Spiff Up Your Website with Free Typography Resources
Ever feel like all the fonts you see and use look the same? Looking for something fresh and new, but don’t know where to start? Have we got a resource for you – Google Fonts! This service from Google is a fantastic collection of open-source fonts, and they’re all free.
You can browse a huge selection of designer web fonts at https://fonts.google.com/, choose your favorites and start right in to beautify and modernize your website or any other project. Of course, if you’re not into ogling typography just for the fun of it (yes, we are geeky that way) or you have a pretty good idea of what you want already, you can use a slew of search features to help you unearth the treasure you’re looking for.
You can limit your search to serif or sans serif fonts, monospaced fonts or handwriting styles as well as display types. Choose the thickness range, degree of slant and width you prefer. You’ll find fonts for English and a large list of other languages, too – all of which you can specify in the search parameters. (Google says there are over 135 to choose from.) You can even opt to view fonts by popularity or dates. Hoping for something brand new and different? No problem! Just sort fonts by age and you can be sure to get something that hasn’t been overused by others.
And if you’re the kind who wonders whether that tie goes with that shirt, Google has you covered. When you click on a font family you’ll be offered suggestions for other fonts that complement it nicely. Suddenly you’re a typographic artist!
Other nifty features include reports that let you know how many times each font has been serve that week, how many websites use it and a graph showing you where a particular font is popular. Especially helpful is the color selection feature, so you can see how your font would look against various background colors.
You may or may not buy into the idea that Google is committed to its stated policy, Don’t Be Evil, but you’ve got to agree that this is a pretty nice service. Take advantage of Google Fonts to make your next project or web update a thing of beauty with a free, open-source font. All the other accounting firms will wonder when you had time to go to design school.
