The open-source type movement is about giving tools away, about ending the monopolies on creativity. In that spirit of giving, we’ve assembled a list of free font resources. That translates to thousands of fonts for you, made by talented, professional, hard-working designers from around the world. You can install them on your computer and then access them in your PicMonkey designs and photos (spoiler alert: they’re in the Yours tab in the Text tool).
Remember: on your quest to font-tastic images, be respectful. Look into the licensing of your font. Some designers may be cool with you using their font for commercial purposes. Others may object.
Volume plus volume equals font geyser
1. Google Fonts
Google’s all about making things easier. Their fonts team has collected hundreds of fonts for web and print design. They make it easy for normies and professionals alike, and all the fonts are open-source. That means you can customize them, publish them, or share them however you want.
2. Monotype
Signing up with Monotype gets you over 3,650 licensed fonts, which is nuts.
3. Urban Fonts
Are you sitting down? Good. Because you’ll need to calm yourself before you learn that Urban Fonts has nearly 8,000 free fonts to choose from. Now, don’t go downloadin’ all at once, they have plenty of categories to let you search smarter for those awaiting gems.
Best for business
4. Fontfabric
Launched by designer Svet Simov, Fontfabric is an independent type foundry that creates high-quality fonts for whatever web or print destinations your heart desires. In addition to the freebies, Fontfabric’s paid fonts are definitely cheap enough to deserve a looksy. Bonus: their fonts can be used for both personal and commercial projects!
5. Font Squirrel
It’s on you to look into the licensing for any font you use, but FontSquirrel wants to help. All of their fonts are free for commercial use, organized in an easy-to-use format, and pre-selected by professional designers. They’ve done the work for you!
6. Font Cab
All you business peeps, rejoice! FontCab’s fonts are all free to use for commercial purposes. FontCab makes it super easy to find fonts by what you’re working on. Instead of scrolling through hundreds of options, just explore categories like Cartoonish, Decorative or Futuristic.
Individual designers
7. Pablo Impallari
Impallari is dedicated to open-source design and design tools. Seriously, check out his work. You deserve the knowledge, and he deserves the love for being such a fabulous resource to the design community.
8. Jovanny Lemonad
Jovanny has designed more than 100 fonts since starting in 2004. He takes a “for designers by designers” approach to his experimental work, and you can see the magic in his one-of-a-kind fonts. He’s even got a steampunk font where the letters are made of gears and pistons!
Campy camp camp
9. Blambot
Blambot has everything your comic book heart desires. They have fonts for dialogues, for sound effects, and for anything else that falls under the camp umbrella. Need a font that would fit the side of a Martian police cruiser, then use Martian Police, d’uh! Catholic School Girls is great for getting a great, inescapably middle-school, handwritten look.
Font in context
10. Typewolf
What’s great about Typewolf is that they show you examples of a typeface out in the wild. It’s an inspiring display of a font’s magnificent potential! Typewolf is an independent project run by designer Jeremiah Shoaf. In addition to fonts, he curates guides, cool projects, and designers.
11. FontShop
The folks at FontShop are amazing. They do font research, font identification, and let you try fonts on for size—all free. Anything made with a FontShop typeface is going to stand out. But don’t just download the fonts and book, take advantage of their curation and expertise to keep your font game strong.
12. Creative Market’s Free Goods of the Week
Creative Market showcases graphics, themes, and most importantly: fonts! Each week they highlight a batch of fonts from indie designers around the world.
13. The League of Moveable Type
The League’s an amazing group of designers who provide new fonts regularly, and they’re as diverse as they are jaw-dropping. Plus, the League is an excellent resource to stay informed about font design, emerging styles, and upcoming designers.
International sensibilities
14. Ten by Twenty
Ten by Twenty, in their own words, creates “splendid little hand-crafted pixel-based products.” If the “splendid” didn’t clue you in, Ten by Twenty is based in the UK. It was started by designer Ed Merritt. When his fonts aren’t free, they’re waayyy affordable.
15. Type Depot
Based in Bulgaria, Type Depot is Alexander Nedelev and Veronika Slavova. They work from their home offices customize fonts, do custom lettering work, and create typefaces like Corki, Piron, Banda, and Glide. Check ’em out and enjoy your increasingly international font library!
16. Lost Type Co-op
The Lost Type Co-op is an independent, collaborative, pay-what-you-want type foundry. Maybe you’ve seen their stuff in projects from Nike, Starbucks, or the President of the United States. They have over 50 different faces from contributors all over the world, and sales go straight to the designer. Lost Type is dedicated to the idea that quality fonts should be made available to anyone. So yeah, pay what you want, just keep in mind the hard work, dedication, and love that went into each font.
How to download and install fonts on your computer
If you’re new to installing fonts, have no fear. It’s super easy. First, click on the font, wherever you found it on the web, to instantly download it.
For a Mac
Find the font in your Downloads folder, and double click the file name (probably a zip file), which converts to another folder.
Click that folder name (which is the name of the font).
There should be an Install Font button near the bottom of the screen that opens up. Click it. You’re done!
For a PC
Extract the zip file of your fonts to the file location of your choice.
From that file location, right-click the font files and click Install. Or, drag the font files from your location into the Fonts folder in your Control Panel.
When you’re ready to drop that font into your PicMonkey creations, peep our tutorial on how to access your own fonts.
