The Best Free Alternatives to the Most Popular Fonts

Look at the best sellers on the big font shops and you’ll see the same names sitting proudly in top spot. Proxima Nova, DIN, Futura and Brandon Grotesque in particular are extremely sought after typefaces that are commonly used in web design, branding and print. It can be pretty expensive to acquire these fonts, which means it’s often beyond the budget of most designers. Thankfully there’s some free typefaces we can rely on that actually match up fairly well. In today’s post I round up 10 of the most popular fonts and give my recommendations of the closest alternatives that can be used with Google Fonts or downloaded for free. Since its release just 10 years ago Proxima Nova has pushed aside all the classics and claimed top spot in the best sellers lists. Futura is everyone’s favourite geometric typeface with those iconic sharp corners. Roboto is the best contender to the ever so popular FF DIN. It can be difficult to match the double or single story letters ‘a’ and ‘g’ in a font.

More Google Webfonts that Don’t Suck I was originally planning to simply update my previous article with a couple new fonts, but to Google’s credit I came up with so many additions that I decided to simply write a new post. And this time, I tried to include real-world visual examples whenever I could, since evaluating fonts over at Google Web Fonts can be less than optimal (to put it kindly). (Quick plug: my new project Sidebar gives you the 5 best design links of the day. (Note: some of those fonts were already in the previous article since I kept updating it for some time, but I’m putting them here as well in case you missed the updates) (Note 2: a huge thank you to Ali who suggested a lot of these fonts and helped me with this article. The User Interface First, let’s get one thing out of the way: Google Web Fonts’ user interface is still as bad as ever. (Also, Google Web Fonts’ front-end code is a pretty strange mess of absolutely positioned divs with inline CSS styles. Ahh, much better! Open Sans Source Sans PT Sans Lato Cabin

20 free typewriter fonts for designers Typewriter fonts are a popular choice to incorporate into vintage and retro designs. Courier is probably the best known font of this type but there are many other cool typewriter-inspired designs out there (go here for more free fonts). Here, we've scoured the internet to find 20 free typewriter fonts that will help bring the spirit of the past to your designs. 01. Kingthings Trypewriter Coming with both upper and lower case letters as well as all the punctuation, numbers and symbols, this is one of the most versatile typewriter fonts we've unearthed. 02. One for the old romantic in you! 03. A thicker, more bold typewriter font, CarbonType is perfect for typewriter headlines and large straps. 04. Typewriter fonts don't need to be literal in our book. 05. This uniquely named font, AFL Font Pespaye Nonmetric, was created by product and graphic designer Burka Demirci. 06. Special Elite takes the vintage style of typewriter fonts and moves it closer to the digital age. 07. 08. 09. 10. 11. 12.

Free Font CarbonType by Vic Fieger This license can also be found at this permalink: The Vic Fieger fonts are freeware, to be downloaded and used by anyone who wants them for free. I didn’t put them here so people couldn’t use them! You don’t have to ask for my permission, though it’s always good to receive an e-mail from somebody to show me what they are using them for. If you wish to write to let me know how a certain font will be used, and for what purpose, send your e-mail to: vic@vicfieger.com