Our Hopeful Home: How To Find and Choose The Best Free Fonts

If you're anything like me you love a free, pretty printable. They're inexpensive and can serve as artwork all over your home. Just print it out and place it in a frame. Voila. However, when I'm the one who's actually making the printable (or blog graphic), I can drive myself crazy when choosing just the right font for my project.

I don't know about you but when it comes time to choose a font for one of my DIY signs I end up with analysis paralysis. Over the years I have downloaded so many fonts onto my computer that when it comes time to choose one I go absolutely numb. And that can really slow you down. I do, however, have a few tricks up my sleeve with regard to how to choose the right font. Hopefully my checklist will at least point you in the right direction.

Think About It In Advance

For starters, you need to have some idea as to the general font "look" you're going for. Is it playful, like a printable for a child's room? Or maybe more formal, like a Save the Date card or even a wedding invitation? If you're a blogger, it could also be that you're looking for just the right font for your blog infographic. That's usually me. As a blogger, I also try to be consistent in my font choices to keep things on the blog looking cohesive, but I'm really bad at writing down which fonts I've used for which projects so I can't always replicate them. Which leads me to my next point.

Keep A Font Journal

I need to take my own advice on this one.The only way you'll get a sense of what fonts are working for you is to keep what I like to call a font journal. That's just a fancy way of saying write it all down in a notebook as you go along so that if you find a particularly great font or font combo you'll remember it for next time! I can't remember fonts to save my life. (Also note: post-its are not the way to go. I tend to write favorite fonts down on post-it notes and then lose said notes. Keeping a journal is by far the smarter route.)

Have An Arsenal of Fonts to Choose From

While having too many fonts can paralyze some people, I still believe that it's better to have more fonts rather than less. So how do you go about stockpiling those fonts? You can always pay for fonts, but that's never been my style. I don't see the point when there are so many great fonts out there that you can get for free. So what are some of my go-to sites for free fonts?

Links:

1. Creative Fabrica

2. Fontbundles

3. Creative Market

4. The Hungry JPEG

Bonus:

5. Pixel Surplus

6. DaFont.com

Sites 1 through 4 above are my go-to favorites, with a bonus two (5-6) thrown in for good measure. MAKE SURE TO REVIEW THE TERMS OF THE LICENSE. In other words, make sure that the free font can be used for your intended purpose, i.e, personal vs. commercial use, etc. Numbers 1-5 above share almost 100% (in my experience) totally free fonts for whatever you'd like, including commercial use. Sweet.

I currently have over 450 fonts installed on my computer. No wonder I have a hard time choosing which font to use! Okay, so maybe less is more when it comes to stockpiling fonts. But you definitely want them for free, so check out my go-to sites and sign up for their e-mails (excpt for Dafont.com which is purely a static site for fonts only) that are filled with free fonts and other fun digital images you can use for projects. Which will probably lead you, too, to the edge of the abysss that I'll call "too many fonts."

Use Wordmark.it To Preview Your Fonts

There's nothing better than to be able to see your font or font combo in action prior to using them in your project. And the best way I know how to do that is with a website called Wordmark.it. It's free and it's pretty awesome in my book. All you do is go to the site, type in the word or saying you want to preview, and it will automatically show you how your words look in each and every one of your fonts so that you can compare and decide right then and there. Honestly, it's been known to preserve my sanity on occasion. The screenshot above is from one of my works in progress I'll be sharing with you soon!

Fonts 101: Checklist

To recap:

1. Think in advance about the look you're going for.

2. Keep a Font Journal for reference.

3. Have a list of go-to free font resource sites.

4. Use Wordmark.it to preview your work.

My next DIY project just happens to involve fonts so stay tuned and I'll share that process next time!

Well, that's it until next time, friends!

I hope you enjoyed reading

How To Find And Choose

The Best Free Fonts.

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