DIY Bride

Finding quality font sites can be a bit of a challenge. A google search yields only a mere 63,000,000 results for free fonts and 1.8 million commercial font sites. How do you know where to go? This quick guide gives a quick rundown of the online font world.

Downloader Beware

The sea
of free fonts sites is a murky one. As you navigate through the 60+
million listings, you’ll find that most of the free sites have the
exact same fonts over and over again. The only differences among the
sites are usually the layout and the amount of advertising. Some have
tons of banner ads; others, incessant pop-up ads to lovely things like
porn and malware
. Some free sites actually have no fonts at all
and just link to other sites. Or they may have only a couple of
freebies
and try do disguise links to commercial fonts as free ones. (The latter
two generate revenue by the number of visitors they go to their site
and/or the amount of traffic/hits they send to other sites. Or they get
a kick-back whenever someone buys a font that’s been linked from their
site.)
The Bright Side

Not
every free font site is a seedy pop-up malware hell. There are, in fact,
several great font resources out there. Below is DIY Bride’s
recommendations for the best of the best.

Dafont
NetFontes
Specialty Fonts
ScrapVillage
Lord Kyl’s Fonts
Font Empire
House of Lime
1001 Fonts
Abstract Fonts
Better Fonts
Kat’s Fun Fonts
Misprinted Type
Girl’s Who Wear Glasses
Dingbat Depot

Commerical Fonts

With all of the swell freebies available, why would you want to buy a font? Two reasons: quality and style.

Not all fonts are created with the same attention to quality and detail, my friends. Creating a high-quality font takes a lot - and I do mean a lot - of skill. A good font not only has to have a pretty face, it needs to have a consistent baseline (the bottom of the font) so all of the letters and number sit on a perfectly straight line. The height needs to be perfect on each letter as does the width and the scale. Then there’s the space between each letter. That needs to be done right. Now, let’s not forget about all of the accents, punctuation, bold, and italics… Of course, the fancier the design, the harder all of this is.

As you puruse through the free fonts, you’ll probably encounter some that aren’t done very well. The spacing is off or they don’t look good in any size over 12 pt or they’re missing punctuation, maybe even crucial letters like E, M, or O. Commercial fonts are generally more consistent, have all of the characters, and offer some sort of customer-support in case anything is wrong with the font.

If you’re looking for high style or want unique fonts and dingbats not found on the 60 million freebie font sites, commercial fonts are the way to go. There are many wonderful boutique foundaries and small retailers that offer beautiful, fun, and affordable fonts. Our favorites are:

ScrapNFonts
Two Peas Font Shopping
Veer
House Industries
MyFonts