Little Box Of Ideas » typography

48 Brilliant Free Fonts For Logo And Web Designers In 2010

Sneh Roy — Tue, 14 Sep 2010 03:26:46 +0000

There are some amazing new font foundries on the design scene who are doing some brilliant work and making it available to designers and developers everywhere for next to nothing. The release of a new font or font family sees the release of a free weight, a trending practice that garners no complaints from anyone. As designers and purveyors of art and all things creative, we enjoy the art of another responsibly and ration our funds for highly desirable designs and resources. I have to admit, there are many stunning fonts out there and most are not cheap. So, it is indeed an exuberant feeling when you discover quality fonts for downloads that are absolutely, stark raving free.

A while ago I did an article and roundup of Free Logo Fonts and today I am following up on that with a big list of 45 brilliant and gorgeous fonts for all you logo designers and web designers out there. I have tried out a couple of these in my logo projects and I have a special affinity for Lobster by Pablo Impallari and League Gothic. There is a good mix for modern, minimalistic, retro, vintage and traditional logos and layouts. Experimenting and altering them to suit your designs will create any look and feel you are after. The fonts below are all free, some require signing up to get to the download which is a very small price to pay for these little typographic gems. As always, enjoy responsibly!

1 Bullpen Heavy Italic

2 Calluna Regular

3 Circula Medium

4 Darjeeling Ornaments

5 Deftone Stylus

6 Expressway Regular

7 Florin Sans Demo

8 Neuropol X Regular

9 Pirulen Regular

10 Planer

11 Reklame Script

12 St Ryde

13 Deibi V1

14 Code

15 Zag Regular

16 Dekar

17 Lot

18 Piron

19 Typeface Adec

20 Zebra

21 Gabo

22 Quadranta

23 Juice

24 Jura

27 Nobile

31 Alte Haas Grotesk

32 Balham

33 Neuton

34 US 101

35 Euro Caps

36 St Marie

37 Goudy Bookletter

38 Ayita Pro

39 Molengo

40 Veggieburger

41 Lobster

42 Adelle

43 Alido

15 Exceptional Handwritten Free Fonts

Paul Maloney — Sat, 01 May 2010 04:00:42 +0000

Typography is possibly one of the most important design aspects of any project; using typography that doesn’t compliment your design can be incredibly detrimental to the design and effect usability and obviously the aesthetic properties of the project. There are thousands of fonts from many foundries available, as well as custom fonts that people wish to create and share. Common sense will tell us that the paid fonts will be of a much higher quality, and have the full character sets but there of course exceptions to the rule. (Museo and Chunk are a couple of great examples.)

With every element of design there are trends. One typography trend that we have seen quite a bit, is of handwritten fonts. This style can be used in many ways, for example client testimonials, signatures and in grunge designs. I have gathered 15 handwritten fonts that particularly stand out for me; the notable part worth mentioning is they are all free. But please do read the usage rights regarding commercial designs and projects.

Note : Cover Image courtesy of Shutterstock

30 Beautiful And Minimal iPad Typography Wallpapers

Sneh Roy — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 01:56:29 +0000

For a while now, I have been working on my "Typeholics Anonymous" Typography related digital artwork series. I have been experimenting with colors, shapes, angles and placements to enhance the overall typography of a piece. The key feature of this series is the absolute minimalism in color and design element. The type is punctuated by a simple red heart and a scroll. The fonts used are some of my personal favorites. And although I don’t own an iPad yet, here are 30 beautifully minimal iPad wallpapers that I have designed as part of the series that I would like to share with you today. Each wallpaper is 1024x1024px in resolution and in JPEG format. The zip file at the bottom of the post contains all 30 wallpapers. They are free to use and share. So enjoy them responsibly.

How Do I Implement @font-face?

Paul Maloney — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 09:41:11 +0000

At great risk of angering the web design overlords I need to get something off my chest, I can’t stand the term "Bulletproof." When someone decides they have come up with a "sure fire" solution they label it bulletproof, which in reality nothing ever is. @font -face is supported by the top browsers using various font types, for example Safari, Opera, Firefox and Chrome handle .TTF and .OTF, Internet Explorer can handle .EOT, and what’s probably worth a mention, Firefox 3.6 now handles .WOFF, and Opera supports .SVG. What I’m going to show you is the most solid (not bulletproof!) method of @font-face implementation I personally find best and use within my projects.

For your CSS:

@font-face {
font-family: "Museo 300";
src: url("fonts/Museo300-Regular.eot");
src: local("Museo 300"), local("Museo 300"),
url("fonts/Museo300-Regular.otf") format("opentype"),
url("fonts/Museo300-Regular.woff") format("woff"),
url("fonts/Museo300-Regular.svg#Museo 300") format("svg");
}

Let’s break it down!

font-family: "Museo 300";

This is the font name, and how you will call it in your stylesheet.

src: url("Museo300-Regular.eot");

This will enable your font on Internet Explorer.

src: local("Museo 300"), local("Museo 300"),

This is the local setting which will call it from your machine if it exists.

url("Museo300-Regular.otf") format("opentype"),

This covers Safari, Opera and Firefox below 3.6

url("Museo300-Regular.woff") format("woff"),

This is the Firefox 3.6 file type.

url("Museo300-Regular.svg#Museo 300") format("svg");

This is the Opera font type. This will cover Safari, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Chrome and Opera at the very least and it provides a local setting which will find the local file on your machine. This can be altered to accommodate any other OpenType font or TrueType font (IF you have permission to use it!)

Example Usage:

#main {font: 18px "Museo 300", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;}

Anything Else?

When using the @font-face font in other elements, its good practice to have a few fallback fonts for users who are using a dated browser or browser that don’t support @font-face.

Demo And Download

I have included a very simple demo along with the various font types which you can run locally and view in the various browsers, and use the sample code to adapt for your own uses. If you have the .OTF file you can use the Font Squirrel Generator which will create the .SVG, .WOFF and .EOT formats for you to use.

20 Free Fonts Perfect For Fancy Logos

Peter Olexa — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 23:41:00 +0000

When designing a fancy logo, we shouldn’t be using a plain font, nor something too grungy. These kind of logos need to maintain their class. The right balance of flair and flourish in typography will render these fancy logos absolutely beautiful. I prepared 20 free fonts which are just right for this purpose. Enjoy!

1. NK38pc-d

2. NK30-d

3. Oregon ldo-extended

4. Fontin Bold

5. ARB – 187 Morderne Caps

6. NK32-d

7. Rechtman Script Medium

8. Diavlo Light Regular

9. Antipasto

10. A JasperCaps

11. Chopinscript

12. Carrington

13. NK137

14. NK107

15. NK690

16. CreamPuff

17. Aka Frivolity

18. NK122

19. NK109

20. NK102