Whether you’re working on designing a mobile app or a video game, typography plays a big role in all types of design.
The question you might have is “where do I find sites to download fonts?”
There are many places from where you can download typefaces. But if budgets are tight, you can’t always stretch to an expensive font.
To help you with that, we’ve rounded up 27 best websites in this article. From where you can download free fonts for your mobile app or game typography.
In case you have something more specific in mind, you can create your own custom font. You can also learn how to use fonts with Felgo in the easiest fashion possible.
27 Best Websites to Download Free Fonts for Video Game and Mobile
We’ve rounded up 27 of the best websites to download free fonts for your mobile app, game or for any other projects.
1. 1001 Fonts
1001 Fonts offers a huge collection of free fonts counting almost 19,000 in 9,991 families. All those fonts have free licenses for commercial use.
On the website, you can also find a huge selection of categories of free fonts. These categories include the free fonts for video gaming, retro, vintage, handwritten, 1980s, etc.
1001 Fonts is one of the best sites to download great free fonts for video game, Android and iOS app typography.
2. Google Fonts
Google Fonts is a great website where you can find over 900 font families. The licenses allow you to download and use them for free, whether it’s for commercial or personal use.
You can find fonts from 5 main categories. Serif, Sans Serif, Display, Handwriting, and Monospace.
The website has great filters that ease the process of finding a desirable font.
You use the following filters: Languages, Number of styles, Thickness, Slant, and Width.
3. Font Squirrel
FontSquirrel is a great place for finding free fonts for commercial use. This site selects high-quality ones and lists them in an easy to browse manner.
All the fonts on the website are royalty-free. You can download and use them for any project’s typography.
4. DaFont
DaFont is one of the best websites for downloading free fonts for personal use. Most of the fonts are free only for personal use. You can still find plenty of fonts that are 100% free for commercial use.
The website is easy to browse due to a large number of categories and a built-in search function. The themes include video game fonts, Gothic, Techno, Holiday, Foreign look, etc.
One of this site’s best features is the active forum. Where you can ask for advice for discovering fonts for specific projects. You can also engage in the general design related forum discussions.
5. 1001 Free Fonts
1001FreeFonts is one of the best places to find free downloadable fonts for personal use. You can also find some great free to use fonts for commercial use as well.
The 1001FreeFonts, like DaFont, is also searchable by name and category. All this makes it a great place to find your font of choice as fast as possible. It also has a database of designers if you’d like a custom font made.
6. Urban Fonts
Urban Fonts is a great online site for finding royalty free fonts. They boast a collection of over 8,000 freeware as well as some premium fonts and dingbats.
The best thing about Urban Fonts is the clean design of the website. It makes it easy to browse for finding your desirable font.
7. FontSpace
FontSpace is a popular free fonts website that lists over 38,000, downloadable fonts. There is a mix of free fonts for personal and commercial use.
When you click BROWSE, you will see a wide selection of categories. The categories include free fonts of Vintage, Retro, the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, Handwriting, Foreign look, Fonts for Holidays, etc.
You can filter by most popular, new or user uploaded fonts as well as check out their blog on font design. If you’d like to save a collection of online fonts, you can also register for a free account.
8. Abstract Fonts
Abstract Fonts is one of the best websites for finding free fonts. You can find over 13,500 free fonts that you can download right away.
The site has a wide selection of categories. From where you can find the desirable fonts and icons for your mobile app or video game typography. Categories include 3D, Adult, Animals, Bloody, Cartoon, Esoteric, etc.
9. FontStruct
FontStruct is actually a font-building tool. It allows you to create your own custom fonts with geometrical shapes.
You can use generated fonts for any mobile app or for any kind of work you want.
The website also has a gallery that includes more than 49,000 fonts which are free to download. Most of those fonts created by people like you. You can clone the fonts created by other users to design your own unique fonts.
10. COOLTEXT
COOLTEXT is a little bit retro but depending on your project, it might be what you’re looking for. It’s known as a logo generation tool.
The site also lists over 1,900 free downloadable fonts. The fonts cover many categories. The categories include free gaming fonts, 3D fonts, retro fonts, music fonts and many more.
11. Fontasy
Fontasy is a free font archive featuring over 1,100 selected fonts for PC and MAC. All the fonts are available for free download. The fonts are in 72 categories (Retro, Vintage, Sci-Fi, Music, etc.).
12. Free Fonts Project
Ivan Gladkikh the founder of the Free Fonts Project. Tries to make typography more popular and available for a broad range of users.
On his website, he offers 34 fonts for free to download.
You can use these fonts for any needs, including for Android and iOS app. In case if you are looking for mobile app ideas, you can get them from here.
13. Font River
Font River offers its visitors free fonts and dingbats for Windows and Mac.
All the fonts listed on the website are free to download. Some of the fonts aren’t free for commercial use. So check the fonts’ licenses before using them for commercial projects.
They also have a blog with tips on designing your own fonts.
14. FondFont
FondFont advertises itself as having the best quality free fonts. While you’ll have to investigate that claim for yourself, they indeed do have a great collection of royalty-free downloadable fonts. They list free fonts of many themes. The list includes Handwriting, Monospace, Retro, Western, Vintage, Techno, etc.
From where you can find the font for the typography of your mobile app, video game, web, or any other project. In case you can’t find the font that you are looking for. They also provide more resources for further research.
15. Fontfabric
Although Fontfabric isn’t the largest collection of free use fonts, the website does have some great looking ones for you to choose from.
You can browse the free selection, and you should try to search according to style. You will definitely find something that will look great in your mobile app or game.
16. FontSpring
FontSpring is a premium font marketplace where you can also find some premium free fonts. You can find detailed information about font licenses in each font page.
17. Typedepot
Typedepot is a small type design studio website. It offers many free fonts for visitors to download. There are also great commercial fonts to buy.
18. Rettoro Supply Co. – 9 Retro fonts
Rettoro Supply Co. offers premium 9 retro fonts for free. These freebies include fonts, textures, brushes, and more.
19. Fontcubes
Fontcubes is one of the best sites for finding free fonts for Mac, Android, and Windows. They host more than 8800 free downloadable fonts.
But, Fontcubes themselves direct users to check with font authors for permission. So this might not be the first place to look if you want to find a font and start using it in your project right away.
20. FreeTypography
FreeTypography is a typography blog and it hosts a large collection of free fonts. They do great interviews with type designers. Also, they give away design advice to help you make informed decisions about the ones you choose. Be sure to check out their Must Have Fonts, which would make a great addition to any font collection.
21. Comic Neue
Comic Neue is the brainchild of Craig Rozynski. It is his attempt to improve on the infamous Comic Sans MS typeface.
Comic Neue aims to be “the casual script choice for everyone including the typographically savvy”. It comes in many varieties.
It’s also an open-source so you can start using it today.
22. Ten by Twenty
Ten by Twenty hosts a small collection of great looking downloadable mobile fonts. Some of them are available for free and some for a small cost.
The interesting thing about these fonts is that they’re unique. And you donate/pay for them whatever you feel like.
23. Dotcolon
Dotcolon is a little bit more ‘boutique’ than some of the others on this list. It hosts a small collection of free use fonts.
The site is the product of Sora Sagano, a Japanese font designer. These typefaces are very clean and refined and would look right at home in any professional app.
24. The League of Moveable Type
The League of Moveable Type is open-source type foundry, dedicated to open-source fonts.
They have a great collection of fonts free for commercial use that you can download use in any mobile app or game. The best thing about this site is you can browse the site in seconds and get your font in no time.
25. Free Design Resources
If you’d like to check out a small collection of modern and video game fonts you need to visit Free Design Resources.
They’ve made 10 fonts available to download with a range of licenses, going from free use to personal use only. Whatever the license type they’re all sure to look great in your next project.
26. SMeltery
SMeltery founded in 2002 by Jack Usine, a French font designer. Jack has made some free use fonts as well as a selection of high-quality paid ones.
You can start using Jack’s free use fonts in any project you like. They are royalty-free.
SMeltrey also has a newsletter so you sign up and stay up-to-date with any additions to the font library.
27. Free Goodies for Designers
Free Goodies for Designers is a small blog run by a group of designers and art directors. It aims to provide great material for all kinds of designers. They have a few categories with a dedicated font section filled with free use options. These fonts would look great in both games and apps so be sure to check it out.
Try a Font Identifier Tool
If you’ve seen a font you’d like to use but don’t know what it’s called, a font identifier can help you out. Online font identifiers usually need a screenshot of your desired font. After that, they return the name of your desired typeface in seconds.
Here are a few different free tools for you to try:
Note that these tools take a good guess at identifying fonts but there’s no guarantee of accuracy. But they’re a great solution if you’ve got a general idea of what you’d like or you’re open to suggestions.
Find App Fonts Using Google
This method is simple but effective if you’re looking for a well-known font. Many fonts are in online directories and indexes so if you know how to look, you can find them in less than a minute. You can use the following search term to do a specific search for fonts on Google.
You need to start your search with [intitle:”index.of” (ttf|otf) fontname -html -php -aps -cf –jsp]. In the above example, we’re looking for the Minecraft font. To search for another font, insert the name after (tff|otf) and hit enter.
There is one downside to this method. It’s important when using a font to make sure you have the proper permission to do so. This can be unclear sometimes with this method. Since the license information isn’t always included with the fonts. So make sure to contact the site administrator to get the proper permission. Before using these fonts in your app or video game.
Don’t Know What Font to Use?
If being able to recognize a certain typeface is missing from your skill set, that’s ok. Nowadays there are a couple of ways to find a font you like.
One site that can help you is Identifont. They have a couple of tools that can help you to choose a font for your project. You can browse various categories by type, such as tall or wide fonts. You can also compare them to one another to see the individual merits of each one. You can even find a companion font to your main font. So everything in your project appears complementary to one another.
Another feature of Identifont allows you to take a survey. Which suggests suitable ones for you. The survey is very easy to take and you can find a font suited to your tastes in a few minutes. You’re provided with two or more characters of varying style and you have to pick whichever one you like most. After a few questions, it will suggest a couple of fonts for you.
Create Your Own Fonts Free for Commercial Use
For creative mobile developers, there are a couple of tools that can help you to make your own typeface. One option that might interest you. Is the possibility of turning your own handwriting into a font.
You can do that at sites like Calligraphr. You need to print out a template, fill it in with your own style, scan it and the websites create your own free to use the font.
Another option is FontStruct, an online tool that lets you draw your own font. This is a fun way to create fonts free for commercial use and you have total control of your typeface. There’s a bit of a learning curve but fontstruct can yield great results.
How to Use Free Fonts in Mobile App or Game Using Felgo
Now that you’ve got a nice selection, you can use this simple process to include them in your Felgo projects.
You can add fonts to your game using the FontLoader element. This element can load fonts by name or from a URL.
Once you’ve found a font you like and transferred it to the correct directory, all you have to do is copy the code below:
import Felgo 3.0
import QtQuick 2.0
App {
FontLoader {
id: customfont
source: "Airstream.ttf"
}
AppText {
text: "Here's my custom font"
font.family: customfont.name
font.pixelSize: 48
}
}
This looks something like this:
Felgo supports both .ttf and .otf fonts. If you have a font in a different format that you’d like to use, you can use Online Font Converter to convert it to a supported format. It is a web tool dedicated to converting font files into whatever format you like.
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