As I’m working on my maps I often find myself looking for the right font. After a while you get tired of Papyrus and Old English–the two most common fantasy-ish fonts (for lack of a better term.) Over the past couple of weeks I focused on finding more that have a fantasy look to them. To me that is something Gothic or Calligraphic.
I found a great site that hosts the work of a font-maker Dieter Steffman. (It is in German so try a website translator to sort of read it.) If I’m reading his site correctly (and erring on the side of caution) he is declaring his fonts free for non-commercial use. His site links to another site hosting a few hundred of his fonts. Unfortunately it doesn’t show samples on one page so you need to click each font name if it seems interesting and that shows a preview page. My favorites for fantasy are Devinne swash, Gabrielle, Roland, Romantik Initialin. For westerns, try Billboard, Old Town or Billboard. For science fiction look for the cleaner fonts or if you want something different try Starburst.
Another site that shows Dieter Steffman’s fonts and many other free fonts is dafont.com. However, since they miscategorized Steffman’s fonts as simply “free” you should be wary and doublecheck the copyright status of any font you wish to use. (Just above each download link they summarize the distribution status as “Free for personal use” or “Donationware” or simply “Free” etc.)
To install a new font on your computer, do a web search for your computer’s operating system name and “how to install a font” or something like that.
What other free font resources do you know about? Which fonts are your favorites for fantasy or science fiction or western maps and handouts?