In this installment of “Free for All,” I’ll cover just one type of freebie: everyone’s favorite, free fonts! You’ll find script fonts, modern fonts, funky fonts, and more. All told, there are more than 100 free fonts in this one article—enough to keep even the biggest type geek giddily building type spec sheets for weeks!
Please note that licenses on the fonts below vary from personal use only to free for commercial use. Some of both types require attribution to the artist. Please check the license on any font you download before using it in a project. And for another caveat on free fonts, see www.creativepro.com/blog/typetalk-are-free-fonts-worth-price.
Simply click an image to download the font or to be taken to a page with a download link. But before you go off to play with your new type, please click the Comments button and tell me what you’d like to see in future installments of “Free for All.” I’ll return to the regular format of five different types of free resources and tools in my next installment.
Grunge Fonts
Popularly referred to as “grunge fonts,” the group of typefaces officially classified as “distressed” first become popular as a result of the title treatment on the 1990s television show the X-Files (download it below!), and the craving for them has only increased since. The following free grunge fonts ought to quench your thirst—at least for a little while.
Handwritten and Hand-drawn Fonts
Get up close and personal with fonts based on others’ real life handwriting and on hand-drawn letterforms.
Funky Fonts
Although “funky fonts” isn’t a traditional typeface classification, it’s the best description for the following eclectic assortment of fonts.
High-Quality Fonts
This category is reserved for those fonts that benefit from the type designers’ great attention to detail and additional features not found in the average free font. Some of them, for instance, contain kerning and hinting data nearly on par with commercial fonts, for which you’d expect to pay a hundred dollars or more. Many of these are complete typefaces given away free to entice you to purchase more tyepfaces in a larger family of fonts. If you like the free samples, we encourage you to pay for the rest of the family and support quality type design.
What can I find free for you? Want more free fonts? More Photoshop brushes? How about more online applications that do this or that for free? Click the Comments button below to tell me what you’d like to see in future installments of “Free for All,” and I’ll do my best bloodhound impression to track it down for you.
Please note: Free for All will often link to resources hosted on external Web sites outside of the control of CreativePro.com. At any time those Web sites may close down, change their site or permalink structures, remove content, or take other actions that may render one or more of the above links invalid. As such neither Pariah S. Burke nor CreativePro.com can guarantee the availability of the third-party resources linked to in Free for All.
This article was last modified on January 8, 2023
This article was first published on June 15, 2009
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I found new cool site for free fonts. Over 90 000 fonts for download: fontsdir.com
Where can I download those front
Thank you for the free font
thanks a lot
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Thanks a lot!
Nice Fonts, for using greetings and some other appilications
nice
For my typography class
nice
its very usefull
thank for font
Thanks. I used to have one for CS3 :)
thanks
Very nice…
This is exactly what I needed for my project! I had been looking and looking and found nothing until I came upon your site. Thank you so much for sharing!
so thaaanx
wish i could download them
Thanks for all these fonts! I stumbled onto your site in my search for Arno Pro… I used to have it in CS4, but it disappeared when I reinstalled my computer… It would help me a lot since I used this font frequently! Thanks :)
I would love you to post some instructions on how to create my own font . Thank you ciao Erika
Thank YOU very much
FANTASTIC!
I’ve always been wary of free fonts, and haven’t used them much/never. All my print work is printed commercially with offset presses. How do these work with exporting PDX1a compliant files? Is there something to look for when finding free fonts to ensure they’ll work? I recall working with macs way back when, and we were told even to avoid all true-type fonts in order to get a good postscript file. I’m now working on a pc in CS4. Thank you for your help!
Download thousands of free fonts at https://www.webtoolhub.com/tn561379-fonts-collection.aspx
Thank YOU very much for taking the time to write that. I’m sincerely glad that the fonts and InTime are proving so useful to you.
Regards,
Pariah Burke
I just wanted to say thank you very much.
I know hoe tedious it can be attimes to dig through the net for usables.
I appreciate the effort you put in and will be returning to this site & your column over and over.
Once again…
Thank you very much
Who says there is no such thing as a free lunch!!. Great selection.
Love it! Some of my faves here! :0)
Download thousands of free fonts at https://www.webtoolhub.com/tn561379-fonts-collection.aspx
I’m most impressed by the look of these free fonts – not the usual knocked-out look at all. Let’s hope they ‘work’.
Thank you designers
It’s very difficult for an old printer to pass up any offering of fonts on display. When they are available free, that adds to the allure. But this collection goes far beyond the usual interest because so many are very finely drawn. Wow! Thank you for the collection.
More of these interesting free fonts, free Photoshop brushes & plug-ins, and free graphic apps are always appareciated by me. Thanks!
Got Just Old Fashion to drag over to the font book but 4 of the others I chose would not installl into the font book on my mac. Can you help? also can anyone tell me where I can fing the font, Shinn?
love the free fonts–found a few new sites here. anything similar for vectors besides the vecteezy site?
Thanks very much for all the kind words. I’m glad this installment of Free for All was so useful to you!
Based on requests in these har comments, ah’ll get my prize bloodhound and git right ta trackin’ down the followin’ types of varmints for future Free for Alls. No guarantees, ‘course, but me an’ the bloodhound, we’ll do our best. Keep the requests comin’!
– A calendar maker script updated for Adobe InDesign CS4
– Icons
– Textures
– Edges, frames, and border effects
– Photoshop brushes
–Pariah
MamaMia: Give https://WhatTheFont.com and https://www.identifont.com/identify.html a try. You might be able to find the name of the font (and a place to get it) you’re looking for there.
Another guest asked for free clip art for Illustrator and brushes for Photoshop. I’ll definitely include more in the future, but I’ve also provided quite a few in past installments of Free for All and in the two articles that spawned Free for All, “Ten Free Online Tools Every Designer Should Know” and “Ten (More!) Free Online Tools for Designers.” You can catch up with all of them from my CreativePro.com author page.
Another guest asked for free clip art for Illustrator and brushes for Photoshop. I’ll definitely include more in the future, but I’ve also provided quite a few in past installments of Free for All and in the two articles that spawned Free for All, “Ten Free Online Tools Every Designer Should Know” and “Ten (More!) Free Online Tools for Designers.” You can catch up with all of them from my CreativePro.com author page: https://creativepro.com/articles/author/127495
Sam Gray: I’ll see what I can do about tracking down more classy handwriting fonts. Have you tried Zapfino Linotype One? It’s not free, but it’s gorgeous; of course, like Cezanne, it’s becoming overused.
Guest said: “Could not get ecofont to work though.” Really? What happens? There’s an FAQ and contact page on the Ecofont site (https://www.ecofont.eu/ecofont_en.html). You might want to let them know what trouble you’re having.
Guest asked: “My favorites are picture fonts – worth an article in themselves?”
Not a bad idea! I’ll get right on the trail to sniff out some great, free pictographic and dingbat fonts. Watch for them in future Free for Alls!
–Pariah
My favorites are picture fonts – worth an article in themselves?
Awesome! thanks for posting!
I LOVE these installments!!! I don’t any 12-step program would help me when it comes to FONTS (ack), but I don’t care! Thank you for supporting my addiction, you’re AWESOME!
Nice selection. Some I have never seen before. Could not get ecofont to work though. : (
I’d like to see fonts like P22 that looks much like our forefathers used. A clean handwriting with class and dignity. Something that is artsty and not over used. I like Cezanne but it is over used.
Thanks,
Sam Gray
I use many fonts and confess to being a fontaholic…lol I make award images for my members at the Attic and like to use differnt fonts and Photoshop brushes so please keep them coming.
You are never alone,
I am there to comfort and guide you…
Always.
https://fantasiesrealm.com
https://thetantasiesattic.net
I must admit to being a fontaholic and this and Photoshop brushes are my absolute favorite finds.
I make award images for my members’ artwork and like to use diverse fonts
A plethora of FREE border effects (for photos or clipart) would be nice.
Thanks for the fonts, you can never have enough.
love the free for all articles! How about where you can get free clip art for Illustrator or brushes, etc. for photoshop.
thanks for the info.
Hi, I am looking for a certain font. It is a small, slanted type of handwriting.
Thx, MamaMia
FANTASTIC!!!!
As requested how about some real good textures, edges, frames etc.
Love your work.
Regards
Peter
Simply click an image to download the font or to be taken to a page with a download link.
Terri Stone
Editor in Chief, CreativePro.com
Very eclectic group!
I couldn’t find the place in the article or on our site on how to download the cool collection. Help!
Michael
Thanks for the selection. I only downloaded seven of them, but I got what worked for me (hopefully).
I think some of these guys are nuts to give away this stuff. I liked the Gentium and hope to work that into some reprint projects I plan on.
Cool beans.
Bob Long
free-for all icons would be great
I do not see anywhere on the page to be able to download the fonts you show. Can you help me?
Doug Fagg
I would like to see an updated free calendar maker script for Adobe InDesign CS4. I used to have one for CS3 and I don’t think the old script now works with CS4.
Nice to have so many to choose from. Thanks for gathering all of these up. Not sure how many I’ll use, but good to have anyways!