the month. To download the font, click on the “About” item in the left sidebar of this site. Once the horizontal menu has appeared, click on the “Bonus font of the mont” section link in the menu.
4. Diavlo by Jos Buivenga.
Diavlo is a free font that is a bit square and sharp. Great attention has been given to detail, spacing and kerning. It contains more than 300 glyphs and over 1.300 kerning pairs. Other weights may follow, but for now it’s only regular.
5. Tuffy, by Thatcher Ulrich
6. Greyscale Basic, by Greyscale [via Computerlove]
7. Kapitza Pop [decorative]
A free version of Pop contains 8 graphic elements in 4 weights (Pop10, Pop20, Pop30, Pop40). When repeated, each Pop element creates a unique pattern which can be combined into an infinite variety of patterns. This font is not free to
use commercially, please read the Licence Agreement.
8. Unibody [pixel font]
Unibody is an optimized screen font family for Macromedia Flash MX and Adobe Photoshop. It’s designed for one point size only, 8 pts.
Freely available fonts
- If you still don’t have Windows Vista fonts, you can get them legally for free, downloading and installing the PowerPoint Viewer 2007. The package includes all 6 Windows Fonts - Calibri, Cambria, Candara, Consolas, Constantia and Corbel, which you can use without any restrictions. [via Praegnanz.de].

- Apparently, Secondlife Installation Package includes Erik Spiekermann’s FF Meta Book and FF Meta Bold as .ttf. It’s questionable, whether these fonts can be used for free (a single cut is currently priced at around 50 Euro). However, you can exract them, following instructions in the article Meta Font “Free for All” Through Second Life?.

Any suggestions? Don’t hesistate to comment! We’ll appreciate it. And the community will appreciate it.
Leave a Reply
Sponsors
- Advertise with us!
Smashing Links
Popular Posts
- 100 Wordpress Themes
- 83 Wordpress Themes
- 80 AJAX Solutions
- 53 CSS Techniques
- 45 Blog Designs
- 50 Beautiful Designs
- 50 Simple Designs
- 60 Elegant Designs
- 65 Flash Designs
- Brilliant Wallpapers
- Brilliant HDR Pictures
- Brilliant Photos
- Free Design Templates
- Free CSS Layouts
- Free Icon Sets
- Free High-Quality Fonts
- Slideshows & Lightboxes
- Adobe Photoshop Tutorials
- Adobe Illustrator Tutorials
All Posts
- 404 Error Pages
- AJAX Libraries
- AJAX Solutions
- Blog Designs
- Blog Headers
- Book Covers
- Browsers Round-Up
- Browser Test Suites
- Buzz-Monitoring
- Charts and Diagrams: Tools
- Cheat Sheets
- Code Beautifier
- Copyright Explained
- CSS Coding Techniques
- CSS Designs 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
- CSS Expert Ideas
- CSS Float Theory
- CSS Frameworks
- CSS Free Templates
- CSS Footers
- CSS Forms 1, 2
- CSS Frameworks
- CSS Galleries
- CSS Ideas
- CSS Layouts
- CSS Menus
- CSS Print-Layouts
- CSS Specificity
- CSS Styleguides
- CSS Tables
- CSS Tutorials
- CSS-Techniques
- CSS Tools
- Data Grids and Tables
- Data Visualization 1, 2
- Date Stamps
- Design Books 1, 2
- Design Magazines
- Designer's Checkpoints
- Domain Tools
- Dreamweaver Tutorials
- E-Mail Delivery
- Favicons 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6
- Firefox Themes
- Fireworks Tutorials
- Flash Designs
- Flash Slideshows
- Flash Tutorials
- Fonts 1, 2, 3, 4
- Forums
- Gadgets 1, 2, 3
- Google AdSense
- Google PageRank
- Graphics Design
- Grid-Based Design 1, 2
- Grunge Design 1, 2
- Hand-Drawing Design
- Handwriting and Lettering
- Hotkeys
- HDR Pictures
- HTML Template Systems
- Icon Sets 1, 2, 3, 4
- Icons, Templates 1, 2, 3
- Illustrator Tutorials 1, 2
- Laptop Sleeves
- Laptop Designs
- Link Building
- Mascots
- Motion Graphics
- Music Videos
- Navigation Menus
- Newspaper Designs
- Online Converters
- Online Generators
- Pagination
- PDF Magazines
- Photoshop Tutorials 1, 2
- Pixel art
- PNG Transparency
- Portfolios
- RSS Best Design Practices
- RSS Icons
- Screensavers
- SEO Tools
- Shopping Carts
- Short Movies
- Slideshows & Lightboxes
- Splash Pages
- Start Pages
- Stock Icons
- Tab-Based Interfaces
- Tag Clouds
- Textures & Backgrounds
- Tooltips Scripts
- Tutorials
- Typefaces 1, 2
- Type Setting Principles
- Typographic Posters
- Typography In Motion
- Typography Showcase
- Usability Books
- Usability Glossary
- Usability Nightmares
- Usability Principles
- User Interfaces
- Vintage and Retro
- Wallpapers 1, 2, 3, 4
- Web 2.0 Tutorials
- Web Profis Ideas 1, 2
- Whitespace & Simplicity
- Wordpress Plugins
- Wordpress Themes 1, 2, 3, 4
Webtips
Sideblog
Ross Johnson discusses 8 forgotten fonts you may use in CSS. Among them are Palatino Linotype, Century Gothic, Copperplate and Gill Sans — apparently, these fonts are installed on a variety of operating systems.
How creative can a table of contents be? Designobserver presents Thirty Tables of Contents. The collection includes excerpts from the books by Philip Larkin, Philip Roth, Paul Rand and Jan Tschichold.
A set of 18 splendid and colorful looking 3D RSS-Icons. They are done with 3d Studio Max. JPG.

In Font Clock 12 different fonts are printed within the mechanism of a clock, providing a random, mixed display of graphic language within a single time piece. Designed by Sebastian Wrong.
One pixel notched corners as used by Google Analytics. Instead of each option being boxed in a clickable rectangle, there is a 1px notch in each corner. It's not necessarily a curved corner, but it is a little softer than a normal box. Nice little trick.
Hartija is a CSS print framework which is an attempt to unite best CSS printing practices into one single CSS-file.
Rather than standard website templates, a free admin template is nearly impossible to find. This is an admin template which you can use for web applications like online-shops or CMS.

Fully Personal Interface research is a survey where people are questioned about their interface preferences. Results: labels and icons should be placed on the left, horizontal menus are more popular than vertical ones.















Wolf (April 2nd, 2007, 2:17 am)
Thanks, now I have the Vista fonts :)
Daniel (April 2nd, 2007, 2:19 am)
How can I download VERSA? It doesn’t look like a free download.
Vitaly Friedman & Sven Lennartz (April 2nd, 2007, 2:27 am)
Daniel, please read the post carefully. All needed information is mentioned there.
Digilee (April 2nd, 2007, 2:47 am)
Yeah Daniel … just click on “Bonus font of the mont” … MONT?
:)
kramer (April 2nd, 2007, 3:16 am)
Here’s a link to the vista fonts for a direct download (without installing powerpoint viewer 2007).
Link [jeffmilner.com]
Bretzelman (April 2nd, 2007, 3:26 am)
Thank you so much. I was just searching for some nice fonts. This blog really is a must have.
Alex Mos (April 2nd, 2007, 7:37 am)
Very nice selection of free fonts like always :)
Arthur (April 2nd, 2007, 11:11 am)
Great Fonts!
Thank You !!!
justSomeRandomGuy (April 2nd, 2007, 1:44 pm)
Also, check out Gentium: Link [www.sil.org]
Balakumar Muthu (April 2nd, 2007, 4:30 pm)
Diavlo is my favorite !
Will (April 2nd, 2007, 5:39 pm)
Thanks for these guys. Awesome stuff.
Carlos Eduardo (April 2nd, 2007, 10:36 pm)
I love this fonts, specially those you show how to install Windows Vista’s default fonts.
Thank you again!
Digilee (April 3rd, 2007, 12:48 am)
Another great article, but doesn’t anyone spell check around here?
flashmotus (April 3rd, 2007, 1:06 am)
Thank you so much, great Fonts!
Carlos Magaña (April 3rd, 2007, 5:09 am)
Great article, OT Versa is my favorite and Mank sans
Mike Panic (April 3rd, 2007, 12:02 pm)
Thank you!
SvT (April 3rd, 2007, 3:23 pm)
tnx ;)
rogaroga (April 3rd, 2007, 7:34 pm)
hello
do you know where we can download the new Vista Font for apple mac ?
tnx
zoxeo (April 3rd, 2007, 11:45 pm)
You guys rock !
Every post of yours has something to look forward for…
Sebastian (April 4th, 2007, 9:18 am)
This are great fonts. Some came from germany :-)
aimyu (April 4th, 2007, 12:17 pm)
good i love you!!!!
codeman38 (April 5th, 2007, 10:16 pm)
rogaroga: The commandline ‘cabextract’ tool (Link [www.kyz.uklinux.net]; also available from Link [www.finkproject.org]) can be used to extract the PowerPoint Viewer installer on OS X.
Lori (April 7th, 2007, 1:01 am)
[…]I’ve been searching for some new fonts for use in both scrapping and other web projects….Link [www.heavengraphics.com][…]
Armen (April 7th, 2007, 8:22 pm)
My new banner at the end of the month is looking like it’ll be using Diavlo. Nice find guys, thanks!
Jos Buivenga (April 12th, 2007, 5:05 am)
[update on Diavlo] new pre-release: two more weights added
I’ve added two more weights besides Book: SemiBold and Bold. Italic (oblique) versions will follow soon.
Cheers!
arturoartur (April 12th, 2007, 7:44 pm)
wow, great font’s. Calibri looks fantastic!
Zahra (September 22nd, 2007, 2:05 am)
I wanted to ask if anyone knows of a true calligraphy software that can design letters to fit a given shape - say a heart of a circle or a crescent etc
I am interested in one for English Script and also for Arabic Script