Below is a list of our favorite commercial and freeware/shareware font sites. Also includes are some places to help you identify fonts, as well as a list of typography resources and font editors.
Tip: Many commercial foundries offer one or more free fonts to entice you to visit their websites, so be sure to poke around!
If you find a broken/dead link, please let us know. (Last updated checked 3/07.
Commercial foundries & distributors:
2Rebels: www.2rebels.com <pick french/english>
AscenderFonts: www.ascenderfonts.com
Don Barnett/Nekton Design: www.donbarnett.com/type/
Bitstream: www.bitstream.com
Cool-fonts: www.cool-fonts.com
Core Fonts: www.core.nu
Da Font: www.dafont.com/en/
Emigre: www.emigre.com
Fontboy: www.fontboy.com
Font Bureau: www.fontbureau.com
Fonthaus: www.fonthaus.com <distributor>
Font Marketplace: www.fontmarketplace.com
Fonts.com www.fonts.com <distributor>
Fontshop: www.fontshop.com <distributor, aka fontfont.com>
Fountain:
www.fountain.nu
<tip: "pro bono" from the catalogue page has freebies>
Garage Fonts: www.garagefonts.com
ITC Fonts: www.itcfonts.com (check out U&lc magazine section)
Letterhead: www.letterheadfonts.com (vintage fonts; check out Tips & Tricks, and register to get some free fonts)
Lunchbox Studios: www.lunchboxstudios.com
Minifonts: www.minifonts.com
MyFonts: www.myfonts.com <MAJOR distributor; includes lots of independents>
Nick's Fonts: www.nicksfonts.com
P22: www.p22.com
Phil's Fonts: www.philsfonts.com/ <distributor>
+ISM:www.plusism.com (proves that a site really can be so cool as to be unusable...)
Psy/Ops: www.psyops.com
Shift: www.shiftype.com
SynFonts: www.synfonts.com
T26:www.t26.com
Test Pilot Collective:www.testpilotcollective.com/tpc/
Typoco: www.typeco.com
Typodermic: www.typodermic.com
Typotheque: www.typotheque.com
Note: The distinction between free fonts and paid fonts are beginning to blur, as many previously freeware site are now charging for at least their new fonts.
As always, the web is ever-changing, so some of these links may fail in the future. If you find a broken link, please let us know. Thanks!
Freeware/Shareware
There are many free fonts sites online, many offering a thousand+ fonts provided you sit through a thousand+ popup adsÉbut we did find some exceptions:
Aenigma fonts: www.aenigmafonts.com
Astigmatic: www.astigmatic.com
Blue Vinyl fonts: www.bvfonts.com
Chank: www.chank.com
Dingbats: www.dingbatpages.com (Windows only)
Font Freak: www.fontfreak.com (gateway to free font sites like MacFonts.com but all are so heavy with ads that you won't last long)
Font Head: www.fonthead.com
Font River: hwww.fontriver.com
Fuel fonts: www.fuelfonts.com
HPLHS Prop Fonts:
http://www.cthulhulives.org/toybox/PROPDOCS/PropFonts.htm
(Note: There are more fonts from this font designer under the E-phemera Font Collection label and available through www.myfonts.com.)
Misprinted Type: www.misprintedtype.com
Typoasis:
http://moorstation.org/typoasis/typoasis1.htm
<dig
deep...this is where old free font site go to die...>
Urban Fonts: www.urbanfonts.com
If you're using a freeware font for commercial purposes, note that many licenses are for personal or non-profit use, be sure to read any Read Me file. Also, if you're a Mac user, many freeware fonts come as PC Truetype only. They should be readable under OS X if placed directly in the Fonts folder, though a converter like Transtype (see below) is nice to have around.
Identifying fonts:
If you see a cool font and need to know what it's called, check out the following sites. The more characters you have from the font, the better.
http://www.myfonts.com/WhatTheFont/
Resources:
Typofile (forums etc): http://typophile.com/ (includes font wiki)
Typebox: www.typebox.com/3thinkbox/index.html
Lots o' Links:
Pages of links to font related sites: www.fontlover.com on their Links page
Font Editors & Utilities
Yes, all roads eventually do lead to Fontlab...warning that their product links keep changing so you may need to adjust your set...
Fontlab Fontographer
The granddaddy of font editors, Fontographer hasn't been updated since 1996. Now that it's owned by Fontlab, promises are being made for a update that would include Mac OS X.
Fontlab FontLab Studio
This full-featured font editor has the professional font designer in mind. Cross platform (Microsoft Windows 95/98/NT, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows ME, or Apple Macintosh OS 9 or OS X).
Fontlab TypeTool
A light font editor designed for modifying existing fonts, and creating new fonts from existing characters and Illustrator files. Less expensive than a full-featured font editor, but looks like it can do anything a graphic designer would need.
Features include: Add ligatures, old style figures, fractions, currency symbols and foreign characters to your fonts; make your own dingbat or clipart fonts; make font variations; add correct em dashes, en dashes, quotation marks and apostrophes to your fonts.
TypeTool 2 is crossplatform. It can also convert fonts between Adobe Postscript Type 1 and TrueType formats, although you have to open each font, set some settings, and resave manually.
FontLab TransType
While TypeTool can convert fonts between Mac and PC, and Type 1 and TrueType, it's not designed to do it quickly and easily. That's what TransType is for: drag and drop dozens of fonts to the "source fonts" side, set the conversion needed (such as create Mac TrueType), and run the batch. The Pro version also supports conversion from and to OpenType.
(Be aware that while demos are available for all FontLab apps, they render with watermarks. So if you find a font with missing characters and little "TT" symbols all over it, you know where it came from!)