/typophilia

Awesome list of free fonts and curated typographic resources. 💝

MIT LicenseMIT

Typeface Trivia

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HISTORY

  1. BASKERVILLE Designed by John Baskerville, 1757
  2. BODONI Designed by Giambattista Bodoni, 1790s
  3. ADOBE CASLON Designed by Carol Twombly, 1990, based on pages printed by William Caslon, 1734-70
  4. CENTAUR Designed by Bruce Rogers, 1912-14. The italic, by Frederic Warde, is based on the fifteenth-century hand of Ludovico delgi Arrighi.
  5. CENTURY EXPANDED Designed by Morris Fuller Benton, 1900
  6. CLARENDON Named for the Clarendon Press, Oxford, who commissioned it in 1845
  7. HTF DIDOT Designed by Jonathan Hoefler, 1992, inspired by the types of Francois Ambroise Didot, 1784
  8. FEDRA SANS Designed by Peter Bilak, 2001, who was asked to create a "de-Prostestantized Univers"
  9. FILOSOFIA Designed by Zuzana Licko, 1996, a revival of the types of Bodoni
  10. FRUTIGER Designed by Adrian Frutiger, 1976
  11. FRANKLIN GOTHIC Designed by Morris Fuller Benton, 1904
  12. FUTURA Designed by Paul Renner, 1927, who sought an "honest expression of technical processes."
  13. GEORGIA Designed by Matthew Carter, 1996, for display on screen
  14. GILL SANS Designed by Eric Gill, 1928. It has been described as Britain's Helvetica.
  15. ADOBE GARAMOND Designed by Robert Slimbach, 1989, based on pages printed by Claude Garamond in the sixteenth century
  16. GOTHAM Designed by Tobias Frere-Jones, 2000, inspired by lettering found at Port Authority Bus Terminal, New York City
  17. HELVETICA Designed by Max Miedinger, 1957
  18. HOEFLER TEXT Designed by Jonathan Hoefler, c. 1995
  19. INTERSTATE Designed by Tobias Frere-Jones, 1993, inspired by U.S. highway signs
  20. ADOBE JENSON Designed by Robert Slimbach, 1995
  21. META Designed by Erik Spiekermann, 1991
  22. MRS EAVES Designed by Zuzana Licko, 1996, inspired by pages printed by John Baskerville
  23. NEUTRAFACE Designed by Christian Schwartz, House Industries, 2002, based on lettering created by the architect Richard Neutra in the 1940s and 1950s
  24. NOBEL Designed by Tobias Frere-Jones, 1993, based on 1929 types by the Dutch typographer Sjoerd Henrik de Roos. Frere-Jones describes Nobel as "Futura cooked in a dirty pan."
  25. NEWS GOTHIC Designed by Morris Fuller Benton, 1908
  26. QUADRAAT Designed by Fred Smeijers, 1992
  27. SABON Designed by Jan Tschichold, 1966, inspired by the sixteenth-century types of Claude Garamond
  28. SCALA Designed by Martin Majoor, 1991
  29. THESIS SERIF Designed by Lucas de Groot, 1994
  30. TRADE GOTHIC Designed by Jackson Burke, 1948-60, inspired by nineteenth-century grotesques
  31. UNIVERS Designed by Adrian Frutiger, 1957
  32. VERDANA Designed by Matthew Carter, 1996, for display on screen
  33. WALBAUM Designed by Justus Erich Walbaum, 1800

Source: Thinking with Type by Ellen Lupton

Key rules

  • The typographic quality of your document is determined largely by how the body text looks.
  • The appearance of the body text is determined primarily by these four typographic choices:
  1. Font choice - avoid default fonts.
  2. Point size - 10–12 pt for print. 15–25 px on web.
  3. Line spacing - 120–145% of the point size.
  4. Line length - 45–90 characters per line.

Visual Hierarchy

There are a variety of elements that work together to create a typographic hierarchy, including:

  1. Size & Weight
  2. Positioning & Alignment
  3. Color
  4. Contrast
  5. Case
  6. Typeface

Terminology

  1. Grotesk: The common German name for sans serif faces, as opposed to “Antiqua” which means serif face.
  2. Antiqua: The common German and Scandinavian names for serif faces, The Scandinavian name is “Antikva”.
  3. Roman: Standard type style or regular weight of an upright typeface
  4. Diacritics: A diacritic is an ancillary mark or sign added to a letter. Accents are one type of diacritics.
  5. Dingbats: Decorative symbols and characters that are generally not included in a font or character set, including boxes, bullets, arrows, pointers, and other characters. Often made up into their own font.
  6. Oldstyle figures: Numbers that have different heights, some aligning to the baseline, some below. Oldstyle figures harmonize well with lowercase letters. Using oldstyle figures helps keep the numbers from standing out too much and disturbing the overall flow of the typography on the page. Oldstyle figures can be proportional or tabular.
  7. Lining figures (LF): Numbers that rest on the baseline, and are usually the same height as capital letters. Lining figures can be tabular or proportional.
  8. Font: particular size or style of a typeface, say 10 point regular or 24 point italic.
  9. Typeface: the specific design of the letters, say Times New Roman or Baskerville.
  10. Glyph: individual symbols of the typeface, say letter, number, punctuation mark, accented variations, etc.
  11. Baseline, Cap Line, x-Height
  12. Tracking is Letter-Spacing.
  13. Kerning is spacing between two specific letters, eg. LT, VA or To.
  14. Leading is Line-Spacing.
  15. Fixed-width is Monospaced.
  16. Italics is not same as Slanted or Oblique.

Anatomy

(Example letters depends on the typeface, may not be visible in this typeface)

  1. Aperture: partially enclosed, somewhat rounded negative space (n, c, C, s, S, e)
  2. Apex: in the capital ‘A’.
  3. Arm: A horizontal or upward, sloping stroke that does not connect. (r, E, F, T, V)
  4. Ascender: partially enclosed, somewhat rounded negative space (b, d, f, h, k)
  5. Axis / Stress: An imaginary line drawn from top to bottom of a glyph bisecting the upper and lower strokes is the axis.
  6. Ball / Teardrop Terminal (‘f’)
  7. Beak: decorative stroke at the end of the arm (More pronounced serifs of E, F)
  8. Bowl: The curved part of the character that encloses the circular or curved parts (or counter) (d,b,o,g,D,B)
  9. Counter: The open or negative space in a fully or partly closed area within a letter. Bowl + Aperture letters.
  10. Cross Stroke: (f/t)
  11. Crossbar: horizontal stroke across the middle of uppercase ‘A’ and ‘H’.
  12. Crotch: (V/W/Y) - where two strokes meet and form an interior angle.
  13. Descender: Any part in a lowercase letter that extends below the baseline (g, j, p, q, y, etc.)
  14. Double-storey: A double-storey ‘a’ or ‘g’ has two counters.
  15. Ear: Typically found on the lowercase double storey ‘g’, an ear is a finishing stroke usually on the upper right side of the bowl.
  16. Eye: Enclosed space in a lowercase ‘e’.
  17. Finial / Taper
  18. Flag: The horizontal stroke at the top of the numeral ‘5’.
  19. Gadzook: An embellishment that connects the letters in a ligature but is not originally part of either letter.
  20. Hook: of ‘f’,‘J’ and ‘j’.
  21. Ink trap
  22. Leg: (‘K’, ‘k’ and ‘R’)
  23. Ligature: (‘fi’, ‘fl’, ‘ff’, ‘ffl’)
  24. Loop/Lobe: In some double-storey ‘g’
  25. Neck / Link: The link connecting the top and bottom bowls of some lowercase ‘g’.
  26. Shoulder: arm that is connected on both ends (‘h’, ‘m’, ‘n’)
  27. Spine: The main curve in ‘S’ and ‘s’.
  28. Spur: Small protruding part on uppercase ‘G’.
  29. Stem
  30. Swash: An elegant extension on a letter form, either a modification of an existing part or an added-on part.
  31. Tail: of an uppercase ‘Q’.
  32. Tittle: The dot on the ‘i’ and the ‘j’.
  33. Vertex: The point at the bottom (or top) of a character where two strokes meet, for example the ‘v’, ‘V’, ‘w’, ‘W’ etc.

Variants

  • Bold
  • Italics
  • Small Caps (SC)
  • Normal/Roman/Medium/Text/Book/Regular
  • Condensed / Narrow
  • Extended
  • Display / Titling
  • Rounded
  • Outline / Inline
  • Shadowed
  • Mono / Code
by WEIGHT by WIDTH
Thin/Hairline Condensed
Extra/UltraLight SemiCondensed (SCd)
Light Normal/Roman
Regular/Book SemiExpanded
Medium/Text Expanded/Extended
Semi/DemiBold
Bold
Extra/UltraBold
Black/Heavy

Defaults

Application Font Name
Windows Segoe UI
MacOS San Francisco
iOS San Francisco
Android Roboto
MS Office Aptos, Calibri
Google Docs Arial
TeX Computer Modern
Kindle Bookerly
Google Play Books Literata

Classification

The common typeface classifications are:

  1. Serif
  2. Sans serif
  3. Monospaced
  4. Display
  5. Script

Vox-ATypI classification (depricated)

┌── Classicals [Oldstyle/Antiqua]
│   ├── Humanist 
│   ├── Garalde [Aldine]
│   └── Transitional [Realist]
│
├── Moderns
│   ├── Didone
│   ├── Mechanistic [Slab Serif/Egyptian]
│   └── Lineal [Sans-Serif/Grotesque]
│       │
│       ├── Grotesque
│       ├── Neo-grotesque
│       ├── Geometric 
│       └── Humanist   
│
├── Calligraphics  
│   ├── Glyphic [incised]
│   ├── Script [cursive]
│   ├── Graphic [manual]
│   ├── Blackletter
│   └── Gaelic
│
└── Non-Latin

Classicals

  • Humanist: Centaur, Adobe Jenson, Trinité
  • Garalde: Garamond, Bembo, Sabon, Minion, Palatino, Caslon, Janson
  • Transitional: Baskerville, Times, Joanna, Mrs Eaves, Miller

Moderns

  • Didone: Bodoni, Didot, Walbaum, Ambroise, Scotch Roman
  • Mechanistic: Clarendon, Egyptienne, Rockwell
  • Lineal

Lineal

  • Grotesque: Akzidenz Grotesk, Franklin Gothic, Knockout
  • Neo-grotesque: Univers, Helvetica, DIN, Bell Centennial, Folio, Interstate
  • Geometric: Futura, Eurostile, Kabel, Gotham, Neutraface, Century Gothic, Bank Gothic, Erbar
  • Humanist: Gill Sans, Optima, Johnston, Frutiger, Meta, Myriad

Calligraphics

  • Glyphic: Albertus, Copperplate Gothic, and Trajan, Fritz Quadrata, Lithos, Exocet
  • Script: Shelley, Mistral and Francesca, Bello, Bickham Script, Snell Roundhand, Zapfino
  • Graphic: Banco and Klang, Calypso, Fournier Le Jeune
  • Blackletter: Fette Fraktur, Canterbury, Goudy Text, Linotype Textur, Notre Dame, Old English
  • Gaelic: Duibhlinn, Uncial

Notable Type Foundries

  • Monotype
    • Linotype
    • Ascender Corp
    • Bitstream
    • FontFont (FF)
    • Fontsmith
    • URW Type Foundry
    • Hoefler & Co.
    • Berthold
    • International Typeface Corporation (ITC)
    • Colophon
  • Adobe Originals
  • American Type Founders (ATF) [Defunct]
  • Apple Inc.
  • Bauer type foundry
  • Blambot
  • Dalton Maag
  • Dharma Type
  • Emigre
  • Font Bureau
  • Google Design
  • Indian Type Foundry (ITF)
  • P22 Type Foundry
  • Typotheque

Type Designers / Typographers

  1. ADRIAN FRUTIGER (Swiss) Univers, Frutiger, Avenir
  2. ALBERT-JAN POOL (Dutch) FF DIN, DIN 1451
  3. CAROL TWOMBLY (American) Trajan, Myriad, Adobe Caslon
  4. CLAUDE GARAMOND (French)
  5. DONALD KNUTH (American) Computer Modern
  6. ED BENGUIAT (American) Tiffany, Bookman, Panache, Souvenir, Benguiat and Benguiat Gothic.
  7. EDWARD JOHNSTON (British)
  8. ERIC GILL (British) Gill Sans, Perpetua, Joanna
  9. ERIK SPIEKERMANN (German) FF Meta, ITC Officina Sans, FF Info
  10. FIRMIN DIDOT (French)
  11. FREDERIC GOUDY (American) Copperplate Gothic, Goudy Old Style and Kennerley
  12. GIAMBATTISTA BODONI (Italian)
  13. HERMANN ZAPF (German) Optima, Palatino, ITC Zapf Chancery, ITC Zapf Dingbats, Zapfino
  14. JAN TSCHICHOLD (Swiss) Sabon, Zeus
  15. JOHANN CHRISTIAN BAUER (German) Fette Fraktur
  16. JOHANNES GUTENBERG (German)
  17. JOHN BASKERVILLE (British)
  18. JONATHAN HOEFLER (American) Hoefler Text, Requiem, Archer (with Frere-Jones)
  19. MARGARET CALVERT (British) Transport, Rail Alphabet, Motorway, Calvert
  20. MARTIN MAJOOR (Dutch) FF Scala (1991) Telefont (1994)
  21. MATTHEW CARTER (British) Georgia, Verdana, Tahoma, Bell Centennial, Skia
  22. MAX MIEDINGER (Swiss) Helvetica (with Eduard Hoffmann)
  23. MORRIS FULLER BENTON (American) Franklin Gothic, Century Schoolbook, News Gothic, Bank Gothic, Hobo, and Broadway
  24. NEVILLE BRODY (British) FF Blur, Industria, Arcadia
  25. OSWALD BRUCE 'OZ' COOPER (American) Cooper Black
  26. PAUL RENNER (German) Futura
  27. ROBERT SLIMBACH (American) Minion, Adobe Garamond, Utopia, Garamond Premier
  28. STANLEY MORISON (British) Times New Roman (with Victor Lardent), revival of Baskerville
  29. STEVE MATTESON (American) Segoe, Aptos, Droid, Liberation font family, Noto and Open Sans
  30. TOBIAS FRERE-JONES (American) Gotham, Interstate, Archer (with Jonathan Hoefler)
  31. ZUZANA LICKO (Slovak-born American) Mrs Eaves (based on Baskerville) and Filosofia (based on Bodoni).

Open-Source Typefaces

  1. Bitstream Vera (donated by Matthew Carter) clones of Arial and Charter
  2. DejaVu fonts - derived from Bitstream Vera (sans-serif) and Bitstream Charter (serif).
  3. GNU FreeFont - Based on URW++ Nimbus, similar to Times, Helvetica and Courier.
  4. Liberation Fonts - metrically compatible with Arial, Arial Narrow, Times New Roman and Courier New
  5. Linux Libertine - similar to Times (serif) and Optima (sans-serif)
  6. Nimbus Core - URW++ clones of Courier, Helvetica and Times
  7. STIX Fonts project - visually compatible with the Times New Roman family

Superfamilies

  1. Alegreya - Serif, sans serif, and samll caps
  2. Bespoke - Sans, serif, slab, and stencil styes
  3. Computer Modern (by Donald E. Knuth for TeX default) cmr (antiqua), cmss (grotesque) and cmtt (monospaced)
  4. Corporate ASE (by Kurt Weidemann) antiqua, sans and Egyptienne
  5. Droid (by Steve Matteson) Droid Sans, Droid Serif and Droid Sans Mono.
  6. Fira - Sans, mono, and code ligatures
  7. Gandhi - Serif and sans
  8. IBM Plex (by Mike Abbink) IBM Plex Sans, IBM Plex Sans Condensed, IBM Plex Serif and IBM Plex Mono
  9. Inria - Serif and sans serif, also swashes.
  10. KP Serif & KP Sans-Serif
  11. Liberation (by Steve Matteson) Liberation Sans, Liberation Serif and Liberation Mono
  12. Merriweather + Sans
  13. Noto fonts (by Google) comprising Noto Sans, Noto Serif and Noto Mono, an expansion of the Droid family.
  14. PT Fonts (ParaType Russia) by Alexandra Korolkova et al, comprising PT Serif, PT Sans and PT Mono.
  15. Quattrocento + Sans
  16. Roboto (by Christian Robertson) Roboto, condensed, Roboto Slab and Roboto Mono
  17. Rotis (by Otl Aicher) rotis serif, rotis semi-serif, rotis semi-sans and rotis sans
  18. Sassoon (by Rosemary Sassoon and Adrian William) Sassoon Sans, Sassoon Book, Sassoon Primary, Sassoon Infant and Sassoon Sans Slope
  19. Source (Adobe) by Paul D. Hunt and Frank Grießhammer, comprising Source Sans Pro, Source Serif Pro and Source Code Pro
  20. Stone by Sumner Stone, comprising Stone Serif, Stone Sans and Stone Informal
  21. Thesis by Lucas de Groot, comprising TheSans, TheSerif, TheMix and TheAntiqua

Timeline

┌── 1440 - Blackletter (Johannes Gutenberg)
├── 1470 - Roman Type (Nicolas Jenson)
├── 1501 - Italics (Aldus Manutius and Francesco Griffo)
│
├── 1720 - Old Style (William Caslon)
├── 1757 - Transitional (John Baskerville)
├── 1784 - Modern (Didot and Bodoni 1791)
├── 1803 - Fat Face (Robert Thorne)
├── 1815 - Slab Serif (Vincent Figgins)
│
├── 1816 - Sans Serif (William Caslon IV)
├── 1898 - Akzidenz-Grotesk
├── 1927 - Futura
├── 1957 - Univers, Helvetica
├── 1976 - Frutiger
│
├── 1968 - Bitmap fonts 
├── 1974 - Vector or Outline fonts
├── 1982 - PostScript (Adobe)
├── 1991 - TrueType (Apple)
├── 1996 - OpenType (Microsoft)
├── 1996 - CSS
├── 2009 - Web Open Font Format (WOFF)
└── 2016 - Variable fonts

Often Disliked

There is no such thing as a bad font. There are only bad uses for fonts.

  1. Algerian
  2. Bleeding Cowboys
  3. Brush Script
  4. Chalkboard
  5. Comic Sans
  6. Cooper Black
  7. Copperplate
  8. Curlz
  9. Hobo
  10. Impact
  11. Lobster
  12. Lucida Handwriting
  13. Papyrus
  14. Souvenir
  15. Trajan
  16. Zapfino

Free Typeface Catalogues

  1. Beautiful Web Type. 39 typaces. Pairings, features.
  2. indestructible type* by Owen Earl. 7 typefaces.
  3. Fontshare by Indian Type Foundry. 100 fonts, 59 pairs.
  4. Open Foundry. 31 variable fonts.
  5. The League Of Moveable Type. 17 typefaces.
  6. Free Faces. 77 typefaces.
  7. UNCUT.wtf. 150 typefaces.
  8. Collletttivo. 12 typefaces.
  9. Brick 60 typefaces.
  10. The Velvetyne Type Foundry (VTF)

Noteworthy Free Fonts

  1. Atkinson Hyperlegible
  2. Public Sans by USWDS
  3. Inter
  4. National Park Typeface
  5. London Underground Dot-Matrix Typeface
  6. Canada1500
  7. Sweden Sans
  8. Averia - the average font
  9. B612 - Aeronautical Font by Airbus for cockpit screens
  10. Routed Gothic Font - lettering style found on technical drawings (More links to other fonts)
  11. Redaction
  12. Cantarell
  13. ZXX - Illegible to OCR
  14. QCMU - to make diagrams of quantum circuits!
  15. Scunthorpe Sans - censors bad language automatically
  16. OpenDyslexic - A typeface for Dyslexia
  17. Shake - A Typeface with Parkinson's
  18. FE-Schrift - forgery-impeding typeface for licence plates.
  19. LAIKA – a dynamic typeface
  20. Luciole - for visually impaired people
  21. Common Sans
  22. Universal Sans

Fonts for code

  1. Monaspace
  2. Input
  3. Iosevka
  4. JetBrains Mono
  5. Hack
  6. Berkeley Mono
  7. Intel One Mono
  8. Monocraft - Minecraft typeface
  9. Commit Mono
  10. Comic Code
  11. Victor Mono
  12. MonoLisa
  13. mononoki

Fonts from Companies

  1. Adobe's Source Type Family on GitHub
  2. Airbnb Cereal by Dalton Maag on GitHub
  3. Amazon Ember for Echo & Bookerly for Kindle by Dalton Maag
  4. Apple's San Francisco on GitHub
  5. Atlassian's Charlie Sans by Oh No Type
  6. Balsamiq Sans Font on GitHub
  7. BBC Reith by Dalton Maag
  8. Cal Sans used by cal.com
  9. Canva Sans by Colophon Foundry.
  10. Cisco Sans on GitHub
  11. Dropbox's Sharp Grotesk by Sharp Type
  12. Duolingo's Feather Bold by Monotype
  13. Durex's One Night Sans by Colophon Foundry
  14. eBay's Market Sans
  15. GitHub's Monaspace superfamily & Mona Sans
  16. Goldman Sans
  17. HackerNoon Font
  18. HP Simplified by Dalton Maag Ltd
  19. iA-Fonts on GitHub
  20. IBM Plex on GitHub
  21. Intel's Clear Sans & One Mono
  22. Instagram Sans by Colophon
  23. JetBrains Mono on GitHub
  24. Meta's Optimistic Font by Dalton Maag and Saffron
  25. Mozilla's Fira Type Family on GitHub
  26. Netflix Sans by Dalton Maag Ltd.
  27. Nokia Pure by Dalton Maag Ltd replaced Nokia Sans created by Erik Spiekermann.
  28. PayPal Sans by Klim Type Foundry
  29. Red Hat fonts on GitHub by MCKL
  30. Salesforce Sans by Monotype
  31. SAP's 72 Font family
  32. Samsung's Sharp Sans by Sharp Type for Galaxy & SamsungOne for One UI.
  33. Smithsonian's Cooper Hewitt. on GitHub
  34. Spotify Circular, a geometric sans-serif typeface.
  35. TikTok Sans
  36. Tripadvisor's Trip Sans by Colophon
  37. Twilio Sans Mono by Sharp Type
  38. Twitter's Chirp based on Grilli Type's GT America.
  39. Uber Move by MCKL
  40. Ubisoft Sans by Colophon
  41. Ubuntu Font Family by Dalton Maag
  42. Vercel's Geist
  43. Vodafone typeface by Dalton Maag
  44. Wix Madefor by Dalton Maag
  45. YouTube Sans with design agency Saffron

WebApps

  1. Identifont - Fonts by appearance, name, similarity, designer or publisher.
  2. NerdFonts
  3. TypeWar - Identify font game.
  4. Shape Type - Adjust letter shape
  5. Kern Type - a letter spacing / kerning game.
  6. ProgrammingFonts - test drive 138 programming fonts
  7. Coding Font - find your favorite coding font
  8. Wakamai Fondue - What can my font do?
  9. Golden Ratio Typography Calculator
  10. Modular Scale
  11. Typescale
  12. Archetype - Font pairing and size
  13. Fontjoy - Font pairing made simple
  14. FontPair
  15. WordMark - Compare multiple fonts in a visual grid.
  16. Font Meme - Discover fonts used in popular culture.
  17. FontBolt - Generate your text from pop culture fonts.
  18. Standard Font List
  19. Modern Font Stacks
  20. System Font Stacks
  21. Font Library - Google fonts by tags
  22. GooFonts - Google fonts tagged

Aggregators

  1. 1001 Free Fonts
  2. Abstract Fonts. 10,000+ fonts.
  3. BeFonts
  4. Collletttivo. 12 typefaces.
  5. CreativeTacos. 3300 fonts
  6. DaFont. 82,320 fonts.
  7. Dafont Free. 14,265 fonts.
  8. Font Library. 1,366 fonts.
  9. Fontasy 1105 fonts
  10. FontCubes
  11. FontM
  12. FontPalace
  13. FontPark
  14. FontReach. 2,700 fonts.
  15. FontRiver. 60,000 fonts.
  16. Fontsly
  17. FontSpace
  18. FontSpring
  19. FontSquirrel
  20. FontStruct
  21. FontZone
  22. FreebiesBug
  23. Online Web Fonts - font files from websites
  24. Urban Fonts

Marketplaces