20 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 Kilogram, Adelle, Ayita Pro, Hattori Hanzo Typeface, Andron, Tertre, Luxi Sans, Sapir, Otari 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.
- 25 New High Quality Free Fonts
- 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.
20 Fresh High Quality Free Fonts
Kilogram
A very bold, striking and unique font which may perfectly serve for headlines. The font can be downloaded and used free of charge for both non-commercial and commercial work.
Luxi Sans
A very clean and legible sans-serif font that can be used for headings and body copy.
Otari Bold Limited (Registration is required)
Otari is vibrant and contemporary, but serious and built to last. Its character shines in display type, but doesn’t interfere at text sizes. Otari Bold Limited is available for free download.
Museo Slab 500 and 500 Italic (Registration is required, PDF Specimen)
Museo Slab is robust slab serif which comes in 12 styles. The font family supports a very wide range in languages and is a complete OpenType typeface. Each weight counts 455 glyphs.
Adelle Bold and Adelle Bold Italic (Registration is required, discount code is provided)
The OpenType Basic version, full commercial licence, of Adelle Bold and Bold Italic can be downloaded free of charge. Adelle is a slab serif typeface conceived specifically for intensive editorial use, mainly in newspapers and magazines. The typeface can be used for subheadings and headlines.
Lobster font
A bold condensed script font with hundreds of subtle ligatures and alternates. The Lobster font contains over 70 ligatures and 37 terminal forms. The font supports full Latin1 Charset.
Hattori Hanzo Typeface
This free font is stylish and clean; it was created for headings and short text and is especially suited to items such as infographics and charts. Designed by Roman Shamin.
Sketchetik Light (Registration is required)
Sketchetik is a hand-drawn font in four styles: light, regular, bold and black. It is recommended for use as display typeface. Only light weight is available for free download and use. Registration is required to download the files.
Ayita Pro SemiBold | Ayita Pro Thin Italic (Registration and checkout are required)
Ayita Pro is a cheerful sans serif design by Jim Ford. Ayita’s open shapes render faithfully at small point sizes and on device screens while the compact design allows more characters per line for headlines. The Ayita Pro fonts feature a typographically-rich Latin character set, with OpenType features for advanced design applications.
Andron (Private use only!)
A rich serif font designed by Andreas Stötzner. It contains accents for Roman, Germanic, Slavi, Hungarian, Baltic and Turkish languages. The font is being designed, and the author could use some feedback. Also notice other open source fonts available on the site.
Free Font Sapir
Actually, Sapir was designed as a stop gap, while waiting for better, professionally designed fonts for linguistics. Available in two styles — Regular and Italic. Designed by Eric Schiller.
Fat Love (personal use only, currently unavailable, mirror)
An experimental bold typeface with playful letters. Created by Jonathan Calugi. Available for personal use only, no commercial use.
Tertre Extra Bold and Extra Bold Italic (Registration is required)
Tertre is a display/short text typeface with a wide range of applications from signage or posters to menus and pricelists; branding, packaging or publishing. The letters have no overhangs and the stroke thickness of capitals and lower case letters is identical, making hinting or anti-aliasing more uniform at any point size and zoom combination. Two weights, Extra Bold and Extra Bold Italic are available for free download and use.
Franchise Bold
Franchise is a strong display typeface meant to communicate your message quickly and with power. The characters are drawn to achieve a unifomity without compromising style. Strong, memorable and free. You may want to support the designer by making a small donation.
Surface Medium
Free humanist sans-serif font that may serve for catchy and attractive corporate headlines in web designs and booklets. Unfortunately, only one style (Medium) is available. Free for personal and commercial use.
Clementine Sketch Font
To make this font display correctly — that is, with the beginnings and ends of each word closed — you must begin each word with a capital letter and end each word with the symbol ^. (There are two irregularities: W & V. If a word contains a W, you must end the preceding letter with a ^. If a word contains a V, you must end the preceding letter with a ^ and capitalize the letter following the V.) example: Amazingly^ Fe^w^ Discotheques^ Pro^vIde^ Jukeboxes^.
Soraya
Half serif, half sans serif. Capital letters A-Z, available only in Illustrator AI format.
Triskweline: A new fixed-width font for programmers
The TrueType TTF version of Triskweline works only at size 10 pt, which should do for your programming editor of choice. However, printing will look funny, as will using the font in word processors like Word or drawing tools like Corel Draw. If your editor supports it, prefer the pixel-font versions of Triskweline (.FON or .PCF).
Barrister Sans Light
Barrister Sans is a geometric sans-serif designed initially as a corporate Cyrillic typeface which quickly evolved into fully grown typeface, available in Latin, Cyrillic and Greek codepages. It includes a set of 5 weights plus their matching italics, with several Opentype features as ordinals, fractions & tabular lining. Barrister Sans is a modern tech-looking sans serif alternative for all your needs. Available for free download until the 16th of May 2010.
Reminder
Please notice that the free fonts listed below are still available for free download and use.
FF Nuvo OT Medium (Registration is required)
Designed by Siegfried Rückel, it’s a contemporary type design with vertical contrast, and especially the characters a, g and y show the calligraphic touch. Suitable for magazine design from headlines to longer texts as well as for advertising, packaging and corporate design. A free download for a limited time. OpenType.
Mayberry Pro SemiBold (Registration is required)
AscenderFonts still offers the font Mayberry Pro Semi Bold 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.
Last Click
So You Need A Typeface (Infographics)
A nice infographics that can actually help you select a typeface for your design work. You may want to search for the path to Comic Sans.





























Tom Something
May 11th, 2010 10:17 amOne of the best round-ups I’ve seen. Great selection!
gusi
August 16th, 2010 3:22 pmthank you very much (^ .^)
Jacob Gube
May 11th, 2010 10:38 amI’m lovin’ Franchise Bold – I’m going to be putting this font into action real soon! Thank you for this awesome list, Vitaly.
Julian Gaviria
May 11th, 2010 10:43 amGreat roundup
Megan
May 11th, 2010 10:51 amThis is a really great bunch of fonts: thanks for taking the time to compile these. I got sidetracked from my ‘work’ by this article for about half an hour…
logoforten
May 11th, 2010 11:12 amnot all are free…. :(
Smashing Editorial
May 11th, 2010 11:15 amThey are all free – we checked the license agreements. What seems to be the problem?
Meaghan
May 11th, 2010 12:23 pmOnly the light version of Barrister Sans is free. A minor issue, but you should probably mention it in your post.
Smashing Editorial
May 11th, 2010 1:17 pmYou are right, thank you. The article was updated.
marlaine
May 11th, 2010 3:34 pmit’s only may 11…it’s no longer free : /
marlaine
May 11th, 2010 7:41 pmmy apologies
i didn’t realize you had to ‘check out’ to see that the price is reduced to 0 :)
Watafak
May 11th, 2010 11:20 amI have free fonts for download in my site. All designed by me, i hope u like it. http://www.watafak.com.ar/trabajos.html?principal=bogus-hyperfuente.html
acara
May 17th, 2010 3:17 pmmarvellous works Watafak ! i love it
David A
May 11th, 2010 11:28 am“The Homestagers” text you’re showing with Lobster link is not Lobster. It’s a sample of another script font the Lobster designer was using to illustrate a point.
Pablo Impallari
May 11th, 2010 12:25 pmYep, i’ts a lettering work by Laura Meseguer. It was there to illustrate people about ligatures.
Guest
May 11th, 2010 11:28 amAh, too bad that most of them do not include cyrillic letters.
paul
May 11th, 2010 11:42 amLobster Font is really nice, it would be great if you could add information saying if the licence allows embedding with @font-face or Cufon
Pablo Impallari
May 11th, 2010 12:18 pmThe Lobster loves to be font-faced.
The ligatures feature will be only available on browser that support it.
paul
May 11th, 2010 12:35 pmthanks, I’ll try it out
Ted Goas
May 11th, 2010 12:00 pmI’ve enjoyed Smashing much more since you’ve gotten away from the list post templates and am hoping you’re just throwing one in every now and then…
Smashing Editorial
May 11th, 2010 1:19 pmNo worries, lists are “extra bonus posts” which are published additionally to our regular schedule. If you find these post useless, please feel free to check the second post publish today instead and just skip this one.
boomtastic
May 12th, 2010 8:37 amThanks Ted we were all really hoping the powers that be would take this site and make it meet only your desires. It’s really great to hear that you think lists stink. Cause I think everyone else kind of likes them, or at least we did until you decided they were uncool. We would hate to upset your delicate little feelings especially since it must be very hard for you to just NOT read that one. So we are all changing our minds so that we all only like what you like! ALL THESE HELPFUL AND INFORMATIVE LISTS BE DAMNED!!! I think they should just shut down smashing magazine, reformat everything and make it all about what Ted wants, then re-open the thing, so only Ted is pleased. Good thinking Ted! Way to be a team player!
Stefan
May 13th, 2010 12:49 amI can’t understand whats so wrong about lists?! They’re almost the only posts that I go trough thoroughly. (The rest I just skim through :P)
Ben
May 11th, 2010 12:25 pmNice Collection must have taken a while to put together, been looking for some decent fonts, good find!
Sacha
May 11th, 2010 12:48 pmWow, a list of free fonts! on Smashing Magazine! I’d have never imagined that in a million years…
More seriously, those are great fonts, so thanks! But like Ted Goas said, beware of the dark side…
Sulpher
May 11th, 2010 1:06 pmVitaly, thanks for great and useful article! A must have for any modern designer.
texcut
May 11th, 2010 1:31 pmthx alot, awesome article!
StealthyLoner69
May 11th, 2010 2:06 pmAbsoulutely stunning collection … one of the best I’ve seen here so far.
Sneh
May 11th, 2010 2:23 pmLoving this! Thanks :)
Thomas
May 11th, 2010 4:31 pmAwesome selection, thanks a lot for sharing.
Jimmy
May 11th, 2010 5:34 pmLovely fonts! Thanks for posting. The only turn-off is that many require registration to download something that is ‘free.’ I’m not a designer so I always pass..
Karissa R.
May 11th, 2010 7:34 pmThank you for these nice free fonts. It’s been a while since you guys posted a round-up of free fonts. Kilogram and Franchise are nice for headlines, downloading those! However, I’ve been seeing too much sans-serif fonts lately, where’s the serif love?
Shyen Lee
May 11th, 2010 7:48 pmReally useful font….
Phosil
May 11th, 2010 7:56 pmGreat thanks for helpful articles.
hdoug
May 11th, 2010 8:23 pmthank you!
thank you!
erick
May 11th, 2010 8:57 pmmi amigo te has ganado un 100… sabes publicas muy buenas cosas me agrada eso. Gracias fantastico.
Rahul
May 11th, 2010 9:05 pmFree is always Welcome!!!
Gaurav Mishra
May 11th, 2010 9:58 pmlove this post..yayy!!
John
May 11th, 2010 10:27 pmGood,I like them.
angeloff
May 11th, 2010 11:13 pmAnother great collection!
Joel
May 12th, 2010 12:10 amDelicious!
Jurica
May 12th, 2010 12:48 amFranchise is my favorite, and has very nice website;)
Thx Derek, and Smashing
Sid
May 12th, 2010 12:48 amAwesome List … :*) ..
Rolando S. Bouza
May 12th, 2010 1:55 amYeah! All great fonts… But I have to say… I felt something special when I saw Kilogram! Awesome font Kilogram!
lobster-fan
May 12th, 2010 2:54 amThe Lobster font you mentioned is GREAT!
But could anyone tell me, how to use it’s awesome ligatures (e.g. in photoshop), because I can’t figure this out?
Thanks!
Pablo Impallari
May 12th, 2010 5:27 amIn Photoshop they should be ON by default, they just happens as you type.
Ryan Cowles
May 12th, 2010 3:59 amThanks for another great set of fonts!
Anonymous Squidward
May 12th, 2010 4:31 amWouldn’t it be great if we could grab @font-face kits for fonts at the same time instead of having to generate them manually? :)
tommy
May 12th, 2010 4:43 amHi Vitaly,
thanks for this great selection. I really appreciate it :)
Keep up the good work,
tommy
Alyssa Roll
May 12th, 2010 5:01 amlove the lobster font! great display type.
Igor
May 12th, 2010 6:15 amLobster is beautiful :) Great Fonts. Thanks
Alex
May 12th, 2010 6:26 amthx for sharing! this is a fun clicking marathon :)
Jean-Baptiste Levee
May 12th, 2010 7:09 amYou may also want to check out our brand new release, as we offer a free trial version of one weight: Acier BAT Text Noir.
http://beta.batfoundry.com/catalogue_3_acier-bat_.html
Sergei Tatarinov
May 12th, 2010 7:11 amSuch a GREAT bunch of fonts, thanks Vitaly :)
As for round-ups’ thing, fonts are not logos or websites or whatever usually being showcased in round-ups, right? I mean posts like “100 … logos lalala nanana” are really not impressive. Why? Because they are mostly just about 100 (in this case) pictures placed in the post one after another, they usually are all from logopond or such gallery, and they lack any personal part like why the author wanted to showcase them or why is that logo so special etc. For logos (or any other common stuff) everyone can go to a gallery and surf through thousands of works, no matter what’s the purpose.
Now, what I think about round-ups of fonts is that they are really useful for most of the people. Especially when they showcase some fresh font of really high quailty. Look at this above post, it’s great. Why? Because the author has not just put it all together in half an hour, but instead has made a thorough research on each of those fonts and put a detailed description, terms of usage, some history and given a friendly suggestion for what part of design each font could be used. Isn’t it enough to give such post five stars?
I’m not saying that only lazy people like it because they are lazy to go and search for desired kind of font, no. Of course, we know some font providers (dafont, myfonts etc) where to go for what we need, but we all value our time, don’t we? And such posts are our friends, you see it and you save hours of your time because you get a straight direction, just a few clicks and you’ve got a handful of tools for your current and upcoming projects.
On the other side, if you are already familiar to all of them, just don’t blame smashing; for there are a lot of people who need such round-ups. Not everyone knows where to find them and even less number of people can go for paid fonts.
Vitaly Friedman
May 13th, 2010 2:48 amThank you for your kind comment, Sergei. Indeed, this is why we keep on producing such round-ups. This post took a lot of time to prepare, so I sincerely hope that people do not consider it to be lazy content. Sometimes even a shorter post like this may take longer than a nice detailed write-up.
Tiago
May 12th, 2010 8:35 amWOW!!!
Drew
May 12th, 2010 8:36 amNoice selection… thanks!
Kirsten
May 12th, 2010 11:44 amThanks so much for this. Great fonts! BTW: the path to Comic Sans is indeed hilarious. ;)
Thilnen
May 12th, 2010 12:27 pmThanks, there are some really nice fonts!
Greg Babula
May 12th, 2010 1:35 pmLove the Lobster font!
theivo
May 12th, 2010 8:25 pmMy thumbs for ‘ Barrister Sans ‘ ! Bravo!
Rodney Keeling
May 12th, 2010 11:33 pmAwesome collection! My slab-serif addiction has only increased! :O
Jeremiah selengia
May 13th, 2010 1:45 amGreat. Im really loving typography
Markus Vad Flaaten
May 13th, 2010 11:38 pmYay! Fonts!!! :)
Nice and varied collection.
ChrisA
May 14th, 2010 1:18 pmYou can still pick up Resonance Bold for free from Ascender as well. (Registration required).
http://www.ascenderfonts.com/info/resonance-bold-free-font.aspx
bee
May 15th, 2010 11:09 amReally cool fonts – thanks a lot for this list!
Dulce
May 15th, 2010 9:38 pmThanks for sharing this Vitaly. Going to use Barrister Sans on my upcoming projects.
Vertinix
May 16th, 2010 8:09 amGreat Fonts… I liked Kilogram font very much.
Thanks for useful sharing.
Ufuk Ömür
May 16th, 2010 11:45 amPijamalı hasta yağız şoföre.
Mayberry SemiBold – İstanbul
angel sanchez y sanchez
May 16th, 2010 11:35 pmlove lobster for my new site in developing
Lieven De Vleeschouwer
May 17th, 2010 5:43 amDelicious selection, really; there is no single font in this list I disliked!
Jasho
May 17th, 2010 7:19 amBarrister is no longer available for free. :(
lec
May 17th, 2010 7:45 amYou Forgot: “XXII Menga” ;)
new.myfonts.com/fonts/doubletwo/xxii-menga/
greetz
Pablo Impallari
May 19th, 2010 11:47 amThe Lobster Font is now included on Google Web Font!!
Eddie | Dream Media Productions
May 21st, 2010 12:31 pmLoving the fonts!!
Josip B
May 21st, 2010 2:21 pmGreat selection, here is one from Bosnia:
behance.net/Gallery/QUB-font/487834
Siby T George
May 21st, 2010 9:18 pmfonts are sooo beautiful
Evan Skuthorpe
June 2nd, 2010 1:09 amthanks for these, some great fonts here.
Reg Wright
June 3rd, 2010 5:54 amLobster and Franchise have to be my two favorite fonts of the last year. Ourstanding work. Also, does anyone known where The Homestagers font from Laura Meseguer might be purchased?
Prior Creative
June 10th, 2010 2:50 amThese are fab! Great stuff! Adelle is simply stunning!
JJuane
July 26th, 2010 5:16 amThank you for this high quality free fonts. I’ve downloaded the Lobster Font, very awesome font.
Dani Raykova
August 9th, 2010 6:51 amLove Kilogram. It’s fresh and unique.
PAGE M
August 10th, 2010 1:49 amI love it~! Thank you so much. ^^
nancyu
August 13th, 2010 4:53 ammost of them aren´t free
gusi
August 16th, 2010 3:24 pmLove you
( .)( .)
) . (
( y )
vinod
September 25th, 2010 9:49 pmHow is this Museo Slab 500 and 500 Italic font free?
Is it just me or most of the fonts listed above are paid to use.
Regards,
vinod
siby t george
November 22nd, 2010 11:53 pmgreat fonts…and thanks for sharing this:)
Felipe Genuino
November 26th, 2010 5:58 amAdorei essas fontes
Obrigado
siby t george
December 9th, 2010 11:12 pmsuperb….thanks a lot:)
siby t george
January 4th, 2011 12:32 amnice… thanks a lot:)
welly
February 11th, 2011 10:22 ami really like ayita font, but so sad i can’t get it for free using.
could u please tell me how i could get the AYITA font for free?
Thanks in advance
Timwi
March 30th, 2011 1:28 amThe font “Otari” listed on this page is not free. It costs several tens of dollars. It’s really annoying to have a really good font listed as “free” and then to find out that it isn’t free…
ScrappyDigits
August 1st, 2011 2:42 amThere are some really fun fonts on this list!
Thank you very much!
Mary
Ronald Kasendwa
February 10th, 2012 7:32 pmThanks for the collection. It’s very useful!
rashomon
April 20th, 2012 9:11 pmGreat selection that’s always fresh! Thank you SM :)
“Barrister Sans Light” link doesn’t work :/ Or I’m missing something?
Mark
July 8th, 2012 3:56 amSuch a crying shame that “Soraya” is AI only and was never made into a font.
Nishan
October 2nd, 2012 3:06 amNat Agapov – OOOOOOoooh geeez You’re one of THEM. It took Vitali like 6 days just to DESIGN our invites. and that desont even count revisions in the middle and making them.