fonts

About to use Comic Sans? Put down that mouse, friend. There is a wealth of gorgeous, playful, bold, eye-catching new fonts that are ready for you to download (look at all of these free ones!) and use at your disposal.

The font options are endless, and their applications are too. Spice up a Powerpoint, create beautiful personalized paper goods, or make a custom text-on-photo cover for the Facebook album of photos from your island vacation. Find out how to install type sets once they're downloaded using your Mac's best-kept secret — Font Book.

Going the DIY route when it comes to your wedding? Wedding invitations are one place where you can save big bucks, but one thing you need is an original font! Don't be a bore with standard fonts given to you, like Times New Roman and Helvetica (albeit classic bores, ahem) — fonts set the tone for style as much as the color scheme and design. Below, we cover a few places where you can download free fonts to use for truly unique invites!

• Fonts 500 — This site has over 500 free downloadable fonts and something for every wedding theme: classic (Jane Austen), edgy (Nauvoo), and your-name-in-lights (Marquee). There's also tons of commercially used fonts, so if you've been dreaming of directing your family to the reception in Simpsons font, well, done and done.
• 1,001 Free Fonts — Just as the name implies, you can search and download scores of fonts for use on your wedding invites, save the dates, RSVP cards, and more.
• Dafont — Search for your perfect font by style — comic, Western, sci-fi, typewriter, etc. — or by your basic serif or san-serif styles. There's over 14,000 fonts to sift through, so you could be here a while.
• LostType — Not only is LostType a great place to find free, cheap, and premium fonts, but it's also a good place to browse to get some invite inspiration.
• MyFonts — Search under "specials" to wander through hundreds of inexpensive and free fonts to use for all of your printing needs. You can even try fonts before buying if you are willing to drop some cash on the perfect font.

In a blow to Helvetica fanatics everywhere (this girl included), a new Princeton study finds that the easier the font, the less you'll remember after reading. Turns out challenging, "disfluent" fonts actually help readers retain information, not hinder it as many people believe.

This could spell bad news for avid ereader users hoping to quickly retain much of what they've read, since most feature simple and unchangeable fonts. It makes sense — the more complex the font, the longer your eye lingers on the word, and the longer your brain has to process and retain the information, sort of like a complicated mental workout. Even if ereaders did start offering the option of different fonts, I don't know that I'd purposely choose a complicated one in hopes of retaining more information.

Source: Flickr User carbonnycs

Good news for font geeks and web design fans everywhere; thanks to a new partnership between Typekit and Adobe, 18 new fonts are making the leap online. Starting yesterday, Typekit users are able to integrate these new fonts (including favorites like Adobe Garamond and Myriad) into their designs. The fonts are available at every account level, with Adobe Garamond available free to users within the free trial period. Find out more about the new fonts after the jump.

This one goes out to all the design nerds and Colour Lovers. Check out Miffies. It's a Japanese site, so you may not be able to read the "about" section, but what it offers needs no explanation. The site has compiled 50 fonts inspired by 8-bit video games, and they are available for free download. I feel a video game championship night coming on.

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These days, writing with a pen and ink may be something of a novelty, especially to folks like you and me who are on computers for eight hours a day. Writing out those Valentine's Day cards really proved to be more difficult than ever! If you're a slave to the keyboard and send more emails than snail mail, you can soon create your own font which will be as distinctive as your handwriting, just by taking a photo of your face.

In beta status right now, Typeface is a software that allows you to create a custom font based on facial expressions. Since no two faces are the same, you'll never find an identical font! Just by moving your mouth, eyes, and position, your font will change and mold until you decide that it's totally "you." Papyrus, be damned.

I love experimenting with different fonts on my computer, especially if I'm creating a special invitation. Unfortunately, there's only so many times I can pass off Comic Sans as handwriting. (Guilty!) While I think it's the closest preloaded font to my handwriting, it's already too recognizable to pass off as my own.

Luckily, I just found a new option. Font Capture. It's so easy to use: download a PDF of the font template, fill in each block with the appropriate letter, scan the sheet, and upload it as a .jpg or .png file. Then, submit the file and Font Capture will deliver your own custom font. The best part is, it's completely free! Plus, fonts work on both Mac and PC, and the site also contains installation instructions.

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