Nine Free-Licensed Serif Fonts
Off the Beat: Bruce Byfield's Blog
When many people think of fonts, they think of decorative fonts that call attention to themselves. However, the fonts that are in greatest demand are the workday ones, especially those for setting the main body of text. Especially in North America, most of those are serif fonts, whose characters often end with a hook or serif at the end of their lines.
The number of free-licensed serif fonts now number in the hundreds, still far fewer than proprietary serifs, but growing constantly. Many are based on proprietary or classic fonts, but original designs are also becoming common. If some seem conservative, they are designed that way -- the whole point of body text fonts is to make the content inviting and readable without being noticed themselves
Here are nine free-licensed serifs suitable for almost all occasions, along with some suggestions about how to use them:
Baskervald ADF Std
Baskervald is the most successful of the free fonts based on Baskerville, the most popular font from the eighteenth century. Both are formal and elegant, and add dignity to a subject. With a font size of 12 points, they are slightly small, so you can easily bump up the size to fourteen points to make their affect more obvious without adding too many lines to your manuscript.
Coelacanth
Coelecanth is inspired by the popular Centaur, itself inspired by the work of Renaissance typographers. You can see the Renaissance inspiration in the slanted cross-bar of the lower case "e." The thin lines saves Coelacanth from being dark and heavy, while giving a stylish informality suitable for informal subjects, children's books, or poetry. On the screen, Coelacanth's lines are so thin that they risk disappearing.
EB Garamond
Garamond is a generic name for fonts inspired by the designs of Claude Garamond in the 16th century. These fonts vary so much that they are rarely interchangable. EB Garamond is characterized by small bowls in letters like "e," a small "t" and long tails on the letter "y." It is an unobtrusive font that can be used for almost any purpose.
Fanwood
Fanwood bears a distinct resemblance to Joanna, a popular font designed by English sculptor and typographer Eric Gill. It is suitable for almost any subject, but not ideal at sizes below 12 points because its letters are short and closely spaced. A variant called Fanwood Text is darker and designed for on-line reading.
Goudy Bookletter 1910
Frederick Goudy was an American typography of the early twentieth century. Many of his designs have not been picked up by proprietary font designers but Barry Schwartz, who also created Fanwood, has created several Goudy-inspired fonts. Of these, Goudy Bookletter 1910 is the most versatile and readable, although it looks slightly old-fashioned.
Josefin Slab
A slab serif is a serif with large serifs. Many examples of slab serifs look massive and unsubtle, but Josefin Slab manages a light appearance, perhaps because of the height of letters like "l" which are almost twice the height of letters like "m" or "x." The Demibold and Bold weights are too dark to be easily used, but the lightness works very well with the Italics. Josefin Sans makes a good match for it.
Merriweather
Without being a copy, Merriweather reminds of Century School Book. It is a large, unassuming font -- so large, in fact, that it requires an extra point or two of line-spacing to avoid looking crowded.
Quattrocento Roman
Quattrocento Roman is an understated font that many users seem to have overlooked. It is distinguished by extremely round letter forms whose strokes are largely the same width -- traits that make it highly readable. Versatile in itself, it is enhanced even more when accompanied by Quattrocento Sans. I would add a point or two to the default line spacing.
Romande ADF St.
Romande is not a font to use at 12 points or less. However, at 14 points, it becomes an almost perfect Renaissance-inspired design. Unlike many fonts, its default line spacing and color need no adjustment. Its bold weight is less dark than many, but avoid using its mediocre italic weight .
Other choices
These nine are among the most versatile free-licensed serif fonts. Some just miss being in my personal favorites, such as Heuristica or Lora. Others are suitable for limited specialized purposes, such as Prociano, which gives an impression of German black letter characters without actually using any, or Gentium, which has a handwritten appearance. More are coming every month, if not every week.
What is exciting about these designs is that they allow designers to work entirely with free-licensed fonts -- something that was impossible five years ago.
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Support Our Work
Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you’ve found an article to be beneficial.
News
-
TUXEDO Computers Unveils Linux Laptop Featuring AMD Ryzen CPU
This latest release is the first laptop to include the new CPU from Ryzen and Linux preinstalled.
-
XZ Gets the All-Clear
The back door xz vulnerability has been officially reverted for Fedora 40 and versions 38 and 39 were never affected.
-
Canonical Collaborates with Qualcomm on New Venture
This new joint effort is geared toward bringing Ubuntu and Ubuntu Core to Qualcomm-powered devices.
-
Kodi 21.0 Open-Source Entertainment Hub Released
After a year of development, the award-winning Kodi cross-platform, media center software is now available with many new additions and improvements.
-
Linux Usage Increases in Two Key Areas
If market share is your thing, you'll be happy to know that Linux is on the rise in two areas that, if they keep climbing, could have serious meaning for Linux's future.
-
Vulnerability Discovered in xz Libraries
An urgent alert for Fedora 40 has been posted and users should pay attention.
-
Canonical Bumps LTS Support to 12 years
If you're worried that your Ubuntu LTS release won't be supported long enough to last, Canonical has a surprise for you in the form of 12 years of security coverage.
-
Fedora 40 Beta Released Soon
With the official release of Fedora 40 coming in April, it's almost time to download the beta and see what's new.
-
New Pentesting Distribution to Compete with Kali Linux
SnoopGod is now available for your testing needs
-
Juno Computers Launches Another Linux Laptop
If you're looking for a powerhouse laptop that runs Ubuntu, the Juno Computers Neptune 17 v6 should be on your radar.