Five of the Best: Font Websites

I have been known to lose many hours to font websites, I guess that’s the geek in me, but I just love a bit of cool typography.

Finding great fonts however takes some time so we’ve rounded up our selection of the best font websites out there.

It’s important to note though that investing in paid-for fonts is worthwhile to make your blog standout and look professional, free fonts are available across the web in abundance but they may not always be the best option.

Free fonts can have issues with them, such as missing characters, only being available in capitals, kerning issues as well as limited weight variations. Whereas the paid-for fonts have had a lot more time spent on them to create something that’s highly adaptable to your needs.

Not all free fonts are bad though, just make sure you are downloading them from a reputable source and save yourself the hassle of bugs.

1. My Fonts: Claims to offer the world’s largest collection of fonts. You can try before you buy with their in-built app, just type in a word to see how it looks and also search for fonts that are similar. They also have What The Font a function that allows you to upload an image or scan to identify the font used. It’s not always amazingly accurate but they do have a great forum you can try too where there’s plenty of other font geeks ready to enlighten you.
2. Font Squirrel: Many free font sites don’t allow commercial use of their fonts but this one is different. A large selection of hand-picked, high-quality, commercial use fonts for free.
3. House Industries: Known throughout the world as a prolific type foundry they have hundreds of amazing fonts to buy. They keep up with the latest font trends and everything they do is handcrafted. They also have a free catalogue that comes with a downloadable free font which is worth signing up for. As well as an amazing range of typographic housewares and objects available to buy.
4. The League of Movable Type: They welcome you to their site with the slogan “No More Bullshit. Join the Revolution.” and promising that you’ll find only the most well-made, free & open-source, @font-face ready fonts. Their ethos is to contribute to the design community by allowing you to browse, download, and use their collection of hand-picked typefaces. You can use them personally or commercially, as long as you credit the original creator.
5. You work for them: They claim to be one of the best design brands in the world and have focused on offering the very best fonts. As well as their extensive font collection you will find some really cool vectors, images and brushes too.

A good tip is to sign up for the newsletters or RSS blog feeds of these font sites, you’ll receive tons of news of the latest font releases and applications. Perfect for keeping you inspired.

For more font resources check out this amazing list of the 100 greatest free fonts of 2012.

Do you have any font resources you’d like to share? Just hit-up the comments box below and tell us your favourites and which fonts you’re loving right now.

Michelle xx