Repeat After Me—Fonts Are Software
Let me ask you this—do you use any free software in your work as a designer? Free plugins perhaps, browsers, tools such as GIMPshop, maybe even content management systems like Mambo or entire operating systems (Linux anyone)? What about free design elements, images from the many sites providing free photos, such as image*after or morgueFile? Now here's the hard question: what about free fonts? I can almost sense your body stiffen. Free fonts, you say! Man, they suck. But what if they didn't?
Is there anything intrinsically wrong with using free fonts in commercial design work? I've always had a totally closed mind to the idea but I recently came across the blog of one Vitaly Friedman, a young Web designer/developer from Minsk who now makes his home in Germany. Vitaly went in quest of quality free fonts for his online work and came up with an interesting list. Sure, his collection has its share of duds and knockoffs, but there are also a few promising items. Kaffeesatz is not without charm, for example.
Vitaly does the right thing by encouraging readers to always check the licenses accompanying such fonts—many are only provided free for "personal use" (whatever that means). But plenty are also offered free of any restrictions.
Even commercial font vendors are getting into the act, as a way of enticing designers to their sites. FontShop, for example, regularly makes free fonts available, such as Elsner+Flake's Baskerville Old Face, shown below.
Perhaps free fonts have a modest place in the designer's toolkit after all, side-by-side with the other free software we use every day.
Chris Dickman
Editor, Graphics.com
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