Typedia is a free-to-use community-driven resource to classify, categorize, and connect typefaces.
It works like a wiki, anyone can join, add & edit pages for typefaces or for the people behind the types.
It is possible to find out details about fonts like:
- the designers
- foundries
- country of origin
- release year
- & more..
The resource is not complete yet (and won’t be, as new fonts are created everyday) but growing & becoming a very useful resource.
Typedia also offers some other great information under the "Learn" section.
FontCapture is a simple & free web application with an impressive function: it turns any handwriting into a font.
It does not require any software and works in few steps:
- download (PDF) & print a special template
- fill it with your handwriting
- scan & upload the template
The service automatically creates your font & presents you the download file.
Also, just before downloading the generated fonts, you can see a full-preview & decide to re-create a new one or not.
P.S. The service is currently in beta status.
Requirements: A printer & a scanner
myFontbook is a free web-based service that enables anyone to browse their font collections.
It can be used with or without registering (free), but by signing in, you can tag & categorize your fonts for reaching them quicker in the future.
A custom text can be displayed with all fonts in both swatch & list views. Also, gylphs view allows you to quickly scan characters and symbols.
The font metrics view displays guides to show default kerning, text baseline, and median height. And, a selected font can be printed easily with several style samples by the click of a button.
Requirements: No Requirements
Compatibility: All Major Browsers
TypeSelect is a JavaScript-based solution for using selectable custom fonts on the web.
It combines the power of typeface.js, jQuery, the canvas, toDataURL, CSS background properties & real overlayed text to accomplish this feature.
TypeSelect is very easy to understand & implement. It is totally controlled via CSS & no server-side files are required.
It has support for double/triple-click selections, UTF-8 characters & gracefully degrades in IE6.
On the other hand, currently, it has some limitations like unselectable text in IE, not being able to use :hover or line breaks & few more.
Requirements: jQuery, Typeface.js
Compatibility: All Major Browsers (with some limitations)
Free Premium Fonts is a website presenting 1000s of free fonts for download.
Fonts are very well-grouped into categories like futuristic, handwritten, 3D & more.
Once you view the details of a font, you can customize the text to have a better opinion about how it will look on your project.
Also, a magnifier helps you to zoom every letter & a "Top 50" list helps seeing what are the most downloaded fonts.
For every designer, Free Premium Fonts is a must-bookmark for reaching to a huge library of free fonts.
There are 1000s of free TrueType or OpenType fonts that can be used in design projects. On the other hand, there are very few free fonts in vector formats.
Fonts in vector formats like .AI, .EPS or PDF are great, specially when we want to modify or add an extra twist to them. As every layer of them are under our hands, this is easily possible.
Here is a collection of 19 creative, quality & free fonts in vector formats (.AI, .EPS or PDF) that you’ll like:
The font’s download link exists in the information section of the page.
Read the rest of this entry »
Open Font Library is a community for finding & sharing non-proprietary typeface designs.
Fonts shared can be downloaded for free or you can upload a font you created to share with others.
Although there are 10+ fonts presented in the website, this is the new face of Open Font Library where there are 150+ fonts to be transferred from the old website.
The website also hosts the fonts for free that you can include them to your webpages with @font-face rules (more details).
And, besides the free fonts, you can find information on how to design fonts, or how to earn money by designing them.
Fonts 500 is a website presenting the most popular fonts of all times and offering them as a free download.
The list is calculated according to the download counts of popular font download websites.
The fonts are already displayed with the names of them but any text can be mentioned for a customized look of the fonts.
P.S. There are some shareware or demo downloads in the list.
If you want to add a personal twist to the text that is used in your websites or designs then you will like this.
YourFonts is a free service that turns a handwriting into a font.
Process is very simple: you print a template>fill>scan>upload it. The font is auto-generated & you can download your font.
Some examples of the fonts generated can be found here.
Want to win a free copy of MainType (a professional font manager)?
YourFonts is giving a free license of MainType who writes a review about the service.
If WRD gets the free license with this post, then it will be given away to a WRD reader.
Just comment to this post, I’ll be running a random query between the commenters to select the winner (when the license arrives – no earlier than 24 hours).
Update 02.06.2009: Just ran the random query and the winner is: Chomik (comment #35920). Congratulations.
sIFR, the widely-used solution for using any font in websites has various alternatives which were also mentioned at WRD:
Cufón is a new one that only requires JavaScript & once configured, so easy to use.
The process for using Cufón is slightly different. Font to be used must be uploaded to a web-based generator, which converts the file to SVG and then VML automatically.
After that, include the generated .js file into your webpage and use it just like any font.
More technical info about Cufón can be found here.
Requirements: No Requirements
Compatibility: All Major Browsers
