[go: up one dir, main page]

Some of the best free fonts

Viewpoint

As a product designer I generally do my best to help people find and think about content, not fonts. My preference is for clear, practical typography that supports a product's visual identity and adds no friction between a person and their goal.

When it comes to free fonts, we've never had it so good. The variety and quality on offer is staggering, and is especially appreciated by old-school web designers who remember the tough choice between Arial, Georgia, Trebuchet MS, and Verdana. These days there are plenty more options but I have some trusty favourites that I consider using on practically every project. They're all popular, with good reason, and that would never prevent me from working with them.

These premium-quality fonts bring excellent typography within reach of every designer and I'm grateful for the generosity of the artists and organisations who've given them to us.

All fonts mentioned here are released under the SIL Open Font License meaning they're free to use for practically anything, with the exception of Charter, which has its own permissive license.

Some of the best free sans-serif fonts

Graphic showing the font Inter. Example text reads: We don't perceive the world as it is, we perceive it as it is useful for us to do so.

Inter by Rasmus Andersson

It can be difficult to remember life before Inter – an impressive “side project” by Rasmus Andersson. Solid, neat, reliable, flexible. Bold and beautiful and calm and respectful. A labour of love donated to the world to improve digital communication for all. Please don't overlook its many alternate characters, including a slashed zero, an upper-case I with serifs and a single-storey lower-case a.

Three samples of the Inter font
Inter has some interesting alternate glyphs you can use to customise your typography
Graphic showing the font Source Sans. Example text reads: We don't perceive the world as it is, we perceive it as it is useful for us to do so.

Source Sans by Paul D Hunt for Adobe

Originally released in 2012, and made variable in 2017, Source Sans was Adobe's first variable font, and one of the first production-quality variable fonts released by anybody. A smart, sensible, no-nonsense typeface, it has a kind of understated authority and a narrow footprint which made it the perfect choice for the Wildlife Photographer of the Year website we designed with the Natural History Museum in 2020. You'll also find it dotted around our Utopia website, where it contrasts nicely with the primary Garamond font.

Graphic showing the font Mona Sans. Example text reads: We don't perceive the world as it is, we perceive it as it is useful for us to do so.

Mona Sans by GitHub

In 2022, much to my surprise and delight, GitHub released a pair of high-quality variable fonts for free: Mona Sans and her slightly squarer sidekick Hubot Sans. Each typeface has variable axes for weight, width, and slant, providing plenty of flexibility for digital and print design work. I prefer Mona's tasteful softness and more rounded shapes but I'd definitely consider Hubot for the right project.

Some of the best free serif fonts

Graphic showing the font Charter. Example text reads: We don't perceive the world as it is, we perceive it as it is useful for us to do so.

Charter by Matthew Carter for Bitstream

A 1980's typeface that has survived for reasons of quality, practicality, and good taste, Charter has the appearance of a pretty standard serif at first glance. On closer inspection it has a real elegant beauty: fine features, chiselled serifs, and just-right geometry and spacing. I highly recommend reading Matthew Butterick's introduction to Charter and downloading his package of the font files.

Graphic showing the font DM serif text. Example text reads: We don't perceive the world as it is, we perceive it as it is useful for us to do so.

DM Serif Text by Colophon Foundry

I discovered DM Serif Text relatively recently. I forget where I first saw it but I was surprised to find it freely available on Google Fonts. It has that premium aesthetic that's so rare in free fonts. It's also available in a Display weight with more thick/thin contrast for using at larger sizes. It has a soft-but-serious authority/news headline vibe that I love. It's only available in a single bold weight so would probably need pairing with a partner font for body text.

Some of the best free mono (and mono-ish) fonts

Graphic showing the font jetbrains mono. Example text reads: We don't perceive the world as it is, we perceive it as it is useful for us to do so.

JetBrains Mono by Philipp Nurullin for JetBrains

Released in 2020, JetBrains Mono is a distinctive, simplified mono with a variable weight axis and a tall x-height for better legibility. As soon as I discovered this font I added it to iTerm and Sublime Text and never looked back. It's soft and comfortable, and has beautiful code ligatures.

Three samples of the jetbrains mono font
Some of the code ligatures in JetBrains Mono
Graphic showing the font Free font ibm plex mono. Example text reads: We don't perceive the world as it is, we perceive it as it is useful for us to do so.

Plex Mono by Mike Abbink and Bold Monday for IBM

With its design "rooted in the idea of man and machine", IBM Plex (2018) is a family of typefaces, including Sans, Serif, and Mono variants. The Mono flavour has a kind of blocky charm with hard and soft elements that blend together into a friendly, technical-but-not-too-technical character. The Sans font – with variable weight and width axes – is also lovely, especially with its alternate g and a characters. Every glyph in the family is a little work of art and the Plex website is well worth exploring.

Two samples of the ibm plex mono font
IBM Plex Mono is a true mono font, with every glyph sharing the same width
Graphic showing the font ia writer quattro. Example text reads: We don't perceive the world as it is, we perceive it as it is useful for us to do so.

iA Writer Quattro by iA

iA Writer Quattro is perfect when you want the mono "code" aesthetic without the actual mono size and spacing limitations. They keep things nicely organised for coding purposes but it can be tiring to read long-form content in mono fonts. In 2018 iA released three variable fonts – all based on IBM Plex Mono – for their Writer app. There's a detailed post on the iA website with the modifications illustrated and some background info on variable fonts, optical weights, line height, and typographic localisation. Of the three iA fonts, Quattro is the most unique and my favourite.

Two samples of the ia writer quattro font
iA Writer Quattro has four different glyph widths, so an M is wider than an i or a k
Three samples of the Space Grotesk font at small and large sizes

Space Grotesk by Florian Karsten Studio

Based on Space Mono (2016) by Colophon Foundry, Space Grotesk (2018) is a more readable mono-style font. Some of the serifs have been chopped off and the wider characters have gained some breathing room. The result is more usable in non-coding contexts while still feeling spiritually connected to the original Mono version. I'm not a fan of the default g and y characters but much nicer alternates are included.

Three samples of the Space Grotesk font at small and large sizes
Space Grotesk has alternate g and y characters if you don't like the default versions, and also has some quirky symbols

Beauty at what cost? (None)

When considering fonts for a project, some of the most important factors are legibility, brand and audience suitability, and cost. If you start with a high-quality, legible, free typeface and experiment with size, weight, colour, line height, and (subtle) letter spacing, you might find these free options will get you further than you'd think. These are professional fonts crafted and maintained by experts and they can help your content land the way it deserves to.