I’ve been doing logo design for five years now and in this time I’ve accumulated both experience and a lot of useful resources that I love and use whenever I design. One of these resources is a list of fonts for
When I just started out as a graphic, my biggest struggle where fonts, especially logo fonts. there was a time when I hated choosing fonts because I was so bad at choosing a font that works. I could design an icon, draw an illustration, but as soon as I added a font to my work, it completely ruined the whole image.
I
Today I can honestly say that fonts don’t scare me as much as they did and I actually don’t find it as hard to combine graphics with typography anymore.
But I still remember the frustration and desperation when I needed to choose a font for a logo design and I felt so lost.
If I had these feelings, I bet others have them too…maybe even you felt that fonts are just too hard, especially now that we have thousands to choose from.
Because of this, I decided to create a post that I would have loved to read five years ago.
I went through about 100 of my logo designs and wrote down all of the FREE FOR COMMERCIAL USE logo fonts that I use most frequently.
I also created custom “logo” examples using each of my most favorite logo font examples so that you would have a better
Can I use a font for my logo ?
Now, you might be thinking: “Well that’s nice and all but isn’t it cheating? Can I use a font for my logo design?“
The short answer is YES you can use a font for your logo design.
Let me explain.
There are a lot of scenarios when you can and should use a font for your logo design.
- You might not have the skills needed to design typography form scratch
- Your client is on a budget so spending time designing custom letterforms is not feasible for you
- There is a specific font that your client loves and wants it made into a logo
No matter the reason, you are allowed to use a font for your logo design and 95% of designers do – including me.
Pay attention to font licenses
Although it’s ok to use fonts for your logos, not all fonts are created equal and you should always make sure the font author has given permission before you start designing.
Make sure you check out the license of every font you plan on using
If you are creating a logo just for yourself without the intention of making any money – that’s Personal use. Most downloadable fonts have an “Available for personal use” license and this forum post explains the Personal use license pretty well.
If you’re designing a logo for a client, or for selling the logo as a template, you need a Commercial use license. There are free fonts that have an “Available for Commercial use” licenses those can be used for commercial purposes.
This is very important and you can get into serious trouble if you ignore a font use license. So a
How to choose a font for your logo?
The art of choosing the right logo font deserves a post of its own. So instead of lecturing you about logo font do’s and don’ts, I’ll try and explain what I’m looking at when choosing a logo font.
Fonts have personalities. Just by looking at a certain font, we can feel a certain way about it. A font can remind us of things and emotions. Some fonts feel posh and reming us of formal evens like weddings. Others are fun and quirky and makes us think about kindergartens and chalk drawings.
So the first thing I try and figure out is what is the personality of the brand I’m creating a logo for. To do that, I use the following personality spectrum for that and ask my clients to choose no more than three of the personality traits.
Brand Personality Spectrum
- Feminine or masculine
- Playful/fun or serious
- Luxurious or affordable/accessible to all
- Modern or classic/traditional
- Youthful or mature
- Loud or subdued
Establishing personality traits will help you narrow down your logo font choices.
Next, I will start to pay attention to actual letterforms to make sure they compliment the logo graphic that I have created.
For example, if my logo graphic has an important element that is round, I will look for a logo font that has round letterforms. So I will look how the letter “o” looks, for instance, to see if it is as round as my graphic.
If my graphic has sharp corners, I will look for a font that has pointy details as well. Repetition is a reliable way to make different logo elements work well together.
Free logo fonts that I use for logo design projects
The following examples are an actual list of free logo fonts with commercial use licenses that I personally recommend for logo design. I have them all installed on my computer and use them regularly.
To make it easier for you to visualize how a particular font would look if used in a logo, I made custom “logo” examples for a fake client called Oliver Green.
The name “Oliver Green” is written using a different logo font in each example and the slogan “professional services” is written using the Raleway font.
If you need real logo examples with these particular logo fonts, go ahead and check out my “100 free photography logo templates” project. I have used all of these free logo fonts to design free logo templates for photographers. Can you recognize the fonts?
Now let’s look at some of my favorite cool logo fonts that I use when designing a logo!
1. Abhaya Libre
Abhaya Libre is a beautiful, elegant serif font. This font is well-suited for brands that want their logo to look professional, established, and luxurious. I envision it working nicely for photographers, law agencies, caterers, event organizers, and apparel designers. You can download Abhaya Libre font here.
2. Amatic
Amatic is a hand-drawn, condensed font. It has a natural, DIY feel making it a good choice for brands that go for a youthful, relaxed, friendly, and maybe even somewhat hipster look. I really like this font as a logo option and have used it on multiple occasions for hip cafes, kid-related industries, and crafters. Download Amatic font here.
3. Arvo
Next up is a cool slab-serif logo font called Arvo. It comes in two font weights (regular and bold) as well as a slanted italic variation. Arvo is a font veteran, it’s been around since 2010 and still to this day, it is one of the most popular free slab fonts available – that says something. A font such as this one has a strong, modern, high tech feel to it. Download Arvo font here.
4. Baron
Baron is a bold, modern font that is perfect for quick logo creation. This font comes with a bunch of pre-made styled characters (such as the letter “o” in my example). Download Baron font here.
If Oliver would be a real client, I wouldn’t use this exact font for this project because the raised “O” makes Oliver read line O! Liver and I wouldn’t want that.
When designing a logo, always keep an eye out for unintended, negative side effects such as these.
5. BioRhyme
BioRhyme is a beautiful, feminine, and delicate font. I especially love how the letter “e” is designed! I would use this font for brands related to healthy lifestyle or beauty (think hairstylists or skincare products). Download BioRhyme here.
6. Black Jack
Black Jack is a font I use quite frequently because of it’s inky, hand-written, signature style. If you love the signature style feel of this font, make sure you check out my “Free Signature fonts for Logo Design” post next.
I think that Black Jack is perfect for a number of self-employed, small business types such as photographers, designers, and crafters. Download Black Jack font here.
7. Cantata One
Similar to Abhaya Libre font, Cantata one is a serious, professional looking serif font. The high contrast between the thin and thick letter strokes evokes a
8. Cookie
I’m a sucker for calligraphy style fonts so naturally, I love Cookie font! It’s very well executed, fun, easy to read, works for both male and female brands, and it’s free. Download Cookie font here.
9. Crimson
Crimson (also known as “Crimson Text”) font is a serif font that would work well for brands that are looking for a professional, sophisticated, traditional look. This font has a no-nonsense, grounded look that is versatile enough for a number of projects. Download Crimson font here.
10. Droid Serif
Another good serif font is called Droid Serif. It is similar to our previous font example (Crimson) but it has some notable differences. Droid Serif’s slightly condensed width and swirly terminal on the “r” makes this font feel friendly instead of corporate. Download Droid Serif font here.
11. Engine
Engine font is a fun and quirky hand-drawn font. Its friendly vibe makes is a great choice for cartoonists and illustrators, people who create hand-made products (potters, knitters, jewelers etc.). Engine font combines great with graphics that are drawn by hand and “imperfect” opposed to pixel perfect vector icons. Download Engine from here.
12. Freebooter
I rarely use such elaborate fonts as Freebooter Script but there are occasions where you need a font that has swirls and flourishes (think, wedding-related businesses, fine art photography).
I would use this font for company brand names that don’t have more than 1 word in it since in most cases that it can make it a bit much (the example image would look nicer with just the word “Oliver”), but single-word names or initials can look lovely with Freebooter font. Download this font here.
13. Helsinki
Helsinki is a great all-caps, sans-serif font. Its official classification is “Comic”, but I like to use it whenever I need a font that is active, high energy, modern and has a “let’s get sh*t done” vibe! Recently I used this exact font when creating a logo for an adventure photographer who climbed mountains and captured extrime sports events. Download Helsinki font right here.
14. Intro & Into inline
Into font has a strong geometric structure, most of the letters are built based on simple geometric shapes – triangles, squares, and circles. It bears some similarity to the popular Futura font. Into comes in two styles – Into inline (shown in the example above) and Into. Download Intro font here.
15. Josefin Sans
Josefin Sans is a feminine, modern font that has a strong character. I envision it working beautifully for brand related to female entrepreneurs, health and wellness, trendsetters and other brands with strong, proud personalities. Download Josefin Sans font here.
16. Karma (semibold)
Karma is a beautiful, elegant, and expensive looking serif font whose structure tends towards the monolinear construction. In the logo example, I used only the uppercase characters but this font has a full set of lowercase characters as well. It also supports both Latin and Devanagari script. Download Karma here.
17. Milkshake
Another of my favorites – Milkshake script font. Although it does have flourishes, this font isn’t strictly feminine, it can work wonderfully for men as well. I would consider this logo font for various digital designers (graphic, logo, web designers), as well as clothing and accessory designs. Download Milkshake font here.
18. Muli
Clean, professional, geometric, and serious. Muli font comes in multiple font weights – from extra light to bold. Muli is a great logo font choice when you need to bring the most attention to the accompanying logo graphic instead of the written word while making the name easy to read. Download Muli font here.
19. Museo Slab
One of the most popular free slab serif fonts is called Muser Slab. If you have a typography book lying around in your house, I bet you could find a mention of Museo there. Museo Slab is robust yet friendly making it an
20. Open Sans Condensed
If you’re looking for a condensed, thin font, consider Open Sans Condensed. A classic yet beautiful sans serif font choice perfect for almost every occasion – from various blog and magazine headers to doctors, desists, and more. Download Open Sans Condensed
21. Oswald
Oswald font is a modern, bold logo font choice perfect for brands that want to convey a
22. Oxygen
Oxygen is a font I tend to use a lot, I especially like to combine it with other, more stylized fonts. This font works really well even if the size is small so I like to use it as a tagline or slogan font below the main company name font. Download Oxygen font here.
23. Pier
Allthough I don’t get to use this one as much I really like Pier font. It looks clean and simple but it has that special something that makes it stand out from a lot of other font choices out there. It looks especially well in uppercase characters. Check out and download Pier font here.
24. Playball
Playball is an elegant, flowing script font that is so graceful that often it doesn’t even need and supporting elements such as graphics and secondary fonts. We used Playball font as a logo for our Camilla WordPress theme and it looks wonderful! Download Playball font here.
25. Playfair Display
Playfair Display is another one of my go-to logo fonts – especially if I need to create something feminine and elegant. It has a strong stroke contrast reminiscent of the broad nib quills popular in late 18th century. A truly beautiful, classic/traditional font with 12 font styles – check out Playfair Display Italic as well! Download the font here.
26. Quicksand
Whenever I need a simple font that looks friendly, accessible, and clean – I tend to choose Quicksand. Its rounded, soft corners go great together with logo shapes that have round features. You can download Quicksand here.
27. Quentin
One of my favorite free script font choices is called Quentin. It has a rough, dry brush texture and looks as if signed by hand. I also included Quentin in my 25 free script fonts post. You can download Quentin font here.
28. Raleway
I used Raleway in each and every of these logo font examples to write the “professional services” tagline. As you can see, Raleway works perfectly in small sizes – especially if you add a bit of extra space between the letters. And can looks great as main logo font! Download Raleway font here.
29. Sacramento
Sacramento is a mono-weight script font that works lovely as a logo font when you need something with a friendly, personal, and elegant feel.Download Sacramento font here.
30. Soria
Soria font has a bit of a vintage, art nouveau feel to it yet it is modern enough to be used in today’s context as well. This is an elegant, regal font suited for brands that are going for the expensive, deluxe look. Download Soria here.
31. Stint Ultra Condensed
Sting Ultra Condensed font is a great bold logo font choice. Perfect for lifestyle and travel-related brands. The condensed form is perfect when you need to get as much information as you can into
32. Sunday
Sunday font has been in my font toolbox for a long time already and I keep finding uses for it all the time. It’s designed to look like a vintage-inspired illustration instead of a font. This makes it a perfect logo font choice when combined with hand-drawn illustrations. Download Sunday font here.
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