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15 Fresh High-Quality Free Fonts
Every now and again we take a look around, select “fresh” high-quality free fonts and present them to you in a brief overview. The choice is enormous, so the time you need to find them is usually the time you should be investing in your current projects. We search for them and we find them, so you don’t have to.
In this selection we’re glad to present you Junction, Nadia Serif, Nilland, CartoGothic Std, Bergamo Std, Comic Serif, Birra Stout, Vegur and a couple of other high-quality free fonts. Please read the license agreements carefully before using the fonts — the license can change from time to time.
- 15 Beautiful High-Quality Free Fonts
- 40 Excellent Free Fonts For Professional Design
- You can find over 80 more free fonts in our section Fonts.
[By the way, did you know there is a brand new Smashing Wordpress Book? Push WordPress past its limits and take the basic blog into an entirely new blogosphere.]
15 Fresh High-Quality Free Fonts
Junction [ Download the .zip-package ]
Designed by Caroline Hadilaksono, Junction is a humanist sans-serif typeface. It has elegant, clearn and very sharp glyphs, but contains only 100 most common symbols. Like Gentium it perfectly fits to body copy, but can also show its strengths, balance and beauty in headlines. Here are some insights from the designer:
“Inspired by my favorite humanist sans serif typefaces, such as Meta, Myriad, and Scala, Junction is where the best qualities of serif and sans serif typefaces come together. It has the hand drawn and human qualities of a serif, and still retains the clarity and efficiencies of a sans serif typeface. It combines the best of both worlds.” Available as OpenType. Released by The League of Moveable Type, an open-source type movement.
Nadia Serif [ Download Mac (Postscript) | Download PC (TrueType) ]
This serif typeface is available for free download; the only requirement for using it is to send a PDF or any other copy of the work using this typefaces to its designers.
Nilland
A beautiful slab-serif typeface, designed by Manfred Klein. The family consists of 6 weights, regular, bold, extra bold, black, small caps and small caps bold (link and images via DerSven.de).
CartoGothic Std
A legible sans-serif typeface, in the opentype format; 4 weights are available: book, italic, bold and bold italic. License agreement. Win and Mac.
Bergamo Std
A free serif typeface, in the opentype format; 4 weights are available: regular, italic, bold and bold italic. License agreement.
HVD Comic Serif [ specimen ]
So many designers hate Comic Sans. They think people who don’t know design are overusing this funny little friendly font, which is nearly every time out of place. Some years ago, type designer Hannes von Döhren created a free alternative to Comic Sans. The difference: It has serifs and a much cooler look. OpenType Pro, designed by Hannes von Döhren.
Birra Stout [ specimen ]
An elegant old-style typeface with strong elements of handlettering, designed by Darden Studio.
Vegur
This humanist sans-serif family is available in OpenType-format in three weights: ExtraLight, Regular and Bold. The typeface can be perfectly used both in body copy and in headlines.
Whiteboard Modern [ currently offline, the link was removed ]
An original hand-drawn typeface, designed by Jay Hilgert. The typeface is currently being designed, so currently only the demo-version is available.
Neighbourhood Type [ Download the .zip-package ]
“I took Neighbourhood as a challenge to create something that had the graphic expression of a display face while still maintaining some of the functionality of a text face. In the end I created something that I feel has the best of both worlds; an ultra simple sans serif text face with a large set of alternates which when combined with the regular characters create a new graphic display look”. Designed by Andy Chung.
Resonance Bold (Registration is required)
This type family consists of smooth curves and fine lines, and evokes the spirit of the 1970s. Resonance is a great typeface family for use on retro and vintage posters, flyers and also headings.
Layer Cake
An experimental typeface, designed by Jakob Nylund. Isometric multiple layered type. Capital letters A-Z, available only in Illustrator AI format.
Reminder: Mayberry Pro SemiBold (registration is required)
AscenderFonts released the font Mayberry Pro Semi Bold available for free download. This font belongs to the Mayberry Pro family. This family is a humanist sans serif designed by Steve Matteson to provide optimal legibility on screen in applications ranging from User Interfaces to web pages. The registration is required to download the font.
Bonus: Eco Font and Flaminia Type System
Eco Font [ Download .ttf ]
A Dutch company SPRANQ from Utrecht has developed a new typeface that is supposed to cut ink usage by about 15% – the trick is that the “Ecofont” has little holes in the letters. There is also Ecofont Professional Edition available: every corporate typeface can be adjusted. (via Twenteinside)
Flaminia Type System [ Download the .zip-package ]
Flaminia is a typographical system that allows its users and its future designers to quickly morph (through the use of Multiple Master axes) different variants of the glyphs. By allowing minimal changes of only one variable in the letter shapes, Flaminia also provides a tool to study which are the most relevant factors in the process of reading signs, and can be used free of charge for further researches in this field. Created by Andrea Bergamini, released by The League of Moveable Type, an open-source type movement.
More free fonts!
For more free fonts, please consider visitiong our previous posts:
- 15 Beautiful High-Quality Free Fonts
- 40 Excellent Free Fonts For Professional Design
- You can find over 80 more free fonts in our section Fonts.
Vitaly Friedman, editor-in-chief of Smashing Magazine (www.smashingmagazine.com), an online magazine dedicated to designers and developers.
- 92 Comments
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May 11th, 2009 6:47 amI loved it!
- 3
May 11th, 2009 6:47 amGreat stuff, thanks SM
- 4
May 11th, 2009 6:48 amWhy give all my personal data incl. CC to download Resonance BOLD. Check “free” fonts first.
- 5
May 11th, 2009 6:54 amawesome! the last ones rock the boat
- 6
May 11th, 2009 7:18 amYour link for the Flaminia Type System is wrong.
Otherwise a fab list (as always) ;) - 7
May 11th, 2009 7:31 amSome very elegant fonts on the list. Great finds!
- 8
May 11th, 2009 7:43 amthanks SM!
- 9
May 11th, 2009 7:57 amI’m sorry, but I cannot see how I can use these on my site. Can you not please advertise a television instead?
- 10
May 11th, 2009 7:58 amnice selection thanks !
- 11
May 11th, 2009 8:00 amWhiteboard Modern seems to be broken… or am I an idiot?
- 12
May 11th, 2009 8:03 amecofont is ridiculous.
- 13
May 11th, 2009 8:13 amthank you, sir
- 14
May 11th, 2009 8:40 amWell, that Daphne font family looks a lot like a knock-off of Museo by Jos Buivenga.
- 15
May 11th, 2009 8:45 amWhere do you guys find these gems! Thanks a lot ill be use these definitely
- 16
May 11th, 2009 9:08 amGreat …! You are the best. Thanks a lot!
- 17
May 11th, 2009 9:16 amGreat! Thanks.
- 18
May 11th, 2009 9:37 amlove it
- 19
May 11th, 2009 9:43 amGreat list!! Thanks
- 20
May 11th, 2009 9:49 amI love em’. This is why I totally support smashing mag. The Fonts!
- 21
May 11th, 2009 9:50 amFree is not open. You should distinguish clearly.
- 22
May 11th, 2009 10:07 amWow, some of the comments on this site are really strange, even scary.
As always thanks for the great collection of fonts you guys have rounded up for us.
- 23
May 11th, 2009 10:22 amStop putting these shitty lists – who cares about fonts? It’s all about content anyway; I am unfollowing you now and unsubscribing from your RSS-feed. Better come up with something useful for a change! :-(
- 24
May 11th, 2009 10:33 amCool, I find some of them useful. Thanks!
- 25
May 11th, 2009 10:36 amCartoGothic Std and Bergamo Std are clones of Frutiger and Bembo… shame!!!
- 26
May 11th, 2009 10:45 amDecent list, but largely useless if you already have Myriad Pro and Frutiger. Seems like half of these are just ripoffs. I was also a bit surprised to see a giant F-bomb on the page, too… Classy.
- 27
May 11th, 2009 10:56 amThere is mistake: Nilland is redirected to Neighbourhood zip file…
- 28
May 11th, 2009 10:57 amvery cool.
- 29
May 11th, 2009 11:23 amPlease take down Daphne. It is a low quality font. Replace it with Museo, the high quality font that Daphne ripped off poorly.
- 30
May 11th, 2009 11:36 amThanks!
- 31
May 11th, 2009 12:03 pmEco-font is one of the lamest ideas I’ve ever heard. Talk about defeating the purpose of a font — readability.
- 32
May 11th, 2009 12:31 pmNice, but I’d love an OpenType version of Flaminia Type System…
- 33
May 11th, 2009 12:34 pmCarto Gothic is the same as Frutiger
- 34
May 11th, 2009 12:49 pmVegur is great but everything is in on the site is japanse… does any have a direct link?
- 35
May 11th, 2009 1:33 pmKinda tired of being assaulted by the profanity in these postings. I used to love visiting this site. I have two young kids and don’t enjoy seeing some of they’re favorite cartoon characters scream the F word. Unfortunately, I’m probably in the minority.
- 36
May 11th, 2009 1:35 pmGreat list.
How about a link to download them all at once? - 37
May 11th, 2009 2:10 pmthat Daphne “font” is horrible and a complete RIPOFF from Museo by Ex Ljbris. See the original that took a lot of effort here: http://www.josbuivenga.demon.nl/museo.html . And how dare they charge for some versions of Daphne! It’s one thing to be inspired, everybody is, but Daphne is beyond that.
- 38
May 11th, 2009 2:17 pmhow come i can’t do anything with the flaminia files? vfb file format?
- 39
May 11th, 2009 2:19 pmDaphne is a shameless, lousy ripp off from my Museo font, which is far better *and free*!!!
(SM) I am very sorry about it, Jos. The link was removed!
- 40
May 11th, 2009 2:30 pmThank you! Love your blog!
- 41
May 11th, 2009 4:05 pmAdrian Frutiger and Robert Slimbach would like to talk with some of these font designers who designed certain fonts featured on this page.
And the League of Movable Type stuff is interesting… except it’s in Multiple Master format. Unless I can find a way to use these without FontForge, it’s useless for web designers.
- 42
May 11th, 2009 4:09 pmBeen using vegur for some time now, its deffineatly made it into my top 10 lists of fonts, Great font, recomended.
- 43
May 11th, 2009 4:40 pmNice list of font, definitely useful
- 44
May 11th, 2009 5:24 pmThe site that features LayerCake (justmytype.org) has really fscking cool fonts.
- 45
May 11th, 2009 7:42 pmthanx
- 46
May 11th, 2009 9:41 pmHey SMASHED… REALLY PRETTY COOL..
Great thanks to you to help me explore my creative sense….
- 47
- 48
May 11th, 2009 10:25 pmI am using Myriad Pro for so many Pojects, its my new Arial/Helvetica :)
- 49
May 11th, 2009 11:58 pmI am the author of Flaminia: the League of Movable Type is a project that aims to share opensource fonts.
Flaminia is a font that needs to be in Multiple Master format (while other fonts featured on the League’s website don’t need to) because it is a system to test the readability of typefaces to use in signage through the interpolation of different variables. It is a scientifical project rather than just a “free font”, and releasing an .otf/.ttf version of it –without the possibility to keep the interpolation available– would make it senseless.So Fontlab is required in order to develop the project further, sorry….on my , you can find all the information you might need.
- 50
May 12th, 2009 12:10 amThat’s much more like it sm … fine collection …
PD_why don’t you make a menue “kids” and put your “wallpapers” and “dark art” there?
:-)
- 51
May 12th, 2009 12:16 amThe Eco Font is silly. I suggest they try the same idea with Eco Toiletpaper.
- 52
May 12th, 2009 12:18 amOh god #44, I won’t ever escape that smiley now, I thought I was safe here… ;_;
- 53
May 12th, 2009 1:31 amFlaminia is one o the best type families I’ve ever seen!
but…
why there’s only a few glyphs in vfb files of Flaminia typefaces?
???????????????????????????????????????????????????? - 54
May 12th, 2009 2:29 amIf these fonts are not installed by default on the system it would be impractical to use them in webdesign (unless you are using them in images).
- 55

- 56
May 12th, 2009 4:38 am@Shivanand
There are enough font replacement techniques out there that let you use non-standard web fonts. Non-standard fonts are no longer an excuse for poor web typography.Cufon – http://cufon.shoqolate.com/generate/
SiFR – http://www.mikeindustries.com/blog/sifr/
jQuery (sifr plug in) – http://jquery.thewikies.com/sifr/
Typeface.js – http://typeface.neocracy.org/
FLIR – http://facelift.mawhorter.net/download/ - 57
May 12th, 2009 4:55 amThanks again Smashing!
- 58
May 12th, 2009 5:22 amlooking at ‘ resonance’, its inspirations are not drawn from the 1970s. Perhaps you are a bit too young, but any student of design should be able to spot art deco lines like thos in this font.
- 59
May 12th, 2009 5:30 amNice article!
- 60
May 12th, 2009 6:37 amThanks! Just what I needed, and perfect timing. Now if only I could design these fonts myself hehehe.
- 61
May 12th, 2009 7:51 amAt least Ecofont isn’t called Greenfont…then the designer would have to be smacked.
- 62
May 12th, 2009 8:07 amdugg, nice roundup, already had most of these but there were some new ones in there.
- 63
May 12th, 2009 8:08 amThe post title sucks (as well as similar ones) FREE WTF $%@*!!!!
free to download, free to download my friends… - 64
May 12th, 2009 8:49 amPicky, but italic is not a “weight”.
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May 12th, 2009 12:38 pmgreat article ;) i got it
- 67
May 12th, 2009 1:39 pmaaaah. those free fonts are not so good :)
- 68
May 12th, 2009 7:50 pmSweet, thanks!
- 69
May 12th, 2009 8:25 pmnice fonts, thanks!!!!
- 70
May 12th, 2009 11:31 pmGreat fonts, thanks! I especially like Vegur. The site Layer Cake has some really cool fonts as well.
- 71
May 13th, 2009 12:50 amexcellent! thanks for the post. :)
- 72
May 13th, 2009 1:16 amUseful stuffs, thanks.
Any of you like western style fonts?Sloppy Hand @
ROCKBUNCH.com - 73
May 13th, 2009 2:37 amHey your “Flaminia Type System ” points to Junction font link :D
Nevertheless excellent collection
- 74
May 13th, 2009 4:24 pmgood~~~ thanks for you~
- 75
May 14th, 2009 12:27 amCarthoGothic is a stolen Frutiger and Bergamo is a stolen Bembo.
Flaminia is great!
- 76
May 15th, 2009 3:08 pmThank you for your appreciation in Flaminia. I would like to make a little note about it though: Flaminia is not a “font”, it is a typographic system to evaluate the design of fonts to be used for signage.
.vfb files are necessary to develop the whole system, because it is based on a Multiple Master with variables that need to be interpolated, and that would be lost uploading .otf or .ttf files.
So all of you designers out there, Flaminia is an opensource project and it still needs a lot of work, but all of you are invited! :)
cheers from italy,
a. - 77
May 16th, 2009 5:32 pmThank u^^
- 78
May 19th, 2009 2:54 amhi
Really very nice fonts
i like it
Thanks - 79
May 19th, 2009 3:12 amhi
its so good - 80
May 19th, 2009 3:14 ami trying my gravatr image
- 81
May 19th, 2009 3:22 pmVegur sure looks like a knock off of Myriad Pro, if you ask me…
- 82
June 5th, 2009 5:58 amthanks for you
- 83
June 6th, 2009 6:34 pmWow Andy Chung’s & Layer Cake’s work is incredible! Thank you Smashing Magazine!
- 84
June 8th, 2009 9:56 amThanks, this is the best resource every.
- 85
July 31st, 2009 11:06 pmSweet thank you!!
- 86
August 4th, 2009 10:31 pmestan bien chidas
- 87
August 4th, 2009 10:32 pmestan bien chidas
- 88
October 10th, 2009 4:24 amimpressive selection. like the nadia most. many thanks and keep goin!
best regards from germany!
- 89
October 13th, 2009 4:26 pmAn observation:
You have some real assholes commenting here.
It’s FREE … take one, say thank you, step aside.
No bitching about the free stuff, geniuses.
… and now, from me:
Thank you. - 90
October 30th, 2009 2:53 amMayberry Pro SemiBold direct secure download from their site:
https://www.ascenderfonts.com/store/download.aspx?d=bb135486-8633-416c-9661-22623df29685 - 91
January 13th, 2010 1:33 amGreat article, thx :) lot of inspiration
Also some nice free fonts fonts2u.com - 92
January 19th, 2010 9:02 pmHey everyone, if anyone has Myriad Pro for Mac or Win, would you mind sending me a copy? I have been looking for it for ages and cant seem to find it. Thanks again. Jay. jay.townsend@live.com
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Tidy – thanks