How To: The 5 Best Places to Download or Design Fonts Online for Free

Whether you're making a poster, drawing a logo or designing a website, the font you use can make a huge difference in any visual design, and the ones available in most word processors can get pretty boring. There are thousands of sites online where you can download free fonts, and even a few that let you design your own. Here are some of the best.

Dafont

With over 16,000 to choose from, there's a font for almost everyone here. You can preview any text, and unlike a lot of other sites, the categories on Dafont are actually pretty easy to navigate.

The League of Movable Type

If you want something totally different, The League of Movable Type is a good bet. It's an open-source community where all the fonts are free, so if you have your own design to share, this is a great site to join.

Lost Type Co-Op

The Lost Type Co-op does things a little differently. It's a site where designers upload their fonts and users can download them for whatever price they want, including zero. It's great because all the profits go to the designer, but you can still get the fonts for free if you don't have the cash.

Font Squirrel

If you need to use a font for commercial purposes, Font Squirrel is your best bet. It's a collection of the best free fonts that are licensed for commercial work, so you don't have to go through all those tedious licensing agreements to find one you can use.

FontStruct

Can't find anything you like on these sites? Try building your own on FontStruct. The font editor is relatively simple to use and everything on the site is free. You can draw it from scratch or, if you're not an artist, there are shapes you can modify to give you a place to start. You can also share your design and browse fonts that other people have made.

Again, this is a very small example of the many free font sites out there, but these are some of the best. What did I miss? Share your favorite sites in the comments!