Come Thou Font of Every Blessing

Fonts are easy to find, but hard to use wisely. We know poor font use when we see it, but how often do we knowingly commit the same crimes, whether to save time or because ‘it’s so pretty,’ even though it’s so not legible. Here are many places to help you find free fonts and a few places to help you learn how to use fonts effectively.

Better Fonts
A web 2.0 site with a nice and quick interface in which to view “10,000 free fonts and counting!” (Does the exclamation mark make you excited about fonts?)

Urban Fonts
Self-dubbed “the coolest free font collection” with over 8,000 fonts.

1,001 Free Fonts
Guess how many fonts they have available?

Dafont
Winning the award for “Website Most Likely Named in the Early 90s,” Dafont.com has almost 7,000 fonts.

The Logos of Web 2.0
What? I thought this post was about fonts? It is. This article details the fonts used in popular Web 2.0 companies. The actual site (fontshop) is also useful for finding more articles in the same vein, like Pillowy Soft Script Fonts for the next time you’re creating a mock-up of that new Christian-based toilet paper you’ve always had in mind.

Font Tester
Another preview site, but not just for fonts. Font Tester lets you see what your fonts and subsequent CSS properties will look like in real time.

Warning:

As a general rule of thumb, you can expect to run into installation problems with 800-1000 or more installed fonts. - (Too Many Fonts)

I suffered this problem after getting giddy on font overload, which is easy to do with so many options, and all of them for free. It slows your system down because every program that uses all of your fonts (Word, Photoshop, Powerpoint, etc.) has to load every font every time you load the program. So pare down your fonts. Just download the ones you need when you need them.

Also, font organization software is a great idea. I use The Font Thing, which is free and simple to use. There are many others out there.

Finally, just check out the Typography topic at A List Apart to learn the ins and outs of good font usage on the web.

If you have any more free font sites to add, or you use a different font organizational tool, or if you know of a few good places that teach good font usage, please leave a comment.