Catch the "˜Font Conference' video that's playing at the foot of the 5 Excellent Sources To Download Free Text Fonts. Times New Roman has his hands full while the rest of the font pack squabbles over artsy fonts like Webdings. "˜Superhero' Comic Sans arrives in the nick of time to save the day.

Aren't we all a bit like that when we pick and choose fonts for our computer? If you aren't a designer, I can't see you straying far from the conservative Arial's, Times new Roman's, or a Calibri maybe. Comic Sans is kept for the cutesy emails we tend to write once in a while.

Let's blame it on the unwritten laws of font usage and those of readability. The lane of common typefaces is narrow indeed. Most of us dare not take the font road that is less travelled.

But what if you really wanted to stand out with your computer fonts; be adventurous, just like painting graffiti on a blank wall? Free computer fonts are easily available. Free fonts that will make you stand out are littered among them thanks to fearless typographic designers.

Mark's article at the above link is a great place to start. Let's pick out a few more free computer fonts and their sources. Stand out in style.

1001 Free Fonts

free computer fonts

One of the fonts that caught my eye on 1001 Free Fonts is called Chopin Script. It's a True Type Font that is in the style of Calligraphic fonts. The site lists thousands of fonts for Windows and Macintosh. Most of them are freeware, and some shareware.

AceFreeFonts

free computer fonts

How about a trip to hell and back? Well, that's the name of the font pictured above. Ace Free Fonts groups 20309 true type fonts for Windows and Mac. The fonts are free to download. You can sift through the fonts by category, alphabetically, or use the tags. For your chosen font, you can also checkout the full character map.

Fonts2U

Sometimes you might feel like writing an email in a typical handwritten style. Even though you know that the recipient may not have that font installed on his computer. I know I do, and that's why I downloaded [ank], a handwriting script font. It is just one of the cool computer fonts that the site hosts. What makes this site standout are the foreign script fonts that are available for download from typeface designers around the world.

The font collection is marked out with licenses (GNU/GPL, freeware, free for personal use, donationware, shareware or demo).

TypeNow

computer fonts

The seven year old typographic website has a small but selective collection. Small equates to 6846 fonts. Selective, corresponds to fonts that are themed on movies, music, and games. If you like any typeface used on a show's credit, navigate to the Themed Free Fonts section from the dropdown to check it out. How about Star Wars? Though, I went for X-Files.

The collection is selective and it doesn't seem to be getting updated with new fonts.

Famous Fonts

computer fonts

If you are still searching for themed fonts, then you could score a hit at Famous Fonts. 300 free computer fonts to choose from; all specifically themed on movies, shows, magazines, automobiles, logos etc. The GodFather anyone?

FontSpace

computer fonts

Carnivalee Freakshow is an abstract font that I downloaded from the site. It looks like one of those retro typefaces from an old sepia toned poster. FontSpace has 13,500+ free fonts for you to choose from. The fonts are neatly arranged in categories from the basic to more abstract styles like art deco you can download, unzip and use on your Windows, Mac, or Linux systems. You can test it out on the site itself with your custom text before a download.

Urban Fonts

fonts for computer

Urban Fonts is a neat well designed site with 8000 free font files and dingbats. You can browse through the free fonts quite easily. The custom text box lets you see your words getting rendered by all the typefaces listed on a page. Fonts are available for both Windows and Mac. As this site has a large collection of free dingbats, I browsed through that for jazzing up my PowerPoint presentations. The one above is called Retrobats.

Acid Fonts

fonts for computer

If you are feeling like going psychedelic with color and grunge for a change"¦try out the Anthology font from Acid Fonts. The site has free fonts for Mac and Windows download arranged neatly in a few categories.

Abstract Fonts

fonts for computer

I had once written a post on using drop caps to enhance your text in Microsoft Word. One of the free computer font categories you can visit here relates to that. You can go retro with DecoCaps or stay on the safe side with Media Gothic.

A neat feature of the site is the dropdown that opens up with all font information when you click on a specific typeface. You can also get to similar fonts from here, do custom previews, see the character map, and check the license before your download the font.

exljbris Font Foundry

exljbris is Jos Buivenga's collection of free fonts. And looking at the selections, you can only admire the handiwork of this type designer from Netherlands. Museo and Calluna are two of his most known typefaces from his font foundry. Some of the styles among his creations are free. For example, the regular Calluna which is a free download.

With fonts, the great thing is that there's no poverty of choice. You can literally send your browser on a random chase and come up with loads of free fonts. The trick is in knowing which font to use. Design work calls for a tasteful eye"¦wording a document stresses on bulletproof fonts for readability across different computers.

I will leave that choice to you. Whatever your choice, you know you can go wild with your imagination and stand out from the crowd with cool free computer fonts.

Which is your favorite font?

Image credit: stallio