Beautiful New Free Fonts For Your Designs
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 Calluna, Andika Basic, Mentone, Sovereign Regular, Medio, Tiresias Infopoint and many other high-quality free fonts. Please read the license agreements carefully before using the fonts — the license can change from time to time.
New Free Fonts For Your Design
Calluna (only Calluna Regular is free)
The Calluna family, designed by talented Jos Buivenga, who has released 9 free fonts already, comes in 8 fonts: Light, Regular, Regular+Italic, Semibold+Italic,Bold+Italic and Black. Calluna is a text typeface with flow. upports a very wide range in languages and is a very complete OpenType typeface. Each font counts 723 glyphs. You can find detailed info on he character set and the OpenType features in the Calluna PDF specimen.
Andika Basic (only Thin is available for free)
Andika is a sans serif, Unicode-compliant font designed especially for literacy use, taking into account the needs of beginning readers. The focus is on clear, easy-to-perceive letterforms that will not be readily confused with one another. The family supports the Basic Latin and Latin-1 Supplement Unicode ranges, plus a selection of the more commonly used extended Latin characters, with miscellaneous diacritical marks, symbols and punctuation. Released under the Open Font License.
Mentone (only Semi Bold and Semi Bold Italic are free, registration required)
Mentone is a new general purpose typeface, an attempt at extending the line of the great sans-serifs of the previous century, Frutiger – Stone Sans – Myriad. The font has round corners and subtle chamfers, which are all but invisible at text sizes, but add an upbeat, irreverent expression at display sizes (via Chris Apalodimas).
Tiresias Infopoint
Tiresias Infofont has been designed for use on information labels to help improve legibility. The characters and letterforms have been designed to provide maximum legibility at a reading distance of around 30 to 100 cm. The Tiresias™ family of fonts are now free to download, subject to the licence agreement (via Fontsquirrel).
Sovereign Regular
Sovereign is a legible, original serif family from G-Type’s Nick Cooke. Available for PC (TrueType, PostScript) and Mac.
Medio (download link)
An antiqua font with 99 glyphs and beautiful geometric forms. Available only in the OpenType format (dersven.de
Sedona Script
A unique flowing script font with old-style numerals, beautiful ligatures and fancy capitals.
Ripe
Ripe was designed to be a practical typeface. Each character is distinct, yet consistent. Its subtle differences are clear enough to be easily read at both high and low resolutions, perfect for print, web and screen media. It is a geometric Postmodern slab seriffed face. The serifs feature simplistic rounded terminals and its stroke is uniform (via Creattica Daily).
CP Mono Beta
The Font is a mono spaced and caps-only (as the original) with weights from thin to black. As a typographic experiment, every character should fit in the same square, vertically too. Diacritics and ascenders had to come down and later, when I decided to add lower case letters, descenders up. A variant with shortened descenders became a stylistic set and another set straightens angles in letters like A, K or V (via imjustcreative).
Days Typeface
An original display typeface meant for use in large sizes; it works effectively in headlines with capital letters. The font contains basic Latin and Cyrillic letters and includes all numbers and main symbols. Available in the OpenType format for PC and Mac (via imjustcreative).
Tiza
Tiza is an informal chalk font, available for free download and use in private and commercial projects (via Creattica Daily).
FF Dagny Thin (only Thin is available for free)
A clean and beautiful grotesk font with a light weight. A good font for advertisements, web typography and brochures.
Pinvoke Pixel Fonts
A collection of quality pixel fonts that can be used free for any personal or commercial projects. Base size: 8 points / Tracking (Photoshop): 0, 125, 250… / Smooth edges (super pixel font)
Reminder: Download fonts from our previous posts
Chunk Open Source Typeface [ Download the .zip-package ]
Chunk is an ultra-bold slab serif typeface that is reminiscent of old American Western woodcuts, broadsides, and newspaper headlines. Used mainly for display, the fat block lettering is unreserved yet refined for contemporary use. OpenType. Designed by Meredith Mandel. (via Graham Smith).
Titilium [ Download the .zip-package ]
A very legible, beautiful academic typeface that perfectly fits to every corporate identity design, magazines and headlines of corporate web-sites. The typeface is available in various weights: text version, title version, extra-black version and full-version.
Rough Draft Regular
A legendary TrueType typeface by Harold Lohner. Contains 189 characters in 9 ranges. For $5 you can buy the complete set which includes separate Outline, Clean Fill, and Solid Fill 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).
Aller Sans [ Specimen | License | Download ]
Dalton Maag design team designed a beautiful sans-serif Aller Sans, sponsored by Danish publishing company Aller (hence the name). The typeface was designed as part of the Danish School of Media and Journalisms new CI and is now available for free use and download (via).
M+ Outline
These fonts are free software. Unlimited permission is granted to use, copy, and distribute it, with or without modification, either commercially and noncommercially. Designed by Morishita Coji. The fonts are regulary updated, work in progress. Caution: Japanese language.
Goudy Bookletter 1911
A serif old-style OpenType font. You need to scroll the frame to find the download link. [via derSven]
Andale Mono
Andale Mono is a highly legible monospaced font which was originally distributed as part of the Internet Explorer 4.0 add-ons page as Monotype.com. It distinguishes well between the zero, and the O. You can find 4 further monospaced fonts in Hamish Macpherson’s article The Typography of Code.

Credits: Hamish Macpherson
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:
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.
Further Resources
- 45 Outstanding Free Vintage Fonts
Harness the power of the antique and make your graphics pop with one of these vintage-inspired fonts, which have returned to the spotlight both in print and online. From the Wild West and Victoriana to the Avant Garde and Calligraphy, there are plenty of styles to choose from. - Top 10 Programming Fonts
Here’s a round-up of the top 10 readily-available monospace fonts for your coding enjoyment, with descriptions, visual examples and samples, and download links for each. The round-up features Courier, Andale Mono, Monaco, Profont, Monofur, Proggy, Droid Sans Mono, Deja Vu Sans Mono, Consolas and Inconsolata. - 45 Useful Free Handwritten Fonts
A couple of really beautiful hand writing-fonts that can give your site a more personal, individual touch. - Fontex.org
A growing collection of free fonts. - Fontsquirrel
Another growing collection of free fonts.
You can learn more about typefaces and typography in our upcoming Smashing Book ($23.99 – available worldwide). Pre-order now and save 20% off the price!


































Jack
August 7th, 2009 4:20 amwhat incredible list!
Bleyder
August 7th, 2009 4:23 amVery useful. Thanks!
Ollie
August 7th, 2009 4:28 amVegur is my favourite font ever. :)
Maiku
August 7th, 2009 4:29 amVery nice, thanks!
Paulo Henrique
August 7th, 2009 4:29 amVery nice the fonts!
Joel
August 7th, 2009 4:38 amThanks for putting the others on there, just re-installed windows and this saves me going back to find the other post aswell ^_^
Cheers
Dayjo
Jasmin Halkić
August 7th, 2009 4:40 amNice fonts. Thanks.
Leia Vieira
August 7th, 2009 4:49 amtks so much =)
Anton Agestam
August 7th, 2009 5:13 amThese type faces are awesome! Thanks a lot!
Dirman Suharno
August 7th, 2009 5:18 ammm some are repost, but overall these typefaces are awesome!
Jeffrey Tang
August 7th, 2009 5:19 amI love you Smashing Mag. Awesome fonts!
DS
August 7th, 2009 6:03 amHi,
First off, these are some really beautiful and awesome fonts. I’m new to web design and I’ve this question. I realized as soon as I actually got into coding, PSD -> XHTML that when it comes to font, both of these areas are poles apart. While I was able to use any fonts till now in my photoshop art documents, when it comes to making a website and coding it, we can not use any font that we want. The font has to be available on viewer’s machine! And there is no very good font-embedding methods available yet. (I was lead to read about SiFR but I realized it has some crucial drawbacks.)
So my question is how do experienced web developers use these free fonts in their website design? I mean, we can not make our text into images due to scaling issues as well as because it is not search engine friendly, not to mention the slowness issue. Then how are these fonts helpful to web developers except for in use in headings?
Help me understand the process please?
Stacy
August 7th, 2009 6:15 am@Dirman Suharno: Hah! I’m not crazy. :) I thought I remembered seeing some of these.
me
August 7th, 2009 6:15 amVegur is pretty close to Myriad (but not as good).
michael
August 7th, 2009 6:39 am@DS
with CSS @fontface you can embed,
with images you can embed the font,
with flash you can embed the font,
there are some tools in js and php who convert your text to a image file.
tsdln
August 7th, 2009 6:51 amwhat a list..i got it..perfect 4 typography…thanks
Maxime
August 7th, 2009 7:00 amI love free fonts! Thx
Mugros
August 7th, 2009 7:20 amI don’t like these Free Fonts posts.
Most of the time they are not “free”. Mostly they are free for personal use but here are a lot of professionals. So you have to read through all the terms to see if it is free for commercial uses. This should be done before posting “free” fonts.
aR
August 7th, 2009 7:53 amGreat and exitng collection. Start to download them all. Thank you SM. I will write a post about this page on my Blog.
Patrick B.
August 7th, 2009 8:00 amBravo! Très jolies fontes, belle initiative!
::
Shawn
August 7th, 2009 8:10 amWow. This is one of the best collections of ACTUALLY USEFUL fonts I’ve seen in awhile! Thank you!
aniec2
August 7th, 2009 8:48 amLove it!
Matthew Nuzum
August 7th, 2009 8:57 am@Mugros I agree, “free” is used quite loosely, but that doesn’t mean there’s no value.
I really like the font and the premise behind Tiresias and it is a GPL font w/ a clarification that you can use it in a document w/out requiring the document being GPL’d as well.
toymachiner62
August 7th, 2009 9:18 am@DS you can just create an image with the font you want and then set that image as the background to an tag for example. Then in your CSS you just give the tag the property of “text-indent:-9999px;” Now your special font will be visible and the text will not.
Yuri van Essen
August 7th, 2009 9:33 am@DS
Well, just like you are saying, it’s mainly for headers, logo’s and so on. Using system fonts is a crucial part of webdesigning and you can still make beautifull sites with them. Try experimenting with line height, letter & word spacing…
Jason
August 7th, 2009 9:51 amNeeded some more fonts. Thank you.
jericho
August 7th, 2009 10:26 amStop copying articles from hongkiat and other blogs!!!!!!!!!!!!!! losers
Fake
August 7th, 2009 10:30 amТак а чо, кроме «ДНИ» кириллических шрифтов нету?
Keith Storm
August 7th, 2009 11:40 am@DS
Check out TypeSelect:
http://www.typeselect.org
Andreas
August 7th, 2009 12:17 pmomg – which one to check out first? ;-)
Wondering
August 7th, 2009 12:24 pmHow the hell is Andale Mono New exactly?
Ian
August 7th, 2009 12:45 pmAndale Mono is under the reminder section, not the new section. :)
Chris Robinson
August 7th, 2009 2:47 pmSome nice ones
Terrance
August 7th, 2009 7:22 pmThanks. Fonts are so important in design and how it plays a important part with the visitors, really do encourage us to spend some time analysis the optimized fonts for our site.
David Boni
August 7th, 2009 8:47 pmIt should be mentioned that CP Mono does indeed have lowercase glyphs. There’s also various weights… making it extremely awesome! I recommend everyone go grab it right now. Coolest monospace font I’ve seen in a while.
Retheesh
August 8th, 2009 12:26 amGood collection of fonts….Thank you
klausany
August 8th, 2009 2:25 amNice fonts!
shsihkebab
August 8th, 2009 5:44 amHOLY GAWD MOTHERRUSSIA! awesome frggin coolness fonts and its darn free!
Riyan
August 8th, 2009 10:33 amKiller fonts Thk’SS
Robin
August 8th, 2009 11:08 amThanks for the list
johnnyz525
August 8th, 2009 11:35 amAwesome…this a great collection and some are even new! Thanks
Josh
August 8th, 2009 1:08 pmpost 18 : If smashing was any good they would list licensing info, or at least mention it. Alas all they can do is make lists of thing.
K Richard Douglas
August 8th, 2009 1:28 pmThe perfect blog brings value to its readers. You have achieved that. Thanks.
Fred K
August 8th, 2009 9:58 pmA few clear ripoffs in there … no surprise since these are free. And surprisingly few really good ones. But that happens when these lists go round and round so, again, no surprise.
Also, someone mentioned @font-face previously … beware that browser support of this fine method is spotty, plus there are any number of licensing issues that come into play if you do use the @font-face method for webfonts (yes, even “free” ones). Zeldman had a great summary of the webfonts state recently (on zeldman.com), you’d do well to read up on it. There’s a WG at W3C looking at the webfonts issue as well. Meaning, it’s a thornier issue than it may seem at first glance. Meanwhile, for those with cash in hand, there are services like typekit and kernest (to name a few) that may be of interest.
Anyway. ./.
Venkatesh
August 9th, 2009 3:38 amit’s very useful! Thank you for Smashing Magazine!!
Peter Baker
August 9th, 2009 5:33 amYou’ve done a great job compiling these fonts. Most free fonts are so peculiar in their kerning/leading that you realize WHY they’re free. But these are very solid!
Thanks so much for putting in this much work,
Peter Baker
Ravernaught
August 9th, 2009 5:35 amGo Ripe, love it!!!
Adam Fairhead
August 9th, 2009 10:00 amNice round up of new free fonts. I’d love to see them separated by license, too, if another one of these comes along. For the sake of making life easier when the tab bar becomes unwieldy with all the font pages open!
Great work.
Tuts King
August 9th, 2009 2:42 pmIt’s nice to see a new list of free fonts. Well done.
Silverback
August 9th, 2009 11:32 pmThanx, some of them are really great. Love Pinvoke Pixel Fonts and Vegur.
Andrew Butterworth
August 10th, 2009 12:24 am@DS
There are several techniques you can use. A common one is to simply create the text you would like in Photoshop and then simply cut it out. You then use CSS to use the image whilst also still having the text there as well but indent it 9999px off the screen. This way when images are disabled or styles then your page will still read with a text header there as well.
There are other ways like SIFr flash replacement and the CSS embed property that will become more popular once CSS3.0 becomes mainstream.
Hope that helps
Good list of fonts – thanks SM
Will
August 10th, 2009 6:38 amGreat list! I can always use new fonts.
petar
August 10th, 2009 9:40 amnew fonts?
Cigdem
August 10th, 2009 10:17 amI just cant download M+ Outline fonts, they look pretty neat but when I go to the webpage, I get lost
Carina
August 10th, 2009 2:01 pmThank you :) My favourites are Days, Andale and Mentone!
Fahai Media
August 10th, 2009 8:09 pmGreat List!
I just wonder why you guyz keep posting Nilland font again and again. Its a great font though ;)
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/05/11/15-fresh-high-quality-free-fonts/
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/search-results/?domains=www.smashingmagazine.com&q=Nilland&sa=Google+Search&sitesearch=www.smashingmagazine.com&client=pub-6779860845561969&forid=1&channel=3942503296&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&safe=active&flav=0000&sig=ZKMPj-qL6g57hzX6&cof=LH%3A50%3BLW%3A138%3BL%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.smashingmagazine.com%2Fwp-content%2Fthemes%2FSM-theme%2Fimg%2Flogo.gif%3BS%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.smashingmagazine.com%3BFORID%3A11&hl=en
Tom
August 11th, 2009 4:32 amGood fonts!
Francois
August 11th, 2009 7:29 amSmashing Mag certainly SMASHES! Can’t wait to get your new book!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Viviana
August 11th, 2009 7:46 amVery Usefull!
Thanks a lot!
Fragmented
August 11th, 2009 3:31 pmAs usual. Totally useful! Thanks!
Sam Grant
August 13th, 2009 3:41 amGreat collection. It never ceases to amazes me how fontographers continue to deliver unique and functional typography. This set of fonts is definitely a welcome addition to any designer’s CPU. Thanx!
carlos
August 13th, 2009 6:55 amusefull as ever here!
Riccardo
August 14th, 2009 7:44 amSome beautiful fonts there. Thank you!
389
August 18th, 2009 5:51 amthx
sayan mukherjee
August 18th, 2009 8:29 amgreat collection…and thanx for shairing.
Fran
August 20th, 2009 4:51 pmThank you!!! Beautiful fonts!
54
August 24th, 2009 10:01 pmthanks~~~~
nunid
September 3rd, 2009 7:54 amThank Verry Much …
gabriel
September 17th, 2009 6:38 amare a beatifull fonts,
thank you very much
Danil
September 26th, 2009 9:36 amIt’s great Vegur!!!
matt
October 12th, 2009 5:47 pmwow, amazing work. Ripe is now my favorite. The rest is still awesome.
Thank you!
Annie Olsen
October 16th, 2009 6:01 amI was just made aware of this page–thank you very much, Mr Friedman, for including Andika Basic in your list! We are honored to be in such good company. Just a note: only the regular weight font is available at this time. As other styles (italic, bold, and bold italic are planned) and characters are finished, they will be added to the free package.
OHoRubpost fm Thailand
November 19th, 2009 1:54 pmGreat! Useful ^^
Thanks you.
Prince XP
December 22nd, 2009 12:55 am***Rough-Draft***
font is showing errow plz help i need
Advnced Thank&
From :Shehzad Badini
sonofthesun
January 3rd, 2010 6:29 amThe download link for Aller font is bad – here is the updated one:
http://nyhedsrum.dmjx.dk/web/Nyhedsrum.nsf/dx/skrift.htm
Thanks,
charlie
Justin Carroll
February 26th, 2010 10:50 pmCalluna, CP Mono Beta and Pinvoke Pixel Fonts. Sick, sick and sick. Love it.
leke
July 2nd, 2010 1:44 pmThK.
ranjan das
July 14th, 2010 2:59 amNice fonts
eshraq
September 1st, 2010 10:44 amthanks for the unique test..
shabi
September 18th, 2010 1:07 amhoo!! beautiful fonts there. Thank you!
renzz
March 1st, 2011 5:12 pmGracias Bro… tan muy buenas las fuentes
deivee
May 11th, 2011 4:12 pmexelente
Andrej
May 16th, 2011 12:03 amreally not bad
Andrej
May 16th, 2011 12:06 amyes
hotel de charme en provence
October 13th, 2011 12:44 pmThat’s very academic writing