Luckily, the spread of free quality TrueType fonts is on the increase. Microsoft created a number of good TrueType fonts that at one time they let folks download from their website. While they no longer host those files on their site, the fonts are still legally available at a number of other sites including http://corefonts.sourceforge.net/.

Lately, Bitstream and Gnome have joined together to create a set of core "open" TrueType fonts. The serif fonts lack a true italics, but otherwise they seem to be a pretty good set. The family of fonts is called Vera, and they can be found at http://www.gnome.org/fonts/.

When it comes to free fonts, the Internet has them in spades. One of my personal favorite font site is 1000 Fonts at http://www.1001fonts.com/ which has a nice interface, tracks favorites and categorizes the fonts.

Other sites include Cheapskate Fonts at http://www.dustismo.com/ which is a font designers website for his free fonts. DaFonts at http://www.dafont.com/en/tracks fonts with international characters and the Euro character. Other sites include FontFreak found at http://www.fontfreak.com/index2.htm. Dingbat Depot is at http://www.dingbatdepot.com/and Highfonts is at http://www.highfonts.com/ (for Disney fans, don't miss the Walt Disney Script). Killer fonts at http://www.killerfontz.com/is another of about 5 font sites (including Highfonts) that are cross linked and for all I know contain the exact same data.

If you have a favorite font site, or a commercial font foundry you are pleased with, drop me a note at support@grasshopperllc.com and I'll include your pick in next months article.