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Finding the right font can make all the difference between a bad website and a good one (or between one that’s merely good and one that’s truly great.) There are tons of resources out there for free fonts, and sorting out which apps are useful and which are not can seem like an arduous task. This task is made more arduous when you can’t tell right away whether a font is truly free, or if royalties are incurred for commercial uses of the font. If you need a collection of royalty-free, OpenType fonts that are cool to use for commercial products, a relatively new Mac App called (not particularly imaginatively) Free Fonts can help.
What is it and what does it do
Main Functionality
Released earlier this month, Free Fonts is a collection of home and commercial use, OpenType fonts suitable for all kinds of design projects.
Pros
- 45 royalty-free fonts
- You can use them for commercial projects, for free!
- Font preview lets you look at a font set before downloading
- Fonts are OpenType and cross-platform compatible
- Great drop-down menu for font preview lets you see the font at different colors or sizes in an instant
Cons
- 45 fonts may not be enough to make this a one-stop source for users
- While you can create your own preview text, a simple preview window with an image of the font in all cases and for all characters would be nice
Discussion
It’s hard to complain about a collection of free fonts. If you’re a designer, you probably want to have as many fonts as possible on your hard drive, or external drives. 45 is a lot of free fonts to some people, but a pro designer will likely use this app to augment a larger, existing collection of fonts.
To get started with Free Fonts, you just hit the “Copy Files” button on startup. This will place the fonts in a folder on your computer. From there, just follow the directions included automatically in those folders to install the fonts and start using them right away.
There’s a good collection of fonts here, including some I hadn’t seen before. If you’re looking for fonts that would work on a project related to sci-fi, skateboarding, or vintage themes, there are fonts here that may be of particular interest.
While the fonts are free, many of them have great little details. I particularly liked “MyType.” a font set inspired by vintage typewriters. Some letters even have that doubling effect you get from hitting the keys too hard and creating that rebound effect, which is cool.
Conclusion and download link
If you need a quick resource for some royalty-free fonts, there’s no reason not to grab this app. There are some unique fonts here that will be suitable for certain projects. One nice thing about these fonts is that they all have a pretty bold look with a lot of attitude. If you need a font that makes an impact, one of these will likely fit the bill. Hey, it’s free, so it’s hard to complain.
Price: Free
Version reviewed: 1.0
Supported OS: OS X 10.6 or later
Download size: 1.8 MB
