Dutch designer Koen Hachmang has unleashed some great free fonts on the web in the past few years. I like Base and Zygoth, but Neophyte is just plain slick. It’s too bad the FNAC font (based on Neophythe) on his splash is a custom job; I like it even better. There’s a lot of stuff to look at here, but be warned: Koen’s site features just the sort of Flash inteface that makes some of you want to slit your wrists.
Zone Erogene has some excellent free fonts and a strange love of mixed cases. Most of their fonts feature upper and lowercase letters thrown together into a bizarre orgy of casing. If you can get past that (like me), check out Arrière Garde, C Dans L’air and the Migraine family.
Update: Never trust the French. Links removed, see Stephen’s post in the comments.
Fenotype is a Finnish type foundry offering a ton of interesting freeware fonts. I downloaded 10.10, Digital Kauno, Linja and Tantor. And for those of you concerned about commercial usage, check out their info page:
Freeware fonts are free to use in both commercial and noncommercial work. Despite that a donation of 20 € or sending one piece of the product where the font has been used is the best way to say thanks.
Okay, that was really just an excuse to use a blockquote. Sorry.
K-Type is an independent British foundry with several very inexpensive commercial fonts–and three completely free ones! Mandatory is based on the font used on England’s license plates and Lexia Readable is an interesting sans serif. Strangely enough, dafont.com has Roadway, which is a great street sign font that I can’t find anywhere on K-Type’s website.
It seems like I see the same half dozen grunge fonts over and over again. Not just on the web, but on crappy album covers, t-shirts and in video games. And the thing is, they suck. And believe me, I should know, I designed one of them (Uptown, which I apologize for. I was young.).
So how come I’ve never seen anyone use Cagna, by Typotek? It’s actually good. And it’s perfect for your roommate’s friend’s band’s non-profit organization’s website that you’ve been working on.
Those guys rock, by the way.
Update: For those of you who don’t speak French, you can head straight to Typotek’s download page.
My coworker Jason Fields pointed me towards Buro Destruct’s typedifferent.com this morning. The site collects 10 years of Buro’s fonts, many of them free. The free fonts don’t have their own section, so you’ll have to scrounge a bit, but it’s worth it. Check out Wurst and Sirca.
When I posted about Cape-Arcona way back on Fontleech’s first day in business, I didn’t know about phantompower, the site of CA co-founder Stefan Claudius. Stefan’s got several free fonts that predate Cape Arcona, including my favorite of his, Kalish.
I could’ve dragged this out for years like the cast of Friends but luckily for the Internet I decided to just dump all the rest of the free pixel fonts on you. And don’t worry, we’re taking a break from bitmap fonts for a while after this.
9031 is worth a visit just for Bangalore, one of the few free pixel fonts I’ve ever used. A script font that’s actually usable? In pixel format, no less? Alright, where’s Ashton?
Clops only has a few free fonts for download, but I like the blocky Ozon.
You should recognize some of codeman38’s video game fonts (if you spent your adolescence playing Super Nintendo). Return of Ganon hit me like an arrow poisoned with sweet, sweet nostalgia.
Core has 3 packs of free pixel fonts. Pack 2 features my favorite, Bongonaut.
The free font section at Habitat Seven sports an interface that is sure to infuriate some of you, but I kind of like it. Drag a chunk of trash (?) from the bottom of the screen into the tree chipper(?) and press the Windows or Mac button and it’ll spit out a nice bitmap font.
Orgdot has a nice selection and a very cool interface that lets you type a preview of each font right on the page. Check out the Teacher’s Pet and Kharon families.
Sucharaka has 4 tiny free fonts. I’m really running out of stuff to say.
Underware’s Unibody family is an example of truly high quality pixel font design. If you use these fonts, you might accidentally look professional!
Okay, that was great. Now I never want to see another pixel font ever again.