Typography has always been hugely important to design. But now, more than ever, we have so many new font choices available that it can become overwhelming. There are so many talented designers out there creating their own fonts, and there is no longer any barrier to entry for posting a new font design online. We’ve waded through font sites, design sites, and other best-of lists to find our favorite fonts to use in 2015. Here is an overview of some of the best ones we’ve found:
1. FarView
Fairview is a modern font reminiscent of art-deco style. It’s great for industrial style projects and confident, upright companies. With the right contrasting colors as shown above, it becomes even more powerful. It was designed by Riley Cran and can be found on Lost Type.
View FarView on Lost Type
2. Bebas Neue
Bebas Neue is an extremely versatile font that is a favorite among designers. Isn’t it odd that so many great designers will put simple white text on a black background with a striking font like Bebas Neue and it looks good every time? Called the “Helvetica of the free fonts”, we actually think it’s better because it’s not overused yet. Thankfully it won’t be overused anytime soon with these four new variations at Font Fabric. Mix and match the different weights in your next project for an amazing impact.
View Bebas Neue on Font Fabric
3. Tracks Type
I think the above image of Tracks Type perfectly captures the essence of it. It’s clean, modern, and interesting. Something that would belong on an album cover, or as the font for a new indie brand of clothing. It’s industrial and semi-retro.
View Tracks Type on Font Fabric
4. Mohave
If you’re looking for the perfect retro font for your vintage-esque logo – Mohave is a top contender. Established by Absolut Foundry, it’s a versatile font that reads well for headlines as a sans-serif font. Pair this with a semi-flat design and you’ve got the 2015 design trends in your pocket.
View Mohave on Behance
5. Alieron
Like most amateur designers, I’m trying to find more breathing room in my work. Good designers know when to use whitespace to create impact in their work. Aileron is an awesome lightweight font that would be great for Apple inspired designs and landing pages. Another idea is overlaying it as white text over a semi-washed out background image.
View Alieron on Dotcolon
6. Simplifica
Simplifica is a bit complicated to me – it’s a stunning font, but I can’t exactly categorize it. It straddles the border of industrial and futuristic, yet elegant at the same time. I think that’s why I’m in love with it. Especially with the color scheme shown above, it looks so fresh and so elegant. One of the best free font faces I’ve come across.
View Simplifica on Behance
7. Corbert Condensed Italic
Corbet is a condensed italic font on the light and airy side. It’s great both as a headline, sub-headline, and body copy font. As shown in the above image, you can play with the kerning and capitalization to produce totally unique styles of the same font. It pulls strongly from the Bauhaus and modernist era, as stating on The Northern Block site. Keep this one in your tool set.
View Corbert Condensed Italic on The Northern Block
8. Glober Free Font
A font calling itself grotesque one does not come across often. Thin and bold beautifully contrast against each other in this skinny and upright sans-serif font on Font Fabric. This font is versatile, for everything from web copy to t-shirts. It’s an excellent font to blow up single letters for, like that ‘g’ above. It’s extremely suitable for poster printing as well.
View Glober Free Font on Font Fabric
9. Big John/Slim Joe
This font completely embraces it’s own duality, even in it’s name. I’ve never come across a font that’s named so closely to a stick of meat that it requires a bit of a double-take. If you don’t click on any of the other font links, click on this one, because what the designer has done to illustrate the power of the contrasting characteristics of the font is so powerful. No more to be said, view this font on Behance.
View Big John on Behance
10. Aventura
Aventure evokes the wilderness, and the washed-out hipster infatuation with the style of camping as of late. Our post-pc modernist era sends some running back to our rustic roots, which is exactly what this font is for. I personally love the designs associated with this font – flat natural colors, images of mountains and forests, and this font matches perfectly.
View Aventura on Behance
11. AXIS
Axis is wide and bold. It takes up space and is meant as a headline. I would think reading a book in this font would get old pretty fast, but in this example above it fits perfectly. It’s a modern, bold font that will be a versatile member of your font family for 2015.
12. Dense
Dense strongly reminds me of Bebas Neue Light, but there are some minor differences. It’s another skinny and thin font, that when emboldened it becomes striking. Use this as the above example shows or pair it with beautiful imagery and it will look amazing in your web and print designs.
View Dense on Charles Daoud
13. Nexa: light and bold
Font Fabric is killing it with these fonts, I love it. Nexa continues the principle of incorporating both light and bold versions of its font to create a strong juxtaposition. This sans-serif font works great in headlines, but can be used in different sizes and weights throughout the copy of your project as well. Play with it a bit and let me know what you discover.
View Nexa on Font Fabric
14. Gringo
As a gringo, I feel this font was made for me. It evokes the Hollywood-contrived memories of the Southwest and old ghost towns paired with the classiness of a nouveau-riche day spa that charges $300 per massage. All opinions aside, combined with a cool design and flat color like the example above, the Gringo font is super cool and weirder than Austin.
View Gringo on Regular Bolditalic
15. Elegant Lux
Elegant Lux instantly reminds me of the Grand Budapest Hotel and the Amtrak. It has the air of 1930’s fancy railroad car traveling, whether that’s intentional or not. This font would work seamlessly in designs for travel and luxury companies. It’s vintage characteristics also make it worthy of the more artisanal design trends, but hey the hipsters have enough fonts to work with – let’s leave this for the travel and luxury space.
View Elegant Lux on Creative Blog
We hope you enjoyed the bit of fun we’ve had picking these fonts. If you think there are some newer kids on the block, please do suggest some. And if you find yourself using these in some of your designs, share those with the rest of us!