The Font Collection

One thing that I always dread as someone who works with tons of text is the transition from one computer to another. It's practically impossible to keep everything together, and not everything syncs.

The thing that bothers me the most are fonts. Fonts don't sync, and I wind up with scattered collections of fonts I need to work on my various projects and then hunting them down later (which can be a pain if some go offline).

The other thing is searching for interesting fonts outside the Google Fonts ecosystem and trying to make sure I get ones that are actually licensed so that I can use them in my games.

The Font Collection is my answer to that. It's a collection of almost 200 fonts which are all licensed in a way that lets anyone use them in projects, most with no strings attached. Some of these fonts are usually distributed without license information, so I've added that where relevant, taking it from the author's website and packaging it to travel with the font.

Q: Is this legal?

Yes. I'm not trying to rip off any font creators–these are all fonts you can legally get for free, packaged exactly as I got them or with more information about their origins. I'm also making this totally free. You can go check out my other stuff, of course, but I'm not making you.

Q: Can I use these in...?

Yes! Read the license for each font to be sure, but these should all work in video games, tabletop games, ebooks, and anywhere else. There are a couple CC fonts that might require attribution.

Q: How did you select these?

These are mostly things I used in games or was going to use in a game. I've put out 40-50 games in 2022 alone (whew!) and probably scores more over the past couple decades. Not all of them are winners, but I need some of them for reverse compatibility. The Specimens.pdf file included with the download has some comments on many of these fonts.

It's worth noting that I am something of a font addict, though I'm not a hoarder. I will see tiny things like a particular letterform I like and download a font and all its associated families. I'll download a recommended sans/serif pairing, even if I don't think they work together. Sometimes I'm trying to replicate a font.

I do writing, game design, and graphic design. Graphic design goes through a lot of fonts that don't work in longer text, smaller sizes, etc. Not all of these fonts are going to be something you should set up in Word and just start typing in, and I sometimes make note of that.

Q: There's a problem with a font, what do I do?

Check specimens.pdf and see if I commented on it. If the issue is something else (incomplete families, legal issues, etc.) leave a comment or send me an email (my address is in the "about The Font Collection.txt" file in the zip).

Q: Why don't you have [FONT]?

I don't include every font that I've ever used. Some of them would not be free to distribute in this way, and some have weird things in their licenses that I feel comfortable with using in my own work but would be an ambiguity I don't want to push other people into. Sometimes fonts that have a free license were distributed without license info, and I can't find the clear license info so they's sitting in a folder on my computer and I just don't feel comfortable including it.

Especially if there's a font I've used in my own work, this might be the reason why I didn't put it here. I might also have legitimately missed it, so feel free to reach out. I won't bite your head off (probably).

Q: Is this a comprehensive collection?

No. I could probably have scraped Google Fonts for all their fonts, but that seems unproductive. These are all things I picked out by hand.

With that said, if there's a great font you think I should include that isn't in here, reach out!

Q: Why are there so many identical sans fonts?

Because there is some tiny feature that I needed, like a particular weight or letterform, that nobody but me would notice in the wild. They're not identical, I promise, and that g is the difference between a timeless classic page layout and an utter disaster that would bring shame and dishonor to my family.

These fonts are cool but not included:

Aetheric Ordnance: Generates a variety of weapons using text! Very cool.

https://levikornelsen.itch.io/aetheric-ordnance (free, but I want to link to the creator's page)

TT2020: Perhaps the best typewriter font out there.

https://ctrlcctrlv.github.io/TT2020/docs/ (free). Not included because the actual font files add up to a hefty download size, though the reason for this is its rich collection of alternate letter-forms. Make your typewriter text look believable with this.

Last updated July 19, 2022.