With the introduction of @font-face in CSS3, we are no longer restricted to just operating system fonts. There are many high quality open source fonts that are hosted on sites like Google Fonts and Font Squirrel that you can use it on your designs and websites. But what if you want to have a try on popular webfonts like Proxima Nova, Brandon Grotesque, Museo, or Apercu and many more for free? Most probably you will have to pay, or subscribe to use those fonts.
But there is a way that you can download the aforementioned fonts for free, not only just the font but the entire font family. Continue read on to find out how you can do it.
[sc:adsense]
The experiment
Basically is just by tweaking your search keywords: by adding “OTF” or “TTF” to your keyword. For example: “Proxima Nova OTF” and “Brandon Grotesque TTF”. On the search result page, you may find links from Github, a site where developers use to manage their codes. Many repositories containing the premium fonts where you can actually download them for free. Below showing a repo with Proxima Nova fonts.
Since this repo is shared publicly, basically you can download the whole repo to your desktop in a zip file. Basically you need to go to the repo home page, and click on the “Download ZIP”.
Perhaps you can also just include “Github” in your keyword. Here I tried “Brandon Grotesque Github” and eventually I found the repo below containing the whole family. Again you can just download the ZIP file to get the fonts.
*Do this at your own risk
This post in just intended to show how you can use specific keywords to search for the premium fonts. We do not encourage using the fonts without obtaining proper licensing of the respective fonts.
The correct way to try premium fonts for free
You can actually try and use the premium fonts for free by using these two sites: Typekit and FontDeck. Typekit has trial account that you can sign up for free, and get access to 261+ font families including Museo. While on FontDeck, you can have access to all the fonts for free when designing and developing, and only pay when going live.
If you still don’t want to pay and would like to look for alternative, you can check out Typewolf’s Top 30 open source fonts, or just simply search “Proxima Nova free alternatives” or “Brandon Grotesque free alternatives”.
Comments