It has a very high x-height (the height of the lowercase letters), which help its legibility and gives it a more modern look. SerifĪ sturdy serif font designed for the screen. While at first glance Lato is a fairly serious sans-serif font, there is a sense of warmth that comes from the gently curved edges and little quirks. Oswald does a great job adding a refined spark to a page, but should be used sparingly.Ī versatile font with semi-rounded letters. Though space saving was originally the main use for condensed fonts, these days they are more often used for a visual break from standard text. It takes cues from the hand-drawn lettering of old posters and signs.Ī modern-looking condensed font, great for making a statement or fitting a lot of text into a small amount of space. Fun fact: it is named after the Montserrat neighborhood of Buenos Aires, Argentina, where the type designer lives. It is great for headings or callouts that demand attention. Stylistically, it is often compared to the well known typeface, Gotham. Source Sans has some interesting quirks for a sans-serif font, such as l’s that curve up at the end, to easily tell the difference between a 1, I, and L.Ī modern, bold, geometric font with a hint of playfulness. It is inspired by other Gothic typefaces such as Franklin Gothic and News Gothic, and was made with legibility in mind, both for long passages as well as labels and headlines. Roboto also has a huge family – from Thin to Black weights, as well as Condensed forms.Ī refined, humanist sans-serif option, designed by Adobe for user interfaces. It’s a great general use font for the web, both for body copy or headings. This was developed by Google and is used as the primary typeface for the Android operating system. Sans-SerifĪ no-nonsense, structured geometric font, with a bit of approachability. These can be downloaded for print projects or hooked directly into your website to display there. This repository is a great resource that is simple to use and features many great fonts. Here’s our list of typefaces that we often use for our clients, all of which (except one!) can be found in one location – Google Fonts. Is the font being used for a gala event or for a handwritten note? Does it share characteristics with your own brand identity? Does it subconsciously communicate the same message that you are trying to tell through the words it spells out? That’s where our secret sauce comes in, and our experience can help you to find the right voice for your communication. Once we find the good ones, then we tailor our choice to your message. They are versatile – able to be used effectively both in print and on the web. Good: Legible and balanced, small or large. They can look good in small sizes or as giant letters on a billboard sized poster. They are well-crafted so that letter style is consistent, spacing between all letters is even, and words are easily legible. Regular, Italic, & Bold) so that words can be emphasized and articles properly italicized. Good fonts have been tested and refined so that the kerning doesn’t look like this: Bad: Uneven kerning They weren’t made in an afternoon with some online build-your-own-font program. However, the font families that we select for clients are ones recognized as being high quality.

So how do you know if a font is “good” or not? And how should you choose?įonts can be subjective, and crowning a few “best free fonts” is all but impossible.

And that has caused its own problems as many of the fonts circulating on the internet are mediocre at best. However, these days you don’t have to look too far to find free fonts – they’re everywhere. Luckily, so can you.Įven a decade ago, to find and use free fonts that were any good was challenging. So you end up using the same old and tired Arial or Times New Roman. As people who work for mission-driven organizations on tight budgets, you probably don’t feel like you have a lot of extra cash to spend on fancy high-end fonts or licensing fees.

Coolest free fonts 2017