5 Best Free Fonts That Haven’t Been Overused (2020): Weekly Round Up
#1 Decalotype
Many free fonts, especially those on Google Fonts, have lost some of their impact because of overuse. Stuff like Montserrat, Varela, Lato and Open Sans are so widely used that, at this point, using Times New Roman would be a revolutionary act.
That doesn’t make them bad fonts, obviously, and using them will give you some peace of mind: at least the fonts on this car crash of a site look good.
However, there’s a whole world of free fonts out there for us to discover so this week’s theme will be ‘Amazing Underused Free Fonts’. Today, we’ll be taking a look at Decalotype, a slightly condensed geometric sans that’s perfect for headings, headlines and titles.
Decalotype comes in seven weights with matching italics, so flexibility won’t be an issue. Its tall x-height and open counters will let you use it to set body text, in addition to all the display scenarios I’ve mentioned above, but its slightly condensed nature could lead to some compromise in readability.
Here are some quick designs I’ve created using Decalotype
You can download Decalotype from literally every free font site, for example HERE. Decalotype is free for personal and commercial use.
#2 Ailerons
At one point, there were few things more curious to me than the almost complete absence of Ailerons from web and print typography.
As I found out later, there is a reason for that: Ailerons is free for personal use but its creator requires that you contact him if you plan to use it for commercial purposes, presumably to license the font by paying a fee.
When I contacted Adilson Gonzales to ask whether I could use the font in my weather app Veterondo: Abstract Weather (a free, open source app on Android; you’re welcome) he said that I could go ahead and do it.
A screen from Veterondo
Just so I’m clear, I’m not referring to the Aileron font, a fine free sans-serif in and of itself. Instead, Ailerons is a display typeface, perfect for titles, headings and logos.
Perfect for Star Trek-style titles.
Something slightly more experimental.
Personally, I think that Adilson does the font and himself a disservice by not simply letting everyone use it, for whatever purpose. It has the makings of a modern classic—if only its license was more permissive.
You can download Ailerons HERE.
#3 Silka
By now, you must think that this entire blog is an elaborate scheme by atipo foundry to promote its fonts. I can assure you that it’s not; in fact, they ignored my email asking them to buy one font per week to offer to (one of) you guys & gals for Free Font Fridays. Yes, I’m mad.
But it doesn’t matter: as scorned as I feel, it doesn’t change the fact that Silka’s Regular and Regular Italic styles are available as a free download (a ‘pay with a tweet’ download, to be accurate) and that they are astonishingly beautiful.
Silka is a geometric sans with some humanist touches and it’s such a versatile beast that it can be used in situations that range from body text to large, display-oriented sizes and contexts.
Here are three examples that showcase its effortless beauty
Vaporwave for dummies
Cuteness overload
You can download Silka’s Regular and Regular Italic styles through a social share HERE. You can also purchase the entire family through a ‘pay what you want’ model on the same page.
Silka is currently woefully underused so using it will increase your social capital, make you extremely attractive to potential romantic partners and cure your male pattern baldness.
#4 Misto
Misto by Katerina Korolevtseva is a stylish display font reminiscent of mid-centrury designs. Combining Misto, some doodles and a mid-century color palette will give your work some instant retro vibes.
Interestingly, Misto was inspired by the Ukrainian city of Slavutych, which, according to Wikipedia, was
purposely built for the evacuated personnel of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant after the 1986 disaster that occurred near the city of Pripyat
I’ve tried to create two quick designs, one showcasing the midcentury character I was describing before and another trying a bit more haute couture-ish, since the high contrast of the strokes does bring Bodoni and Didonesque stuff to mind.
Misto is free for both personal and commercial use and you can download it HERE.
#5 Subjectivity
So far we’ve had two display (Ailerons & Misto) and two sans serif (Decalotype & Silka) typefaces in this week’s ‘Best free fonts that haven’t been used to death’ feature.
For our final font, I wanted to dig deep for an unfairly-underused serif font. And I did. I went to Google. I travelled to Behance (can we take a moment to appreciate how much like a Middle Eastern city name Behance sounds?). I even took a boat and went out in the middle of the Pacific (where, legend has it, is where all free serif fonts meet to fuck) and came back empty-handed and afflicted with scurvy and chlamydia*.
Thankfully, as I was starting to get really desperate and close to giving up, I met a wise old man roaming the Tibetan Plateau. I told him about my epic struggle and he simply said “Why don’t you go check out Subjectivity, ya fucker?” in perfect English, after which he immediately vanished into thin air, leaving the last syllable of “fucker” to hang in the air, reverberating for hours on the surrounding mountains (“-er, -er, -eer, -errr, -eerrrr,” and so on.)
Just in case you doubt the veracity of my Tibetan adventure story, here’s a photo from Unsplash.
Subjectivity is amazing. It’s not just a single font but an actual family (superfamily, even) of sans serif and serif fonts, in many weights and matching Slanted versions. The font is quite idiosyncratic, and as the designer himself says
It is a strange experimental typeface that has a geometric skeleton and unusual features. These tails in letters like the a, j, y and t might remind you of calligraphy or hand scripts. The contrast is unique – the thin fonts are monolinear, and the bolder it gets, the higher the contrast.
I made a couple of quick designs to show you how it looks:
Subjectivity Sans.
Subjectivity Serif. If you’re wondering where the serifs went, take a closer look to the ‘i’s and the ‘h’.
Subjectivity, in all of its guises, is amazing for branding, packaging and poster projects. You can download the font HERE.
*I know. I didn’t use protection because I didn’t know free serif fonts could give you STDs.
