Free Font: Cretino by Larabie

Larabie is an incredible Canadian designer who now lives in Japan. He's designed hundreds of fonts and made them available for free.

This particular example is called Cretino, and it has quite a lot of character... definitely no cretin could come up with this or use it in design.

Is it a copyright free font? No, not exactly. But it is a royalty free font: meaning you can use it and not have to pay each time you use it. It is also a free font, meaning you don't have to pay anything for it. The terms of use indicate that you can use it for commercial purposes. Here is an excerpt:

“1. Allowed uses
You may use the licensed fonts to create images on any surface such as computer screens, paper, web pages, photographs, movie credits, printed material, T-shirts, and other surfaces where the image is a fixed size.

You may use the licensed fonts to create EPS files or other scalable drawings provided that such files are only used by the household or company licensing the font.”


In fact, Larabie's company still own's the copyright to the font. He created it, and he can do with it what he wants, including giving it away for free! So just because you can use his font, you can't sell it and you can't say you created it, because it belongs to him.


Here are some examples of the free font Cretino:

Great looking free font with a lot of character. Make sure you check out the flourishes on the capital letters!


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Free Hand Drawn Fonts

I found a great design site with lots of freebies at fudgegraphics.com. In this case, it was a collection of hand drawn fonts with a nice pencil-sketch look to them. The fonts all come from a great font collection called DaFont. What sets this font site apart from the rest? Well its large collection of REALLY GOOD fonts! I haven't spent too much time there, but a lot of good fonts were found just from visiting the front page.

One of the great things I love about typography, and yet still almost hate about it at the same time, is the unlimited variety that can be found in designer type. There are practically an infinite number of fonts out there! It can make it hard to choose a specific font for a specific project.

A good software package for organizing your fonts is a must if you are doing a lot of design and don't want to get overwhelmed by the choices out there.

What font organizing program do you use? Leave it in the comments and in the future I'll write a post about some of the most popular.

Thanks to a recent post by David Airey re: user comments or I wouldn't have found this great site.

Creating Copyright Free Fonts

Created by Michael Spitz.

If you have a knack for design or you have always wanted to give your hand a try at making your own font, then now is the best time to start!

Check out these great books for inspiration and how-to, but don't forget to even just pick up your pencil and paper and sketch out some ideas!

Copyright Free Fonts

Fonts are really incredible aren't they? Also more correctly known as typefaces in the design world, the right font can make a good design incredible. It can even make a poor design better. And a poorly chosen font, one that doesn't fit the right mood or audience can make a great design miss its mark.

Copyright free fonts are fonts that can be used for free, as they don't have any copyright attached to them. Another more correct term would be public domain fonts, or perhaps just free fonts. You could find a free font out there on the web but be careful and make sure you check its license or terms of use: some free fonts won't let you use them in cases where you'll be making money - they are only for non-commercial use.

I'll be providing some great free fonts, and wherever possible I'll indicate if it can be used for personal or commercial use.

Sit back and enjoy the world of copyright free fonts! If you have any great suggestions, send me an email!

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