Font-tastic!
With the rise of Google web fonts, Font Squirrel, and the open-source movement, free high-quality fonts are more widely available than ever. But with great font freedom comes great font responsibility, and it’s easy to succumb to the pitfalls of ugly free fonts. But worry not! We, The Pekoe Group Design Team, have waded through the trenches of the Internet to bring you what we believe to be the best free fonts available.
Museo: http://www.myfonts.com/
Though Museo isn’t entirely free (italics and certain weights will cost you a small fee), it is one of the most unique free fonts available, and it’s great for both display and text. Its anachronistic blend of sans and slab-serif qualities make for a font that is not to be missed.
League Gothic: http://www.
One of the real stand-outs of the open-source movement, League Gothic (not to be confused with the similarly styled, but more expensive, Trade Gothic) is a revival of an unreleased font from the early 1900s. It’s a versatile, condensed sans-serif display font that sits comfortably in both print and web and, best of all, it’s 100% free.
Steelfish: http://www.myfonts.
Steelfish is a great display font that we recently used for Woody Harrelson’s Bullet For Adolf. Like League Gothic, it is a condensed display font that looks great at large sizes, but one should be wary of using it for text.
Code Pro: http://www.myfonts.com/
Code Pro isn’t really free per se, but the demo of it is, and it’s of such high quality that it deserves to be included here. Especially interesting about Code Pro is the use of uppercase “I”s with serifs, despite being a sans-serif. Trendy!
Quattrocento: http://www.
Too long has Trajan graced the posters of every film ever (examples range from “Titanic” to “Sex and The City”). Now, with Quattrocento, which is similarly based on classic Roman letter-forms, you never have to use Trajan again and it’s totally free. Best of all, this font is great for both display and text alike.
There you have it folks. The best of the best.