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15 Fresh High-Quality Free Fonts

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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 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.

Junc1 in 15 Fresh High-Quality Free Fonts

Junc3 in 15 Fresh High-Quality Free Fonts

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.

Nadia in 15 Fresh High-Quality Free Fonts

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).

Nilland in 15 Fresh High-Quality Free Fonts

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.

Carto in 15 Fresh High-Quality Free Fonts

Bergamo Std
A free serif typeface, in the opentype format; 4 weights are available: regular, italic, bold and bold italic. License agreement.

Bergamos in 15 Fresh High-Quality Free Fonts

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.

Comic in 15 Fresh High-Quality Free Fonts

Birra Stout [ specimen ]
An elegant old-style typeface with strong elements of handlettering, designed by Darden Studio.

Birra in 15 Fresh High-Quality Free Fonts

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.

Vegur in 15 Fresh High-Quality Free Fonts

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.

Wb in 15 Fresh High-Quality Free Fonts

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.

Nb in 15 Fresh High-Quality Free Fonts

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.

Res in 15 Fresh High-Quality Free Fonts

Layer Cake
An experimental typeface, designed by Jakob Nylund. Isometric multiple layered type. Capital letters A-Z, available only in Illustrator AI format.

Layer in 15 Fresh High-Quality Free Fonts

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.

Mayberry in 15 Fresh High-Quality Free Fonts

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)

Eco in 15 Fresh High-Quality Free Fonts

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.

Cap1 in 15 Fresh High-Quality Free Fonts

Cap2 in 15 Fresh High-Quality Free Fonts

More free fonts!

For more free fonts, please consider visitiong our previous posts:

Vitaly Friedman, editor-in-chief of Smashing Magazine (www.smashingmagazine.com), an online magazine dedicated to designers and developers.

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  1. 1
    Phill
    May 11th, 2009 6:42 am

    Tidy – thanks

  2. 2
    deffault
    May 11th, 2009 6:47 am

    I loved it!

  3. 3
    snnaqvi
    May 11th, 2009 6:47 am

    Great stuff, thanks SM

  4. 4
    spocarum
    May 11th, 2009 6:48 am

    Why give all my personal data incl. CC to download Resonance BOLD. Check “free” fonts first.

  5. 5
    dudelord
    May 11th, 2009 6:54 am

    awesome! the last ones rock the boat

  6. 6
    Cole
    May 11th, 2009 7:18 am

    Your link for the Flaminia Type System is wrong.
    Otherwise a fab list (as always) ;)

  7. 7
    jhoysi
    May 11th, 2009 7:31 am

    Some very elegant fonts on the list. Great finds!

  8. 8
    Siah
    May 11th, 2009 7:43 am

    thanks SM!

  9. 9
    Nathan
    May 11th, 2009 7:57 am

    I’m sorry, but I cannot see how I can use these on my site. Can you not please advertise a television instead?

  10. 10
    olybop
    May 11th, 2009 7:58 am

    nice selection thanks !

  11. 11
    Horttcore
    May 11th, 2009 8:00 am

    Whiteboard Modern seems to be broken… or am I an idiot?

  12. 12
    Mugros
    May 11th, 2009 8:03 am

    ecofont is ridiculous.

  13. 13
    Vygantas
    May 11th, 2009 8:13 am

    thank you, sir

  14. 14
    antofa
    May 11th, 2009 8:40 am

    Well, that Daphne font family looks a lot like a knock-off of Museo by Jos Buivenga.

  15. 15
    Luke
    May 11th, 2009 8:45 am

    Where do you guys find these gems! Thanks a lot ill be use these definitely

  16. 16
    rutiso
    May 11th, 2009 9:08 am

    Great …! You are the best. Thanks a lot!

  17. 17
    Tobbi
    May 11th, 2009 9:16 am

    Great! Thanks.

  18. 18
    Crystal lee
    May 11th, 2009 9:37 am

    love it

  19. 19
    Tim Smith
    May 11th, 2009 9:43 am

    Great list!! Thanks

  20. 20
    JOHNNY BOY
    May 11th, 2009 9:49 am

    I love em’. This is why I totally support smashing mag. The Fonts!

  21. 21
    Thomas
    May 11th, 2009 9:50 am

    Free is not open. You should distinguish clearly.

  22. 22
    nomad-one
    May 11th, 2009 10:07 am

    Wow, 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. 23
    Andy Morrow
    May 11th, 2009 10:22 am

    Stop 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. 24
    Edward
    May 11th, 2009 10:33 am

    Cool, I find some of them useful. Thanks!

  25. 25
    Manlio Napoli
    May 11th, 2009 10:36 am

    CartoGothic Std and Bergamo Std are clones of Frutiger and Bembo… shame!!!

  26. 26
    Jeff
    May 11th, 2009 10:45 am

    Decent 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. 27
    Morph
    May 11th, 2009 10:56 am

    There is mistake: Nilland is redirected to Neighbourhood zip file…

  28. 28
    Salih S. Demir
    May 11th, 2009 10:57 am

    very cool.

  29. 29
    Matt
    May 11th, 2009 11:23 am

    Please take down Daphne. It is a low quality font. Replace it with Museo, the high quality font that Daphne ripped off poorly.

  30. 30
    Alessandro
    May 11th, 2009 11:36 am

    Thanks!

  31. 31
    NBS
    May 11th, 2009 12:03 pm

    Eco-font is one of the lamest ideas I’ve ever heard. Talk about defeating the purpose of a font — readability.

  32. 32
    Lailson Bandeira
    May 11th, 2009 12:31 pm

    Nice, but I’d love an OpenType version of Flaminia Type System…

  33. 33
    Michiel
    May 11th, 2009 12:34 pm

    Carto Gothic is the same as Frutiger

  34. 34
    mathiz
    May 11th, 2009 12:49 pm

    Vegur is great but everything is in on the site is japanse… does any have a direct link?

  35. 35
    Kraft
    May 11th, 2009 1:33 pm

    Kinda 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. 36
    Ted Graf
    May 11th, 2009 1:35 pm

    Great list.
    How about a link to download them all at once?

  37. 37
    Rutger
    May 11th, 2009 2:10 pm

    that 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. 38
    sean farrell
    May 11th, 2009 2:17 pm

    how come i can’t do anything with the flaminia files? vfb file format?

  39. 39
    Jos Buivenga
    May 11th, 2009 2:19 pm

    Daphne 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. 40
    Clever Daisies
    May 11th, 2009 2:30 pm

    Thank you! Love your blog!

  41. 41
    Umm...
    May 11th, 2009 4:05 pm

    Adrian 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. 42
    Aaron Moody
    May 11th, 2009 4:09 pm

    Been using vegur for some time now, its deffineatly made it into my top 10 lists of fonts, Great font, recomended.

  43. 43
    Yuda
    May 11th, 2009 4:40 pm

    Nice list of font, definitely useful

  44. 44
    Leland Clemmons
    May 11th, 2009 5:24 pm

    The site that features LayerCake (justmytype.org) has really fscking cool fonts.

  45. 45
    lalit
    May 11th, 2009 7:42 pm

    thanx

  46. 46
    Rajnish Gupta
    May 11th, 2009 9:41 pm

    Hey SMASHED… REALLY PRETTY COOL..

    Great thanks to you to help me explore my creative sense….

  47. 47
    francisa
    May 11th, 2009 9:49 pm

    thanks!

  48. 48
    Shuuun
    May 11th, 2009 10:25 pm

    I am using Myriad Pro for so many Pojects, its my new Arial/Helvetica :)

  49. 49
    Andrea Bergamini
    May 11th, 2009 11:58 pm

    I 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. 50
    rcs
    May 12th, 2009 12:10 am

    That’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. 51
    Johnny
    May 12th, 2009 12:16 am

    The Eco Font is silly. I suggest they try the same idea with Eco Toiletpaper.

  52. 52
    Quakeulf >:3
    May 12th, 2009 12:18 am

    Oh god #44, I won’t ever escape that smiley now, I thought I was safe here… ;_;

  53. 53
    salami
    May 12th, 2009 1:31 am

    Flaminia 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. 54
    Shivanand Sharma
    May 12th, 2009 2:29 am

    If 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. 55
    Vijayta
    May 12th, 2009 3:18 am

    Thanks a lot for such a nice font set :) :)

    http://vijaytapanchal.com

  56. 56
    Pete
    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. 57
    Tom Bradshaw
    May 12th, 2009 4:55 am

    Thanks again Smashing!

  58. 58
    Rank Uno
    May 12th, 2009 5:22 am

    looking 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. 59
    Andy
    May 12th, 2009 5:30 am

    Nice article!

  60. 60
    Pinky_D
    May 12th, 2009 6:37 am

    Thanks! Just what I needed, and perfect timing. Now if only I could design these fonts myself hehehe.

  61. 61
    Disposable_Hero
    May 12th, 2009 7:51 am

    At least Ecofont isn’t called Greenfont…then the designer would have to be smacked.

  62. 62
    Chris Robinson
    May 12th, 2009 8:07 am

    dugg, nice roundup, already had most of these but there were some new ones in there.

  63. 63
    Mario
    May 12th, 2009 8:08 am

    The post title sucks (as well as similar ones) FREE WTF $%@*!!!!
    free to download, free to download my friends…

  64. 64
    Miguel
    May 12th, 2009 8:49 am

    Picky, but italic is not a “weight”.

  65. 65
    sama creation
    May 12th, 2009 11:54 am

    Thanks! great article

  66. 66
    ayb
    May 12th, 2009 12:38 pm

    great article ;) i got it

  67. 67
    Adam Cernik
    May 12th, 2009 1:39 pm

    aaaah. those free fonts are not so good :)

  68. 68
    KC
    May 12th, 2009 7:50 pm

    Sweet, thanks!

  69. 69
    vinhkoon
    May 12th, 2009 8:25 pm

    nice fonts, thanks!!!!

  70. 70
    Jan
    May 12th, 2009 11:31 pm

    Great fonts, thanks! I especially like Vegur. The site Layer Cake has some really cool fonts as well.

  71. 71
    gr8pixel
    May 13th, 2009 12:50 am

    excellent! thanks for the post. :)

  72. 72
    Sloppy Hand
    May 13th, 2009 1:16 am

    Useful stuffs, thanks.
    Any of you like western style fonts?

    Sloppy Hand @
    ROCKBUNCH.com

  73. 73
    Romeo
    May 13th, 2009 2:37 am

    Hey your “Flaminia Type System ” points to Junction font link :D

    Nevertheless excellent collection

  74. 74
    yasense
    May 13th, 2009 4:24 pm

    good~~~ thanks for you~

  75. 75
    justpictures.net.tc
    May 14th, 2009 12:27 am

    CarthoGothic is a stolen Frutiger and Bergamo is a stolen Bembo.

    Flaminia is great!

  76. 76
    Andrea Bergamini
    May 15th, 2009 3:08 pm

    Thank 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. 77
    Maximilian Georg Liebscher
    May 16th, 2009 5:32 pm

    Thank u^^

  78. 78
    satish.borkar
    May 19th, 2009 2:54 am

    hi

    Really very nice fonts
    i like it
    Thanks

  79. 79
    satish.borkar
    May 19th, 2009 3:12 am

    hi
    its so good

  80. 80
    satyaspb
    May 19th, 2009 3:14 am

    i trying my gravatr image

  81. 81
    Andrew M.
    May 19th, 2009 3:22 pm

    Vegur sure looks like a knock off of Myriad Pro, if you ask me…

  82. 82
    gaem
    June 5th, 2009 5:58 am

    thanks for you

  83. 83
    Jay Lopez
    June 6th, 2009 6:34 pm

    Wow Andy Chung’s & Layer Cake’s work is incredible! Thank you Smashing Magazine!

  84. 84
    Rachel Jones
    June 8th, 2009 9:56 am

    Thanks, this is the best resource every.

  85. 85
    Luke Jones
    July 31st, 2009 11:06 pm

    Sweet thank you!!

  86. 86
    borda chido
    August 4th, 2009 10:31 pm

    estan bien chidas

  87. 87
    borda chido
    August 4th, 2009 10:32 pm

    estan bien chidas

  88. 88
    jonas seydel
    October 10th, 2009 4:24 am

    impressive selection. like the nadia most. many thanks and keep goin!

    best regards from germany!

  89. 89
    Dave
    October 13th, 2009 4:26 pm

    An 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. 90
    aero
    October 30th, 2009 2:53 am

    Mayberry Pro SemiBold direct secure download from their site:
    https://www.ascenderfonts.com/store/download.aspx?d=bb135486-8633-416c-9661-22623df29685

  1. 00

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