There are about a kajillion places to explore and download free typefaces on the web, but not all of them are legitimate or participating in the best practices for sharing design/design elements. And there are garbage fonts beyond measure everywhere you look.
The League of Movable Type is a happy exception - it’s a presently-smallish-but-growing collection of Open-source typefaces. Founded by designers Caroline Hadilaksono and Micah Rich of weareagoodcompany.com, their slogan is “The League of Moveable Type – fueling the Open-Source Type Movement, one typeface at a time!”
Not all of them are Top Ten winners – Sniglet in particular may seem a little-overwrought-puffy-60′s, especially to those of us who’ve already lived through that typographical-era (think of stuff like this. *shivers*) – but most of their creations are especially beautiful and immediately useful.
Our favorites from the League thus far:
• The Flamina Type System by Italian designer Andrea Bergamini, created as a elegant solution to what he found to be chaotic and poorly-designed Italian road signage. It’s clean, modern, readable and elegant.
• Junction by LMT co-founder Caroline Hadilaksono, who calls it “where the best qualities of serif and sans serif typefaces come together.” I love this face – it reminds me of a few other serif/san serif hybrids, but stands firmly on its own: look at that lowercase “u” – to die for.
• Finally, we love love League Gothic, a revival of the Alternate Gothic 1 face created by American Type Founders’ head designer Morris Fuller Benton. (We are currently featuring the American Type Founders 1906 salesbook in exciting depth at our Ragtag tumblr – noted in our home blog entry “Tumbling Type.”) We’ve put a sample page of American Type Founder’s original Alternate Gothic No. 1 in this post’s gallery – with a couple of Wayside ornaments thrown in for good measure.)
And FYI, BTW, and for what it’s worth: League Gothic reminds us of the header/subheader font often used in the later Harry Potter films for The Daily Prophet, Ministry Proclamations, flyers, and end credits. (See the poster & type image in this post’s photo gallery.)
Resources:
The League of Moveable Type website.
The League of Moveable Type twitter.
The League of Moveable Type co-founders’ design business weareagoodcompany.com
More about Morris Fuller Benton – who was also the designer of the well-known boho typeface “Hobo”.
Note (from The League’s website): “All fonts made available by The League of Moveable Type are subject to the Open Font License, and all remaining content will be shared with the Attribution Share Alike Creative Commons license “
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