20 Great Free Fonts

Two words that bring creative pros rushing over with tongues wagging are free and
fonts. And if they appear in a sentence as free fonts, then youve got yourself a
dynamic duo to entice any designer. Well, assuming those fonts are of decent quality
and from a reputable source. Ive used my typographical prowess (read: Oooohthis
ones purdy!) to ferret out a few gems to help you spice up your next project, all while
keeping your budget under control.
Font Diners Featured Item is based on signage originally found on a department store
marquee dating back to the 1940s. It has that clean art deco look, with a touch of
modern poise, making it at home in a 50s-themed diner menu to high-tech headlines.
Font Diners licensing is pretty strict and quite involved, so be sure to read their FAQs
before using.

The Gothic styling of Adobes open source 12-font Source Sans Pro family was
designed with user interfaces in mind. That being said, its a clean, sleek, highly-legible
typeface that would be just as at home within an eBook as it would nestled inside a
smartphone app. Desktop, eBook, PDF, app, and web

Part of Softmakers five-font Cambridge family, Cambridge Serial Regular is perfect

for lending an old world feel to your layouts, especially when you get tired of Century
Old Style. The other Cambridge Serial fonts are Light, Medium, Bold, and XBold, with
the entire family going for only $15. Desktop and web

Steelfish from Typodermic is a 15-font family of condensed sans serif beauty, with
seven of those fonts available for free. Typodermic explains that Steelfish was modeled
after many different headline fonts, rather than one individual source. Definitely
appeals to my love of mid-Century everything. Desktop

Space. The final frontier. Cmon, you were thinking that, too. While not exactly Classic
Trek and not exactly Next Generation, Typodermics Ethnocentric boldly goes above
and beyond to give your project a space-aged feel. Out of the 12 fonts in the family, the
regular and italic fonts are free. Desktop

With 12 fonts in this family, Latinotypes Sanchez Condensed provides a great

alternative to Rockwell. I couldnt put my finger on why I liked it slightly more than its
more established relative, until I realized it was a bit more rounded (read: less stodgy).
The regular and italic versions are available for free. Desktop and web

Insigne Designs Le Havre Layers is a 21-font family with art deco design and
accenting styles. Use the free Le Havre Layers Primary in combination with the other
(purchased) fonts to create shadows, cross-hatching, wireframes, 3D shadows, and
other dimensional effects. Desktop and web

CheapProFonts Scriptina Pro typeface is a modern script with an old-fashioned,

hand-crafted look. Created as an upgrade to the original Scriptina, this version
features an extended non swoosh collection of letterforms, though those swooshes
are still available as OpenType extras. Scriptina Pro also features a multi-language
character set and additional style sets. Desktop and web

If you grew up in the 1980s, even if you didnt like heavy metal, youll instantly
recognize Typodermics Metal Lord creation. Based loosely on Iron Maidens logo, this
heavy metal font includes some stylistic alternates and uses the power of darkness,
um, I mean OpenType, to join characters together and change forms when necessary.
Desktop

Manic Depressive by SpideRaYsfoNtS features a hand-scratched look to create an

edgy grunge typeface. Originally created as a fundraiser project for a bipolar disorder
research group in the UK, its now available as a commercial font for most uses. The
creator also provides a link to the foundation, so even users of the free license can
donate to the cause. Desktop

I know its not even close to Christmas yet, but its never too early to start thinking
about decorating. And Austie Bosts Christmas Doodles font is fun way to decorate
your creations with a little holiday spirit. This dingbat typeface contains roughly 90
(okay, exactly 90, I counted) characters. Desktop, web, ebook

Geometria from Brownfox is a 16-font family, with 8 weights, each with an italic
version. Im always on the lookout for clean sans serif fonts and Geometria really
appeals to me. How could you not love that capital G? Geometria Light is available for
free, which is my favorite (price, that is). Desktop and web

ChunkFive from the League of Moveable Type is a throwback to the chunky headlines
of yesteryear and wanted posters of the Old West. But this ultra bold slab serif would
look just as at home advertising this weeks grocery store specials or artisanal handmade objet du jour. Desktop, eBook, PDF, app, and web

Check out this font, comrades! Arkhip from Fontfabric proclaims itself as a font with a
Russian soul, made in the USSR. Whatever its history, Im all for a font that is classically
retro, yet somehow sleek and modern. The display font includes Cyrillic and small caps
and comes in one flavor with limited special characters. Desktop, eBook, PDF, app, and
web

Fontfabrics Sprite Graffiti brings the bold artistic graffiti style to your layout, in three
different fonts: regular, shadow, and extras. Each of the fonts evokes a look and feeling
somewhere between marker lettering and spray paint. The extras include paint-dripped
lines, symbols, and swooshes. Desktop, eBook, PDF, app, and web

Sorts Mill Goudy from The League of Moveable Type is a sort of revamped Goudy
Oldstyle. Available in regular and italic, Sorts Mill Goudy offers old-world class, without
looking just plain old. The League of Moveable Type is committed to providing practical
open source fonts. This typeface certainly delivers with OpenType features such as
roman small caps, ligatures, capital spacing, fractions, and oldstyle and lining figures.
Desktop, eBook, PDF, app, and web

Waaaaay back in the early days of desktop publishing, I fell in love with Brush Script
(dont judge). I havent lost my love of thick-stroked brush fonts, but these days my
heart belongs to Kaushan Script by Impallari. This display script looks like it was
created with an organic ink brush, complete with uneven baselines and strokes.
Desktop, eBook, app, gaming, merchandise

Not your typical dingbats font, Gismotype by The Sweatshoppe uses everyday objects
as the letterforms themselves. From books, to martinis, to fish hooks, to protractors,
Gismotype takes these objects and crafts them into a whimsical font. Each items
shape determines the letteror number or punctuation markit represents. Can I
interest anyone in an underpants D? Desktop, eBook, app, gaming, merchandise

Fontfabrics Nexa Rust Free Super Family contains five fonts including Sans Black,
Script, and Handmade, but it was the Slab Black Shadow, with its weather-worn look
that first caught my eye. The extras font contains hand-drawn ornamental elements
with whimsical arrows and symbols. Desktop and web

Jura by Ten by Twenty provides a nice alternative to more rigid typefaces like Times
New Roman. Jura is a narrowish, roundish serif with a sort of letterpress feel to it. With
no hard edges, it looks at home pretty much anywhere and works as well in a headline
as it does in the address line on a business card. Jura is available (as donationware) in
regular, bold, italic, and bold italic. Desktop

Categories: Features, Type

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Working With Dynamic Symbols in Adobe Illustrator

by Chad Chelius
Symbols have always been a powerful tool in Illustrator. With symbols, you can easily

create elements that repeat throughout your artwork and most importantly, update
them with the click of a button. The 2015 release of Adobe Illustrator CC adds new life
to symbols by allowing users to modify elements of a symbol instance while still
retaining the link to the original Symbol.

Creating a Symbol
Symbols can be created from virtually any piece of artwork including embedded
images. To create a symbol, select the artwork that youd like to turn into a symbol and
either drag the artwork into the symbols panel, or click on the New Symbol button at
the bottom of the Symbols panel.

Youll be presented with the Symbol Options dialog box which provides you with
options for defining your symbol. Start by giving your symbol a name. The export type
isnt important unless youre going to import this symbol into Flash in the future. The
symbol type however, is very important. If you want to take advantage of dynamic
symbols, make sure you enable the Dynamic Symbol radio button and click OK.
Immediately, a symbol will be added to the Symbols panel and the original artwork will
become a symbol instance. You can easily identify dynamic symbols in the Symbols
panel by the + icon in the lower-right corner of the symbol thumbnail.

What Makes a Symbol Dynamic

To use a symbol, simply drag it and drop it onto the artboard or click the Place Symbol
Instance button located at the bottom of the Symbols panel. This creates a symbol
instance and you can drag as many of these to the artboard as you wish. What makes
these symbol instances so useful is that theyre incredibly efficient. Instead of
generating the artwork every time a symbol instance is placed, the symbol instance
always references the symbol.
So if a change is made to the symbol, all of the instances update. This alone is
powerful, but the limitation is that you cant modify any of the symbol instances
separately from the symbol. Thats where the dynamic symbols come in! With a
dynamic symbol, you can use the Direct Selection tool to select elements within each
symbol instance and change their color or modify the path.

In the figure above, I adjusted the color of each symbol instance to give each one a
unique appearance. Now if I edit the symbol by double-clicking on the symbol in the
symbols panel or by double-clicking on a symbol instance, I can make an adjustment
that will still affect all symbols but the independent edits made to each symbol will be
retained. In the figure below, I adjusted the doorway to the tent to give it a rounded
appearance.

You can even add artwork to the symbol and it will update all symbol instances as well.

Considerations

The thing to keep in mind when using dynamic symbols is that any edits you make to
the symbol instance will trump the edits made to the symbol itself. For example, when
you edit the color of an element in the symbol instance and then make a color change
to the symbol, the color applied to the symbol instance will be retained. If you ever
decide that you want to revert a symbol instance back to the appearance of the
symbol, you can select the symbol instance and click the Reset button Control panel at
the top of the screen. This, by the way, will also reset the scaling applied to the Symbol
Instance as well.
Categories: Design, Graphics, Graphics Image Editing, Illustration
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