How to Find and Identify Fonts

The free, easy and legal way!

Wether you’re trying to find the best font for your novella, because you’re a selfpublisher, or you’re designing a leaflet as a startup graphics designer — the licensing fees for professional, commercial fonts can be daunting at times. While there are ways (like always) to basically obtain any font you want for free, there is a free and perfectly legal way to get lots of quality fonts: open source.

Open source basically means, that you’re free to use the fonts for any kind of project, be it commercial or just for private use. There are an estimated onehundredandthirtyfive quadrofontzillion fonts out there in almost as much variations.

Who really needs all of those?

If you’re not required to use “specific” fonts for a given project, you’re free to use “lookalikes” or “alternative” fonts. In all honesty, if you have a handful of fonts, you’re set for almost any kind of project.

I recommend a “5-way typeset” like so:

• 5 sans serif fonts (think Arial)
• 5 serif fonts (think Times New Roman)
• 5 monotype fonts (think Courier New)
• 5 handwritten and swirly fonts (think Brush Script)
• 5 really heavy fonts (think Impact or Gothic…