Best Free Serif Fonts in 2020
This is a round-up of this week’s Best Serif Fonts-themed post run. Have a nice weekend!
Cormorant
Let’s start with the typeface you’re reading right now. Cormorant claims to be inspired by the Garamond heritage but tweaked for use in large display sizes, while not compromising on legibility at lower sizes. Here’s what the type designer himself has to say about the typeface:
Cormorant is characterized by scandalously small counters, razor-sharp serifs, dangerously smooth curves, and flamboyantly tall accents.
Does it accomplish what it sets out to do? We’ve set our crack team of investigative typographists on the case and they’ve delivered a verdict that’s sure to shock many (fig. 1)
fig. 1
Cormorant’s “scandalously” small counters can potentially cause issues with legibility, so the typeface is also offered in a selection of Cormorant Garamond styles, with tweaks including bigger counters so that no pearl-clutching type designer is needlessly scandalized.
Here’s a comparison between the lowercase ‘e’ and ‘a’ of the basic vs the Garamond styles (fig. 2) which showcases the difference in counter sizes.
fig. 2
Cormorant is easy to recommend, and not just because it looks great. It not only offers a big variety of weights and matching italics but it goes even further than that by including features that you don’t normally find in the hundreds of free typefaces available for download out there, like small caps, standard and discretionary ligatures and even stylistic sets.
You can download Cormorant here.
Butler
Fabian De Smet’s (awesome name, bud) Butler is, according to its designer
a mix between both Dala Floda & the amazing Bodoni family
I can definitely see the Bodoni influence in the highly-contrasting strokes of the letterforms. The Dala Floda influence is more apparent in the stencil version of the typeface.
fig. 1
There’s no doubt that, whichever version and weight (of which there are many, from ultralight to black) you decide to use, Butler is a gorgeous typeface. However, it’s definitely less flexible than Cormorant, mostly owing to its lack of italics. Its highly-contrasting strokes are also a strike (see what I did there?) against its flexibility, since body text set in Butler will be relatively difficult to read (fig. 2)
fig. 2
It’s in scenarios where a font is meant to be eye-catching that Butler really shines. The typeface website says that it’s “great for posters, very big titles, books & fancy stuff”, which is pretty spot-on.
You can download Butler HERE.
Sorts Mill Goudy
My third selection for this week’s Free Serif Fonts feature is Barry Schwarz’s Sorts Mill Goudy. The typeface is inspired by Goudy Old Style and, you know, it kinda shows.
This particular variant has found a home on The League of Movable Type and, if you’re like me, ie. distracted by shiny objects, you may initially ignore it in favor of more impressive, impactful typefaces like Orbitron and League Gothic.
However, when the time came for me to work on a heavily text-based app, what was the typeface I crawled back to and begged for forgiveness? You guessed it.
Juniorsmile screenshot.
Sorts Mill Goudy includes small caps styles, ligatures, old-style figures and many other conveniences the modern designer expects.
What it doesn’t include is different weights. You just get the one, regular weight and that’s it. Is it practical to use such a typeface?
Sure it is. I wouldn’t use Sorts Mill Goudy to set an entire magazine but it worked pretty well in the Juniorsmile app when I decided that I’d replace bold styles with small caps to add emphasis or differentiation and create some sort of hierarchy.
You can download Sorts Mill Goudy HERE.
Calendas Plus
Let’s get something out of the way: atipo is my favorite foundry but I’m not affiliated with them in any way.
Now let’s get something else out of the way: Calendas is not 100% free, but it might as well be. What I mean by that is that you can get the Regular style by ‘paying’ with a Twitter or Facebook share or get the complete family (which includes Regular, Italic and Bold styles) by paying using a ‘name your price’ model (prices start a five euros, with a maximum of 100€).
Calendas Plus is my favorite typeface in this week’s Best Serif Fonts feature for many reasons. What initially won me over was the beauty and elegance of the letterforms. That fondness quickly turned into admiration because of the perfectly-balanced, just-right small caps and escalated into hot, steamy font-affair thanks to the stunning special characters and discretionary ligatures.
fig. 1 — Smooth as lovemaking.
The banner (fig. 1) was created using the free version of Calendas Plus, which you get when you do a social share. Take a look at those ligatures and swashes. Look at them, damn it!
You can get Calendas Plus HERE.
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