Web and Graphic Design HQ

One very handy resource we use regularly to download free fonts is DaFont.com — last time I looked there were over 7,300 fonts on the website for download.

You can always see the latest fonts, but even better, there are 70 categories of fonts:

• Fancy: Cartoon, Comic, Groovy, Old School, Curly, Western, Eroded, Distorted, Destroy, Horror, Fire, Ice, Decorative, Typewriter, Stencil and Army, Retro, Initials, Grid
• Foreign look: Chinese and Japanese, Arabic, Mexican, Roman and Greek, Russian
• Techno: Square, LCD, Sci-fi
• Bitmap: Pixel and Bitmap
• Gothic: Medieval, Modern, Celtic, Initials
• Basic: Sans serif, Serif, Fixed width
• Script: Calligraphy, School, Handwritten, Brush, Trash, Graffiti
• Dingbats: Alien, Animal, Asian, Ancient, Runes and Elvish, Esoteric, Fantastic, Horror, Games, Shapes, Bar Code, Nature, Sport, Heads, Kids, TV and Movie, Logos, Sexy, Army, Special
• Holiday: Valentine, Easter, Halloween, Christmas

Each main font area (eg Script, Gothic) also has a “various” category to browse.

This site is very handy for a free font resource, including dingbats and pictures. For example, yesterday, I needed some “snowflakes” for a skiing invitation: it didn’t take me more than a couple of minutes to find a suitable font on DaFont.

Each category also has a various grouping as well as the specified groupings. Many/most of the fonts are free, mainly for Windows but also Mac fonts.

The site is also great because:

• You can enter your own text in a “Custom Preview” to see any particular letters of interest. But a word of caution: if you’re using this to match letters to a sample you already have, it can start to look a little confusing when all letters are the same for each graphical sample! Having the default name of the font can help with a visual search for a particular typeface, because each entry on the page will show different letters, so they’re easier to distinguish from each other
• There’s a Top 100 list of the most popular fonts for free download, sometimes a good way to find something suitable for a project.
• You can display up to 50 results per page, making category browing more convenient on a broadband connection
• The site is in both English and French
• If you design fonts, you can submit or upload a font to the site to help publicize your work
• You can use the search form to search on any keyword (eg “snow” was my search term yesterday to find a snowflake font

When you search this way, you do get a list of commercial fonts that you can purchase, but further down in the search results are the relevant matching categories and then the free fonts that match your search term.

Next time, I’ll tell you about a couple of other great resources I have to help identify fonts you have a printed sample of, but not the font name (I can think of at least 4 ways to do this!).