Many business owners, whether they are just starting out or have been building their brand for a while, don't realize how important it is to choose the right fonts. Not only do your fonts help shape the overall look and feel of your brand, but they also can have complicated licenses and usage terms.
When choosing fonts to use in your business, you can either..
- Pick any font you like, but ensure you have the license for the font and understand the usage terms
- Pick a commercial free use font, giving you an open font license you can keep and have and avoid paying costly fees
Even for fonts with open licenses it's important to read the terms and store them somewhere safe, but on average a commercial free font is going to be so much easier to use in your brand. It doesn't cost anything to get the font (unlike some fonts which can be a one time cost or even some a monthly cost), and the terms of use are typically much easier to understand.
So, How Do I Get A Commercial Free Font?
As brand and website designers, searching for commercial free fonts is a huge part of our daily work for clients. We have a few favorite sites we like to use to source these, some that provide all free fonts and some that provide specific sections of freebies. It's important to carefully check each font to ensure it's a free one to make sure you are safe, so definitely do your research! That said, here are our favorite sites to get freebies:
- Google Fonts - This is our favorite site, since in our experience everything on Google Fonts has been commercial free for years and you get an open font license with everything you download. They also provide easy search ability through visual categories, helping you find a style that fits your brand quickly.
- Open Foundry - This site advertises itself as a curated collection of free open-source fonts, meaning everything on there should be ready to use without purchase. We like this site because they change up the options occasionally to provide variety, and their presentation is great.
- Free Faces - This website provides a lot of really cool and unique fonts that we don't typically see on other sites like Google Fonts. They claim to provide fonts under a variety of free licenses "somewhere on the interwebs." Good to do your research when grabbing from this site especially, but in our experience so far they have been giving us truly free to use fonts which is great! Just make sure you double check that you get an open font license when you choose from this site, since they send you typically to another site to actually grab the files and licenses.
- Dirty Line Studio (Freebies) - This site specifically has a set of freebies they seem to add to over time, offering you some very cool and unique fonts for free that again we haven't seen anywhere else. We also recommend checking your license when grabbing from here, it seems the way they do it is to provide you a commercial use license right away without having to pay for it. However, the font is not technically open source, so keep that license somewhere safe! Also we recommend you do that no matter if the license is open or not ;)
What Kinds Of Fonts Should I Pick For My Brand?
Every business is different, but there are a few guidelines we like to follow when choosing fonts for a brand.
- Choose fonts that match the personality of the brand and their audience.
- Example: If you are running a pet grooming service and the rest of your branding is very fun (think vibrant colors, cute pet icons, etc.), you want your fonts to be fun too. In that case you would want to pick playful fonts with fun shapes or more bubbly letters. Whatever you choose, it should match the energy of your business!
- Choose 2-3 fonts for the most clear, cohesive presence.
- Some brands can get away with a few extra if they have a specific reason for it, but for most businesses using more than 3 fonts might start to get confusing to the customer and look cluttered.
- Make sure you have a strong Heading font and an easy to read Text font no matter the combo.
- Your Heading font is used for large text, like headings over paragraphs, in your logo, and more. This font should be cohesive with your overall brand and add some visual interest where you type large text.
- Your Text font is used for all smaller text, so it needs to be very easy to read even at small sizes. This is the text you use for long paragraphs on your website, on your social media if you have lengthy tips you are sharing, and anywhere else you need small or lengthy amounts of text.
- If desired, you can also choose an Accent font as a third. This can be something more unique and less easy to read, with the purpose being to add more flair and personality to your branding. If it's not super easy to read (most accent fonts aren't) we suggest only using it at large sizes and sparingly.
Free Font Pairing Inspiration You Can Steal
If you want some inspiration directly from our design studio here at Sproutouts, below are a few pairings we created solely using fonts from Google Fonts! You are welcome to steal any of these if you think they fit your brand well. Just make sere you go get those licenses and files from Google Fonts to have on-hand for yourself. ;)
Closing
We hope this guide helped you feel confident about picking (or refreshing) your brand fonts! For even more design freebies and inspiration be sure to follow us on Instagram, Tiktok, and Pinterest. We post freebies each week and a ton of inspo.
And, if you want help designing a gorgeous custom brand for your business, reach out to us today to collaborate! We would love to create something completely unique and completely you.
Happy brand building,
Sproutouts
