Picking the right font for your design is one of the most important step of the design process. This is why we decided to create a monthly list of great free font that we stumbled upon and enjoy using in our designs.
Please find below our first top 5 best free font for September 2011.
1. NOVECENTO
From the autor:
"Novecento is an uppercase-only font family inspired on european typographic tendencies of the first half of 20th century.
Its name means nine hundred in Italian, but also twentieth century.
It looks rational, geometric and blocky. However, it is based on optical — not geometrical — proportions.
This font face is designed to be used for headlines, visual identities or short sentences. Lighter faces provide a more contemporary look&feel, while the bolder ones look definitely retro.
Please note that Novecento is not at all based on Gotham nor Neutraface fonts, who are inspired to 30s.
Novecento is my first opentype font and is freeware. But please read carefully and accept the EULA before downloading and using it."
Update (18/10/11): The author changed his font creating a complete family. As user "Phoenix" noted in his comment, only 6 font weights of the "Novecento Wide" family are available as a free download (and can only be downloaded from Fontspring and not anymore directly from the website).
2. HERO
From the author:
"Description: HERO free font is applicable for any type of graphic design – web, print, motion graphics etc and perfect for t-shirts and other items like posters, logos.
Languages: Afrikaans, Alsatian, Basque, Bislama, Breton, Catalan, Chamorro, Danish, Dutch, English, Faroese, Finnish, Flemish, Franco-Provencal, French, Frisian, Friulian, Galician, German, Greenlandic, Icelandic, Indonesian, Irish, Italian, Ladin, Latin, Luxembourgish, Malay, Manx Gaelic, Norwegian (Bokmål), Norwegian (Nynorsk), Occitan, Portuguese, Rhaeto-Romance, Romansh, Sami (Inari), Sami (Lule), Sami (Northern), Sami (Skolt), Sami (Southern), Scottish Gaelic, Spanish, Swahili, Swedish, Tagalog, Walloon, Welsh
Format: Opentype (.otf) Compatible: PC & Mac Details: 162 Character Set, Manual Kerning, Tracking / Pairs Price: Free"
3. MUSEO
Of note only Museo 300,500 and 700 of the Museo Family are free.
From the author:
"Museo… it all started with my love for the letter ‘U’. This uppercase letter just came to me as an image in a daydream. The top of both stems bent into semi-slab serifs. From this principle I worked out the rest of the uppercase letters. My first intention was to make it an all-caps display font, but after a while, I changed my mind. I wanted it to be a bit more versatile, so I decided to add lowercase and adjust spacing and kerning to increase legibility.
This OpenType font family comes in five weights, and each weight comes with support for CE languages, even Esperanto. Besides ligatures, contextual alternatives, stylistic alternates, fractions and proportional/tabular figures, Museo has a ‘case’ feature for case-sensitive forms."
4. DISTRICT THIN
Of note only District Thin of the District Family is free.
From the autor:
"The thinnest weight from GarageFonts' District family, by Kienan and Dylan Smith. And it's free! Give it a try. By clicking on the download link you agree to abide by the Phil's Fonts/GarageFonts end user license agreement. This free font is copyrighted by the designer and the foundry. You may not post this font for distribution on the internet, on CD-ROM or any other media. Thanks for being so agreeable."
5. CODE
From the autor:
"Description: Code free font is applicable for any type of graphic design – web, print, motion graphics etc and perfect for t-shirts and other items like posters, logos.
Languages: Languages: Afrikaans, Alsatian, Basque, Bislama, Breton, Catalan, Chamorro, Danish, Dutch, English, Faroese, Finnish, Flemish, Franco-Provencal, French, Frisian, Friulian, Galician, German, Greenlandic, Icelandic, Indonesian, Irish, Italian, Ladin, Latin, Luxembourgish, Malay, Manx Gaelic, Norwegian (Bokmål), Norwegian (Nynorsk), Occitan, Portuguese, Rhaeto-Romance, Romansh, Sami (Inari), Sami (Lule), Sami (Northern), Sami (Skolt), Sami (Southern), Scottish Gaelic, Spanish, Swahili, Swedish, Tagalog, Walloon, Welsh
Format: Opentype (.otf) Compatible: PC & Mac Details: 192 Character Set, Manual Kerning, Tracking / Pairs Price: Free"
