This is my own selection of the best free typefaces published in 2021, grouped by category. The list will grow until December 31, 2021.
Text typefaces: Zodiak (Jérémie Hornus, Gaetan Baehr, Jean-Baptiste Morizot, Alisa Nowak, and Théo Guillard at Fontshare). A 24-style text family with Century-like newspaper roots and sturdy bracketed slab serifs. Originally called Claire (2020). Calmadita (by Sic Typus Creatus Est, a group of five Mexican type designers). Atkinson Hyperlegible (Applied Design Works, Braille Institute). Newsreader (Hugues Gentile, Production Type). Made in 2020, but showcased at Production Type in 2021, this is an extensive optically corrected family (Caption, Text, Display) for reading on screens. |
Sans typefaces: |
Rounded sans typefaces: |
Type systems: RedHat (Pentagram and Jeremy Mickel). Open source variable Display, Text and Mono subfamilies. |
Art deco typefaces: Moniqa (Rajesh Rajput). In 162 styles, including variable fonts. Italico (Antonio Filigno). |
Hipster typefaces: |
Script typefaces: |
Calligraphic typefaces: Pencerio (Manushi Parikh). A monolinear hairline Spencerian script. Ballet VF (Maximiliano Sproviero, with Eduardo Tunni and the Omnibus team). A variable Spencerian penmanship font with optical sizing from 16pt to 72pt. |
Brush typefaces: |
Sketched, Layered or Poster typefaces: |
Blackletter typefaces: |
Dingbats and ornaments: Sébastien (Vanessa Zuñiga). Patterns and color fonts based on the 17th centry tilings of Jean Truchet. Botana (Masyafi Studio). |
Programming fonts: M Plus Code Latin and M Plus 1 Code (Coji Morishita). Drafting Mono (Owen Earl). A typewriter-like font but in which slabs are added not just to the lower case i and l as was the practice in the past. In eight styles. |
Garalde typefaces: |
Display typefaces: |
Slab serif typefaces: |
Copperplate: |
Wood type revivals: |
Letterpress emulation: |
Didone typefaces: |
Fashion mag typefaces: |
Revivals: New Computer Modern (Antonis Tsolomitis). A revival and major extension of Knuth's Computer Modern fonts for typesetting mathematical texts, 2019-2021. Stripes (Steve Harrison). A revival and extension of Tony Wenman's Stripes (1972-1973). Aboensis (Tommi Syrjänen). A very carefully researched revival of 15th century alphabets used in Codex Aboensis (1430s) and The Black Book of Abo Cathedral (late 15th century). |
Stencil typefaces: |
Variable fonts: Ballet VF (Maximiliano Sproviero, with Eduardo Tunni and the Omnibus team). A variable Spencerian penmanship font with optical sizing from 16pt to 72pt. Truculenta (Ivan Castro, Eva Sanz and the Omnibus team). An enormous vernacular sans family with optical size, weight and width axes. |
Multilingual typefaces: | Wonderful, adorable, refreshing typefaces: |