A Collection of Free, Creative Display Fonts

Dan Robinson

11 years ago

There is often a call, in design, to create something that stands out and grabs attention. From printed posters and billboard ads to product packaging and even blog headings – there are many cases where you’ll need to design something with the purpose of making the viewer stop and take notice. In cases like that, a display font that uses big, bold and unconventional imagery can work wonders. Everyone is used to seeing the same fonts that come with their computer – and if you want to draw attention to your design, you run the risk of looking the same as everyone else by using Helvetica.

Creative display fonts often make use of unconventional shapes to draw your attention. They can use unexpected shading to stand out, or use filler patterns that aren’t seen in most typefaces. Because they’re designed to be seen at scale, they can have a completely different aesthetic to regular fonts and don’t need to be readable at a variety of sizes. The key feature here is that display fonts are allowed to break all the rules – and sometimes it’s the surprising, strange and unusual typefaces that make the best headings.

I’ve brought together a collection of some of my favourite unusual display typefaces. All of these are (at the time of writing) available to download for free, but please do check the licence before using them for any commercial or personal project. If you know of any other typefaces that belong in the collection, let us know in the comments!