Get additional fonts – free from a safe source

I have a mate (yes, I do have some mates) in Melbourne, Victoria who delights in utilizing unusual/non-standard fonts in her emails. The emails will more often than not elicit responses such as ‘hey, what font is that you are using?’ and ‘where did you get that font from?’ – I guess she enjoys the intrigue.

A lot of sites say they offer free fonts, but there’s generally a catch, or they are merely a collection of standard fonts that come installed with Windows. Whether you are like my mate or looking for specific fonts for particular projects, Google provides a safe source for a huge variety of non-standard additional fonts – just head on over to http://www.google.com/webfonts

There you can view and download from a collection of literally hundreds of free fonts in various categories. Use the dropdown menu under “Filters” in the left hand panel to isolate a style, or choose “All Categories” to view the lot:

Font display options can be configured via a menu across the top of the main panel; you can input personalized text, change the size of the font and/or the order in which the displays are sorted:

Simply click on the “Add to Collection” button for each font you wish to download, a blue bar will then popup at the bottom of the window showing a list of selected fonts:

When finished making your selections and ready to download your collection, click on the “Use” button in the blue bar:

A new page will open with a link at the top right hand side to “Download your Collection”” – click on that link and a popup will appear, now click on the option to “Download the font families in your Collection as a ZIP file”:

Locate the zip folder on your hard drive and extract to a suitable location. Install each font by double clicking on the font file and then clicking the ‘”Install” button in the ensuing window:

A simple, safe and free way to increase your choice of fonts for emails, word documents, slideshows, projects, flyers, etc, etc.

2 thoughts on “Get additional fonts – free from a safe source”

  1. hi
    is there a way to use google selected fonts in an email? does the recipient need to have the same font in order to read it? it seems to talk about websites only. i don’t have a website.
    thanks

  2. Hey Chet – The fonts are available for use in personal docs (including emails) as well as for websites. And no, the recipient does not need to have the same font installed in order to read it.

    When you click on the install button (as described in the article) the font is added to a central repository and will then be available to select in the usual way, in Word Docs, emails or anything else which shares the font library.

    Cheers…Jim

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