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20 New 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 Madawaska ExtraLight, Apparatus SIL, League Gothic, Contra 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.

[Offtopic: by the way, have you already visited Smashing Magazine's Facebook fan page? Join the community for a stream of useful resources, updates and giveaways!]

New Free Fonts For Your Designs

Madawaska ExtraLight
Madawaska is a rugged slab-serif font in 7 weights with fractions, old style numerals & lining numerals. When you’re using Madawaska Jeans or Madawaska River styles in an OpenType savvy application, common letter pairs will be automatically replaced by custom pairs for a more realistic, gritty effect. Madawaska ExtraLight is available for free download and use.

Mada in 20 New High Quality Free Fonts

Apparatus SIL
The Apparatus SIL fonts were designed to provide most of the symbols needed to reproduce the textual apparatus found in major editions of Greek and Hebrew biblical texts. The fonts include the basic ASCII character set plus some international characters, Superscript characters, Certain Greek, Hebrew, Gothic (Fraktur) and other letters used for manuscripts and special punctuation. The font family consts of 4 weights: Regular, Italic, Bold and Bold Italic. It was designed for optimum clarity and compactness when printed at small point sizes.

Apparatus-sil in 20 New High Quality Free Fonts

League Gothic
League Gothic is a revival of an old classic Alternate Gothic No.1. It was originally designed by Morris Fuller Benton for the American Type Founders Company (ATF) in 1903. The company went bankrupt in 1993. And since the original typeface was created before 1923, the typeface is in the public domain. This font is a display sans-serif, available for free download and use in personal and commercial projects. Designed by The League Of Moveable Type.

Gothic1 in 20 New High Quality Free Fonts

Gothic2 in 20 New High Quality Free Fonts

Contra
This legible font family comes in 2 weights: Regular and Italic. It works best for headlines and in large sizes.

Contra in 20 New High Quality Free Fonts

Sorts Mill Goudy
A ‘revival’ of Goudy Oldstyle and Italic, with features among which are small capitals (in the roman only), oldstyle and lining figures, superscripts and subscripts, fractions, ligatures, class-based kerning, case-sensitive forms, capital spacing. There is support for many languages that use latin script. Currently there is no bold, but artificial emboldening by a web browser isn’t especially offensive with these fonts. Serif text/display-font, designed by Barry Schwartz.

Barry1 in 20 New High Quality Free Fonts

Barry2 in 20 New High Quality Free Fonts

Calluna Regular (registration is required)
Calluna is a typeface with flow. Calluna supports a very wide range in languages and is a very complete OpenType typeface. Each font has overall 723 glyphs. To download the free regular weight, you’ll have to register at MyFonts.com. Designed by Jos Buivenga.

Call1 in 20 New High Quality Free Fonts

Call2 in 20 New High Quality Free Fonts

Goudy Bookletter 1911
A classic vintage serif font, based on Frederic Goudy’s Kennerley Oldstyle. Designed by Barry Schwartz.

Bookletter in 20 New High Quality Free Fonts

Public Gothic Family
Public Gothic Family is a little industrial, little vintage, little condensed, little bold. Public Gothic is a new font family, free to use in all your designs, commercial or non commercial. PB family members are PB Square, PB Vintage, PB Circular, PB Federal. It’s compatible with any OS (Mac T1, Win OTF, Win TTF).

Fr in 20 New High Quality Free Fonts

ArtBrush
A brushed script font for informal occasions. The @font-face-kit is included.

Artbrush in 20 New High Quality Free Fonts

FFF Tusj
A distinctive, original script font that is supposed to be a handwritten version of Georgia. The font works best in very large size.

Tusj in 20 New High Quality Free Fonts

ITC Chino Bold Italic
International Type Corporation released a new text family ITC Chino that consists of 10 fonts. One weight, Chino Black Italic was released for free.

Chino in 20 New High Quality Free Fonts

Burnstown Dam
An original playful typeface that can be useful for family-related websites. Available in the OpenType format.

Burnstown in 20 New High Quality Free Fonts

Deibi
An original, playful free font, created by Wete, a Spanish type designer.

Typography-free-fonts-127 in 20 New High Quality Free Fonts

Tex Gyre Schola
A clean, strong, academic sans-serif font that can be used for formal documents and scientific works.

Tex in 20 New High Quality Free Fonts

Juvelo
A font family from The Crud Factory, inspired by Diethelm-Antiqua, and named ‘jewel’ in Esperanto. An italic is being developed.

Typography-free-fonts-147 in 20 New High Quality Free Fonts

Programming fonts: ProFont for Windows, Mac and Linux and Anonymous Pro (thanks, Chris Apalodimas).

Prog in 20 New High Quality Free Fonts

Sovereign™ Regular
Sovereign is a highly original serif family from G-Type’s Nick Cooke. Available for Mac and Win.

Typography-free-fonts-156 in 20 New High Quality Free Fonts

Experimental Free Fonts

Groteska
A blocky experimental font by Alberto Rodríguez.

Typography-free-fonts-117 in 20 New High Quality Free Fonts

VAL

Beho in 20 New High Quality Free Fonts

Beho2 in 20 New High Quality Free Fonts

Digitica
Another geometric font by the French type designer Samuel Delabarre.

Typography-free-fonts-110 in 20 New High Quality Free Fonts

Layer Cake and Soraya
Layer Cake (the first screensot below) is an isometric multiple layered type with capital letters A-Z, available only in Illustrator AI format. Soraya (the second screenshot) is half serif, half sans serif with capital letters A-Z, also available only in Illustrator AI format. Designed by Jakob Nylund.

Layer in 20 New High Quality Free Fonts

Soraya in 20 New High Quality Free Fonts

Badabum
Where does typography become art? Well, for instance in this font. The letters are difficult to read, but geometric forms are abstrac and captivaning. A creative font by Jonathan Calugi.

Geo in 20 New High Quality Free Fonts

Free Font Amadeus
A playful, @font-face compatible free font by the foundry Bright Ideas.

Amadeus in 20 New High Quality Free Fonts

20 Dingbat Fonts That Are Actually Useful

Typography-free-fonts-133 in 20 New High Quality Free Fonts

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).

Chunk1 in 20 New High Quality Free Fonts

Chunk2 in 20 New High Quality Free Fonts

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.

Tit in 20 New High Quality Free Fonts

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.

Rough in 20 New 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 20 New High Quality Free Fonts

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).

Allersans in 20 New High Quality Free Fonts

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.

Mplus in 20 New High Quality Free Fonts

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.

Andalemono in 20 New High Quality Free Fonts
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:

Junc1 in 20 New High Quality Free Fonts

Junc3 in 20 New 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 20 New High Quality Free Fonts

The team here at Smashing Magazine. Mostly Sven & Vitaly.

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  1. 1
    marlaine
    November 15th, 2009 6:18 pm

    great – thanks :)
    i always love FREE things!!

  2. 2
    gamma-normids
    November 15th, 2009 6:19 pm

    Oh, thanks a lot. These are always useful :)

  3. 3
    Kaelzhang
    November 15th, 2009 6:21 pm

    Amazing collection! Thanks to share.

    I like those geometric fonts so much~

  4. 4
    uberdesigner
    November 15th, 2009 6:21 pm

    Thank you soooooo much! Twitted and also went to delicious!

  5. 5
    Aaron White
    November 15th, 2009 6:21 pm

    Nice collection, these are perfect for my new design!

  6. 6
    Floris Fiedeldij Dop
    November 15th, 2009 6:29 pm

    Yesssssh! I just spend an hour browsing the web for 2 of these fonts, and what do you guys do? Freaking put them both in 1 article, 5 minutes later. Excellent </burns>

  7. 7
    Floris Fiedeldij Dop
    November 15th, 2009 6:38 pm

    Public Gothic Family is strange, upon installing it every program that renders it, takes 15 seconds on the latest iMac beachballing, with every preview change. Basically put Photoshop into a coma. I had to uninstall it. What a shame!

  8. 8
    gjsignal,blogspot.com
    November 15th, 2009 7:05 pm

    just i need it :D

    i need a new look for my Forex blog, and here u are guys give me so many option to improve the typography

  9. 9
    miklb
    November 15th, 2009 7:07 pm

    Rough Draft 404’s at font squirrel, too bad, looks like a nice font to own.

  10. 11
    Design Informer
    November 15th, 2009 7:11 pm

    Great fonts! These are all really nice.

  11. 12
    Tai Travis
    November 15th, 2009 7:15 pm

    Great Collection Thanks!
    When it comes to Geometric fonts I can’t say I “get it”. I can’t even read some of them. I guess its an easy way to store decorative vector imagery like Dingbats.
    Unless I am missing something completely concerning Geometric fonts which is possible. Am I?

  12. 13
    OE Web Design Gold Coast
    November 15th, 2009 7:16 pm

    Thank you! Those are some very handy fonts I will definitely be able to utilize! Thanks again for the awesome post!

  13. 14
    giovannidema
    November 15th, 2009 7:32 pm

    what about….

    giving us a link to download a zip/rar pack comprehensive of all this fonts ?

    This proposal could be applied to every free-font post.

    Good fonts here, thank you very much.

  14. 15
    Amy
    November 15th, 2009 8:01 pm

    Copy note: I believe “Tex Gyre” is a serif face, not sans-serif as the blurb says.

    Tai: I don’t much get them either. I try to think of them as a jumping-off point for a very decorative display option, almost like illuminated caps from old manuscripts. Taking a letter or two from an appropriate geometric, outlining it, coloring and tweaking it and using it as a design element. I just never think of doing that though. :p

    Give me legible serifs and sans-serifs with good kerning pairs and ligatures any day!

    I love that there are several high-quality faces featured here. It’s maddening, yet brilliant, that houses are offering one weight of a font, especially when they aren’t stingy about it and offer the midrange roman or something, rather than “super bold condensed” or something. You wind up using the free weight, loving it, and then running to purchase the whole family. :)

  15. 16
    Waheed Akhtar
    November 15th, 2009 8:06 pm

    Thanks for these fonts. I liked Contra. I also reminded me the video game we use to play in our childhood named CONTRA :)

  16. 17
    dlv
    November 15th, 2009 8:57 pm

    I have to say… EXCELLENT MATERIAL has this post !!!

    clap clap clap

  17. 18
    Eric Kelsey
    November 15th, 2009 9:24 pm

    Good article :]

  18. 19
    Viknesh
    November 15th, 2009 10:25 pm

    Wonderful collection. Fonts are always useful. Thanks :-)

  19. 20
    vaibhav saxena
    November 15th, 2009 10:49 pm

    cool collection!
    Thanks 4 awesome font!

  20. 21
    Janice (5 Minutes for Mom)
    November 15th, 2009 10:55 pm

    Fantastic fonts – and free too! THANKS!

  21. 22
    let
    November 15th, 2009 10:58 pm

    Good collection, thanks a lot !
    But look at the Rough Draft, there’s a bad link.
    ;)

  22. 23
    Stefan Dosch
    November 15th, 2009 11:06 pm

    How could you forget Museo which is available for free in 3 weights: http://new.myfonts.com/fonts/exljbris/museo/ Cheers & thanks for the great article!!!

  23. 24
    JBantha
    November 15th, 2009 11:20 pm

    I love public gothic since the first day it was on public! god bless it

  24. 25
    Alejandro Paul
    November 16th, 2009 12:26 am

    Excellent fonts! Thank you for researching these and posting them.

    Another fantastic site / forum to get new fonts is http://www.pilo.me

    It is the best typography forum for graphic designers / typographers on the internet. I believe it is an invite only site, similar to ffffound and behance, but a little more homegrown and small townish, but the content they have available is amazing.

    Thank you again!

    • 26
      joenutz
      November 16th, 2009 7:53 am

      hey, Alejandro.. would it be too much for me to ask for an invite?

    • 27
      Wete
      November 17th, 2009 6:10 am

      Hola,
      ¿Eres Ale Paul? Soy Juanra, el diseñador que ha hecho la tipografía Deibi (incluída en este artículo de 20 fuentes gatuitas). El año pasado coincidí contigo en Barcelona, en la escuela IDEP con Eduardo Manso (yo soy alumno de Eduardo, pasastes un dia a ayudar a Eduardo con las correcciones). Tus tipografías son una fuente de insipiración buenísma, son las mejores tipos calígraficas modernas. ¿Me podrías pasar una invitación para la página esta que dices?
      Muchas gracias!

  25. 28
    dave
    November 16th, 2009 12:34 am

    am i going to get shot for saying that i really like calibri?

    love, dedicate mac enthusiast / despiser of times new roman.

  26. 29
    Phil
    November 16th, 2009 12:47 am

    i love this so much, thank you thank you thank you!

  27. 30
    Ant
    November 16th, 2009 1:00 am

    Oooh fonts!

  28. 31
    Callum Chapman
    November 16th, 2009 1:21 am

    I love the free experimental typefaces, especially Digitica – great post!

  29. 32
    Farid Hadi
    November 16th, 2009 1:58 am

    Wow! I just downloaded 18 of these fonts listed here! This is a great list. Thanks SM!

  30. 33
    matt
    November 16th, 2009 2:11 am

    Always love the free font posts!

  31. 34
    SonicE
    November 16th, 2009 2:34 am

    “20 New” ?!?!?!?!?! Some of these fonts are already announced here

  32. 35
    Hynek Zatloukal
    November 16th, 2009 2:39 am

    Thanks! Great!

  33. 36
    cattle
    November 16th, 2009 2:39 am

    Those “NEW” fonts are almost all the same as on older “free fonts” posts.. I’ve noticed that shamshingmagaze adding same freebies on the new posts and nothing new…

  34. 37
    Henning
    November 16th, 2009 2:59 am

    Don´t wanna be a spoiler, but why show “aeroportal” and tempt the tempted, when it clearly states:

    Aeroportal is a custom made typeface with exclusive rights for the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

    • 38
      Vitaly Friedman
      November 16th, 2009 4:46 am

      You are right, Henning – sorry, we missed it. The link was removed.

      • 39
        Per Olav Walmann
        November 16th, 2009 12:38 pm

        Thanks for reminding them, Henning! Both the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and myself wanted it to be available, but with restricted usage rights.

  35. 40
    Raul_Barriga
    November 16th, 2009 3:41 am

    I like it ,
    uhaa uhaa!!

  36. 41
    VictoriaAnn Design
    November 16th, 2009 5:10 am

    Thank you for sharing these, I just love Sovereign™ Regular and Deibi.

  37. 42
    evertt de sousa
    November 16th, 2009 5:24 am

    very nice this post.

  38. 43
    Michael_Cartwright
    November 16th, 2009 5:29 am

    Very nice list of fonts. I am always looking for something unique and legible.

  39. 44
    bunak
    November 16th, 2009 5:59 am

    FFF Tusj – bad archive :(

  40. 45
    Luc Lapierre
    November 16th, 2009 6:46 am

    Thanks for all the great stuff! Can’t wait for the Smashing Book next monday!

  41. 46
    cssah
    November 16th, 2009 7:05 am

    Fantastic fonts , I like Titilium font very awesome

  42. 47
    Alex
    November 16th, 2009 7:09 am

    Great! Thanks!

  43. 48
    Logos
    November 16th, 2009 7:39 am

    I’m sorry, but Vegur is a Myriad Pro ripoff…

  44. 49
    Akino
    November 16th, 2009 7:44 am

    Thanks! Great!

  45. 50
    Jez
    November 16th, 2009 8:00 am

    Awesome guys! ^_^

  46. 51
    Nick Yeoman
    November 16th, 2009 8:17 am

    Awesome! If your looking for more free font resources I’ve shared some too:
    http://www.nickyeoman.com/blog/graphic-design/68-free-fonts

  47. 52
    shymon
    November 16th, 2009 8:31 am

    These fonts can be considered as “high quality” only for english texts. They don’t contain any diacritic characters :(

  48. 53
    alekos karalazos
    November 16th, 2009 8:51 am

    I was hoping for atleast 1 greek font. but wht the h.ck thanks

  49. 54
    cutcopypaste
    November 16th, 2009 9:03 am

    what would be awesome? a zip file with all of the fonts. i know that may be problematical with some of the licence agreements, but maybe it would be ok for some of them.

  50. 55
    scantraxx
    November 16th, 2009 9:09 am

    Thank you verry much for this free fonts
    I like particulary “VAL” because this fonts is so fresh & pop and i like this

  51. 56
    Kathryn Merlihan
    November 16th, 2009 9:31 am

    Hey Smashing! Thanks for the free fonts. They look great!

  52. 57
    ostry-deXter
    November 16th, 2009 10:05 am

    FFF Tusj is the best! :) Thx

  53. 58
    Adam
    November 16th, 2009 11:15 am

    Another great collection of free fonts! Thanks!

  54. 59
    Evi Loveres
    November 16th, 2009 11:37 am

    Excellent Collection.
    Thank you very much for posting!

  55. 60
    sitesmais
    November 16th, 2009 12:25 pm

    great!
    free and good quality

  56. 61
    david
    November 16th, 2009 1:15 pm

    Buena recopilación Gracias desde Barcelona

  57. 62
    berthus
    November 16th, 2009 1:36 pm

    OPS Thank a lot

  58. 63
    Kuan
    November 16th, 2009 1:47 pm

    Cool Job man

  59. 64
    Greg
    November 16th, 2009 2:43 pm

    Hi, are these fonts save to use on a website through technics like @font-face or cufon?
    Or are they just save if not distributed by the site?

  60. 65
    Dzinepress
    November 16th, 2009 10:31 pm

    beautiful fonts which can help us for web and print media designing. thanks

  61. 66
    Colorflo
    November 17th, 2009 12:43 am

    Good post and nice collection. Titilium is my new all time fav… =)

  62. 67
    Code Red
    November 17th, 2009 3:26 am

    On Goudy Bookletter 1911, the example image displays “Antique Cock” in the bottom-right corner…nice one, my grandpappy would be proud.

    Great list, but a number of these are not ‘new’, as the post title claims….I know, hate the hater. :-)

  63. 68
    Matthias
    November 17th, 2009 4:10 am

    Very useful collection, thanks. Vegur is one of my favourites.

  64. 69
    Charlotte
    November 17th, 2009 4:16 am

    I love Smashing Mag! Thanks for all your great articles, I’m in font heaven with this one :)

  65. 70
    Bine
    November 17th, 2009 10:23 am

    great! :D

  66. 71
    Giovanni
    November 17th, 2009 8:51 pm

    Can never have enough fonts. These are nice!

  67. 72
    ZettaByte
    November 17th, 2009 10:02 pm

    Thanks… really appreciate all the great inspiration. Excellent collections.

  68. 73
    Aurora
    November 18th, 2009 1:28 am

    Love the fonts: just one question, though. You state that the Madawaska font is free, but when I go to the link, there’s only options to buy the font… I really want that font! :’(

  69. 74
    Klaas
    November 18th, 2009 5:42 pm

    Great, thanks to this post I finally found a font to use for my own site (which still is in development, but will be online in january). I am talking about the League Gothic, the capitals look so awesome that suddenly everything about my design feels right to me.
    Maybe I will post a something about the stages the design went through, when the site is online, maybe others will see/feel the same as me.
    Thanks again for the post and thanks League of Moveable Type for the font.
    Not much to see there, yet, but have a look at tunundmachen.de.

    Best
    Klaas

  70. 75
    Luke Jones
    November 19th, 2009 1:16 am

    Great thanks!

    Free stuff makes me happy.

  71. 76
    Agus
    November 22nd, 2009 11:54 am

    Thanks so much !!!

  72. 77
    Daniel D.
    November 24th, 2009 5:13 am

    Titillium Text will be updated at end of this year. For now there is a new fork called Titillium Maps with various widths on their homepage (download the full version).

    Best font ever!

  73. 78
    Ant
    December 11th, 2009 7:45 am

    What fonts from this article have cyrillic letters?

  74. 79
    Diane
    December 17th, 2009 9:18 pm

    I love all the fonts! cartoonish mostly :)

  75. 80
    jason
    December 30th, 2009 2:11 am

    I found it very informative as I have been researching a lot lately on practical matters such as you talk about youtube videos. Then sıcak video fans says to me erotik video spam emails going on sex video fans private pages.

  76. 81
    Jason
    January 3rd, 2010 4:07 pm

    Thanks for the great list of fonts! Love them!

  77. 82
    Midnight Oil
    January 15th, 2010 11:22 am

    Wow! Those are hot. Some really great ones in there, and all for free? Sweet!

    Here’s an article I did on 20 Rockin’ Block fonts: bit.ly/57E7Fd.

  78. 83
    Andrew-CreativeSync™
    January 18th, 2010 8:00 am

    Great, Thanks guys..we just had to RT to our followers! Keep in Sync™

  79. 84
    Lee
    January 19th, 2010 1:30 am

    many thanks! you dunno how much efforts you have saved!!

  80. 85
    Aleksandar Tasevski
    January 20th, 2010 7:58 am

    wow artbrush!!! just what I needed

  81. 86
    ThisIsInspired
    January 21st, 2010 10:43 am

    Vegur is a fantastic font. It’s very trim and thin, like Helvetica Neue Ultralight, but a bit more minimal and less blocky.

    Excellent selection. Thanks for posting!

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