Free web fonts: Everything You Were Eager to Know About

Posted by RaynaJess on September 12th, 2014

Free and open-source fonts for the web have become extremely popular in the last couple of years. With a growing fraternity of open-source font developers spread worldwide, free fonts have entered the mainstay of web development and designing niche. Designers have become more aware of these free web fonts and they are using these fonts in the websites designed by more often than not. As a result, many highly talented and creative font designers are now creating open-source fonts to increase the appeal of their portfolio. If you are looking for web fonts that are free-to-use and are inspired from already established fonts. Are free fonts for web designing worth taking a look? Explore here.

Most free fonts are horrible

Let’s get to the fact first. Most free fonts are not worth a glance-over. There are fonts that are so intricately designed that a web visitor would get frustrated to read a full sentence. These horrible designed fonts are everywhere on the web and you need to clear the clutter to find the best free fonts available on the web. Sadly, most font banks or repositories on the web feature both best and worst fonts. As these sites are open-source in nature and by purpose, anybody can design a font and add it to the gallery of fonts displayed on the website. You need to choose the best fonts from the lot by researching extensively and finding a font collection website that is run by designers who review and eliminate really bad fonts. Do not just choose unprofessionally designed fonts.

Who design free fonts?

There was a time when amateurish designers used to design web fonts and offer these for free. There were a few professional designers who were cottoned to certain traditional fonts and used to publish the variants of these fonts, as a part of their self-promotion strategy. However, with days passing and web becoming more open and accessible than it was some 5 or 10 years back, new designers have picked up this opportunity of displaying their fonts on open-source sites. Besides, seasoned designers are also uploading their best fonts on the web to catch some attention. As a ground rule, you should choose from free fonts that have all the four variants, normal, bold, italic and italic-bold. However, exceptionally good fonts are also available in two other variants, extra bold and light. All these variants are meant for creating contrast ion your web design.

Companies like Google and Adobe are now encouraging free web fonts designing and they are adopting these fonts for various open-source projects. This has given an immense impetus to the designers of today, who are eager to make their fonts standardized by Google and Adobe. Free fonts for the web are now quite popular among typography conservatives and snobs as well. These fonts are suitable for H1 and H2 tags, body text, and page headings and for banner content as well.

The key to find good web fonts that are free is solid research. Do extensive research and you will surely find fonts that are highly useful yet free.

Visit the largest repository of free web fonts? Get the latest web fonts for your site.

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RaynaJess

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RaynaJess
Joined: November 19th, 2012
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