Everyone knows Chank,

May 11, 2001 9:34 AM

Everyone knows Chank, but there are literally thousands of indie font producers out there, many of whom offer amazing fonts for free. Any MeFi denizens care to share their favorites? The more obscure the better, but I'll start with a relatively well known house of Test Pilot Collective.
posted by FPN (37 comments total)

fuelfonts
posted by hobbes at 9:37 AM on May 11, 2001

Try Font 42. It's a one-man site with fonts like "Carson Daly is Evil," "Janet Reno Lapdance," "Britney in a Blender" and "Sam Brown is My Hero."
posted by Reggie452 at 9:39 AM on May 11, 2001

Larabie Fonts has a whole mess of fonts - lots of freeware and shareware.
posted by dogwelder at 9:44 AM on May 11, 2001

I lost the best font site I ever saw, along the lines of Chris Ware's retro-print stylings, and I couldn't find it again! I remember it was brown, with woodcut ornaments for forward & back, with many pages of old poster & ad typefaces. If anyone could help me retrieve it, well, I think I'd kiss them.
posted by greensweater at 10:00 AM on May 11, 2001

Typearound has a nice bunch of fun fonts, all freeware. I especially like the site because it's the brainchild of Stephen Deken of Diary-X fame.
posted by Dreama at 10:07 AM on May 11, 2001

Great post! I love the fonts at ChannelZero. They've only got about 20 fonts, but I've used them all at one time or another.
posted by jpoulos at 10:09 AM on May 11, 2001

fontomas. They put up one free font a week. It's only available until the next font is up. They'll email you when there's a new font, and they are going to publish a CD with all their fonts later this year.
posted by neuroshred at 10:16 AM on May 11, 2001

i like nofont. not only does andreas have cool fonts, he experiments with text in ways that amaze me. plus, he's very personable. he offered me all of his fonts as they became available via email written directly to me. i'm a sucker for a nice person on the web.
posted by carsonb at 10:19 AM on May 11, 2001

Are there any great, undiscovered display and print fonts?

Is there something cool for the default in Word or the Variable and Fixed-width setting in IE or Netscape?
posted by Erendadus at 10:21 AM on May 11, 2001

Lots of font links in today's Gleanings.
posted by mathowie at 10:47 AM on May 11, 2001

ok i got a few.

free:
gl:tch freeware fonts

Pay:
scanjam
lineto
letterheadfonts
posted by ewwgene at 11:11 AM on May 11, 2001

I've always liked Divide by Zero fonts, disturbed.com, and Toxic Type by Dobi.
posted by howa2396 at 11:12 AM on May 11, 2001

WOW. that gl:tch freeware fonts site is awesome. It lets you type in any sample text and generates an example of the fonts with that text. Very cool.
posted by howa2396 at 11:18 AM on May 11, 2001

I've been known to make my own fonts. Are there any other amateur fontographers (alphabetician, whatever) on MeFi?
posted by iceberg273 at 12:00 PM on May 11, 2001

I made a lil' truetype font a couple years ago. It's not very good, but hey. It was fun.
posted by sonofsamiam at 12:06 PM on May 11, 2001

Not really obscure, but I've always liked fontalicious.
posted by Gilbert at 12:12 PM on May 11, 2001

iceberg, Jo makes fonts on her site.
posted by mathowie at 12:32 PM on May 11, 2001

Hey sonofsamiam - there are umlauts on the n! :) You are right; it is fun! I always find the lowercase s to be the most enjoyable to draw. Well, that, and the lowercase i and the lowercase k. I keep waiting and waiting for the world to adopt CSS-2, so that I can use my fonts on my weblog.

(Here are the fonts that I've made available publicly: karlfont and Neuromuscular Junction. Like 'em or not, they're free.)
posted by iceberg273 at 12:32 PM on May 11, 2001

Thanks, Matt.
posted by iceberg273 at 12:36 PM on May 11, 2001

Of course, Jo's page lead to the Lego Font Creator. Yay!
posted by iceberg273 at 12:37 PM on May 11, 2001

dincTYPE has long been a favorite and not only because they've sent me tons of free junk. The site's down for remodeling at the moment, but they link to their equally sexy side projects and should be back soon.
posted by jga at 1:30 PM on May 11, 2001

Iceberg- like sonofsamiam, I've made a few fonts (evil self-link here). It really helped me appreciate how difficult it is to make a good font. God bless those folks who do it for free!
posted by dogwelder at 1:49 PM on May 11, 2001

Hi guys, another cool font page you gotta visit is www.pizzadude.dk - This "dude" has got (I think) about 200 fonts! And a great way of showing them!
- Johnny
posted by doggbreath at 2:08 PM on May 11, 2001

Circuitously through Textism, see Typoasis.
posted by modofo at 2:19 PM on May 11, 2001

Uhm...It was my intention that it should've been a clickable link. Sorry, see if this helps: www.pizzadude.dk
posted by doggbreath at 2:36 PM on May 11, 2001

i'm represented by thirstype and in europe.

but the coolest stuff around is at fontalicious. that guy cranks out the best candypop fonts you've ever seen. well-crafted stuff produced in record quantities (considering it's a single person).
posted by patricking at 3:38 PM on May 11, 2001

woop. there's supposed to be a fontshop germany link in there to make that sentence make sense. my bad.
posted by patricking at 3:42 PM on May 11, 2001

ooo, and i totally forgot about eyesaw. this guy's amazing.

(that was me making penance for an accidental doublepost)
posted by patricking at 3:55 PM on May 11, 2001

ShyFonts makes several very cool fonts that I use often. The bad news is that they've apparently closed up shop... (you can still download all of their great fonts, though.)

The good news is that it looks like the brains (?) behind ShyFonts has moved on to Apostrophic Laboratories, another font foundry.
posted by crunchland at 4:08 PM on May 11, 2001

04 has some nice bitmap-style fonts, if you like that sort of thing.
posted by gamera at 5:28 PM on May 11, 2001

I like Bureau Destruct, makers of Plakatbau from Radiohead Kid A.
posted by timothompson at 5:56 PM on May 11, 2001

Closefonts has a freebie or two.
posted by aniretac at 6:01 PM on May 11, 2001

Don't forget the venerable fonthead designs, home of RedFive (hint: it was released at roughly the same time The Phantom Menace came out), Holstein, GoodDog, and other freefont classics.
posted by dsandl at 11:07 PM on May 11, 2001

i'm not sure what sort of reaction this will garner, but i'm gonna talk more about nofont, just 'cause i like it so much.

nofont does neat-o graffiti-like fonts. however, nofont also goes beyond a typical font and creates fonts like this, recording a character set in different tones of voice, then creating a font out of it. other 'experiments' include a font for when you read on your side (you know, can't read opposite page), architecture in typeography (and the possibilities of the reverse), and more!

man, i dont know. i just think this is way cool. oh, and the site design is grand.
posted by carsonb at 1:45 AM on May 12, 2001

Do any of you font experts have any idea what the font used on the cover of The Smasing Pumpkins Machina 2 is (as seen here)? And where I might be able to download it? Or something like it?
posted by davidgentle at 4:46 AM on May 12, 2001

Hi, greensweater...

Could you be thinking of the fonts of the amazing Pat Broderick of Rotodesign/Modern Humorist fame?

...or perhaps the luverly type stylings of the font diner?

webchick
posted by webchick at 10:15 AM on May 12, 2001

A suggestion for all those font lovers out there, a blog on typography! Lines & Splines.
posted by silusGROK at 10:26 AM on May 14, 2001