Finding the Perfect Font for Your Book Cover Design

When designing a book or book cover, finding the perfect font for the project can be an exhausting process. Compromise on quality just isn’t an option. Add to this a tight budget and many turn to the web in search of free fonts.

I find perusing the typography isle a pleasure, but when searching for a fabulous free font that is also licensed for commercial use, the enjoyment wanes. With the mountain of websites offering free fonts, it is a tremendous task to find fonts that are superior quality.

Here’s a few tips on finding the best FREE (or low cost) fonts:

• Know what you are looking for. Decide what style of font (serif, san serif, blackletter, script, display) will work best for your project and only search for that style.
• Smart searching. Instead of just searching for “free fonts”, consider adding keywords such as quality, commercial, design and professional to your search tag.
• Use twitter, design sites and blog to find posts on great free fonts.
• Paid fonts. Look at professional typography sites – many offer free fonts as an incentive.
• Examine the whole font. Many poorly executed typefaces are missing numbers and punctuation.
• Read the License. Many free font sites are licenses for personal use only and do not include a commercial license. Licenses also can change, so re-read.
• Download the open type format (OTF). It offers the most flexibility in use.
• The best fonts come with a ‘family’. A font family should contain (at least) regular, italic, bold and bold italic weights. Many font sources only offer one weight for free with the rest of the family for purchase.
• If the style of a letterform bothers you – don’t use it. Compromise isn’t an option. Choose a font that makes a statement about your project.

Traps to watch out for:

• Avoid any site that disguises or hides the download link. Also avoid sites that take you to two or more sites to download the font.
• Avoid grungy or handwritten fonts. They tend to reproduce poorly at a larger size.
• Avoid fonts that degrade when enlarged or do not read well at smaller sizes.

Quality Free (or Almost Free) Font Sources

The following sources have many fonts to choose from, some free, some not. I have chosen these few as my favorites this month.

• Linden Hill
• Osterich Sans
• Overlock
• Code
• Haymaker

The League of Moveable Type

Linden Hill
Designer: Barry Schwartz
Package: roman and italic
Cost: FREE
Linden Hill is a digital version of Frederic Goudy’s Deepdene. This is a nice letter style for print books, easy to read and clean. The package includes roman and italic.

Ostrich Sans
Designer: Tyler Finck
Package: ultra light, normal, thin (dashed), medium (rounded) black, and bold (inline)
Cost: FREE
This is a beautiful style – tall letterforms with wonderful curves. Six different weights makes this font extremely versatile.

Font Squirrel

Overlock
Designer: Dario Manuel Muhafara
Package: (7 styles) regular, italic, bold, bold italic, black, black italic, and small caps
Cost: FREE
The initial idea of this typeface was to simulate the Overlock sewing technique. This font evokes a warm feeling with its rounded glyph shapes. The Overlock typeface family is perfect for titles and looks its very best at bigger sizes. It comes in three weights, Regular, Bold and Black, each with a true italic. It has two sets of numbers and small caps which are available as a sister family.

Font Fabric

Code
Package: (2 styles) light and bold
Cost: FREE
Clean font. The light is very light and may work for a book cover title with some creative design.

Lost Type Co-op

Haymaker
Designer: Trevor Baum
Package: (7 styles) regular, italic, bold, bold italic, black, black italic, and small caps
Cost: Donations (minimum $5)
A display typeface that’s both rugged and refined. Perfect for western and nostalgic Book Cover design. Inspired by the workmanship, lettering, and baseball jerseys of the 1930’s and 40’s.