March 19, 2024

30 Extremely Elegant Serif Fonts

A few weeks ago, I showed you a bunch of super sleek fonts to use in your clean designs, but if you’re looking to establish a classic mood for a design, you may want to choose elegant serif fonts.

This article presents to you 30 of the best free serif fonts around…

 

Novello

Novello

Museo

Museo

AlexandriaFLF

AlexandriaFLF

Bienetresocial

Bienetresocial

Kontrapunkt

Kontrapunkt

Serif Beta

Serif Beta

Gentium Basic

Gentium Basic

Centabel Book

Centabel Book

Divona

Divona

Andron Freefont LAT

Andron Freefont LAT

Grandesign Neue Serif

Grandesign Neue Serif

TypoLatinserif-Bold

TypoLatinserif-Bold

Bergamo Std

Bergamo Std

Contra

Contra

Sanford

Sanford

Temporarium

Temporarium

Juvelo

Juvelo

Justus

Justus

Day Roman

Day Roman

Bitstream Vera Serif

Bitstream Vera Serif

Dustismo Roman

Dustismo Roman

Portland LDO

Portland LDO

Cardiff

Cardiff

Oxford

Oxford

Queens Park

Queens Park

Athena Unicode

Athena Unicode

Imperium

Imperium

RomanSerif

RomanSerif

Slab Tall X

Slab Tall X

Liberation Serif

Liberation Serif

Henry Jones is a web developer, designer, and entrepreneur with over 14 years of experience. He is the founder of WDL and ThemeTrust.

63 Comments

  1. Lisa Reply

    These are stunning! I personally love serif fonts, as I believe sans serif’s are getting overused and killed. Nice collection! Thank you!

  2. Paul Reply

    No offense but I wouldn’t call too many of these fonts elegant, while I wouldn’t call Museo a serif font at all. Where are the classics like Baskerville, Caslon, Goudy, Bembo? All truly elegant not to mention Garamond, Jenson and Joanna all well established (Garamond was designed in the 1540s) truly elegant fonts. Do yourselves a favour and take a look at some of the masters of type design.

  3. Duh Reply

    @Paul it’s 30 elegant *free* serif fonts, the ones you mention are not free. Do yourself a favor and figure out the purpose of an article before writing something snotty in the comments.

  4. Paul Reply

    I didn’t see my comment as being ‘snotty’. I understand that the fonts are free, I was simply pointing out that with the constant flood of free fonts on the market we are losing sight of true elegance in type design. Surely real quality is worth paying for?

  5. bigyaz Reply

    Paul: When you start out with “No offense…” and follow up with “Do yourselves a favour…”? Yeah, that’s snotty.

    And if the list included such well-known stalwarts as Garamond and Caslon the author would no doubt have received equally snotty remarks about stating the obvious.

  6. Paul Reply

    bigyaz: Handbags at dawn! Seems Kirsti and Kyle have the right idea. Trajan a classic since the Roman Empire and Hoefler & Frere-Jones one of the world’s premium type foundries.

    I’m not totally against free fonts, I’ve used a few myself in the past but if you’re not experienced enough to recognise a well designed font you can very easily fall into a habit of using poor fonts and your work is going to suffer in the long run.

    Glad to see some us are still flying the flag for good font design.

  7. SOS Media Web Design Reply

    Interesting list. To me, it shows the future of “elegant”. Many comments mentioned the heavy classics: Bodoni, Caslon, Bembo — then others mentioned the more contemporary classics like Archer. This list reads to me like the “elegant free fonts” or “elegance on a budget”. Not to take away from the fonts, as I’ve downloaded and used Museo and Kontrapunkt on many occasions, but always with the notion that I was “modernizing” and “removing elegance” by applying those fonts. Thanks for the post.

  8. likethegoddess Reply

    Hey, let’s not let the tone disrupt the message. When I saw “30 Extremely Elegant Serif Fonts,” I was hopeful. I look at this list and agree with Paul. I would call very few of these fonts “extremely elegant,” free or not. All the typefaces that Paul mentioned would rank more elegant to me than most on this list. One could take offense at this comment or use it as a helpful critique. The latter is my intention.

  9. Torley Reply

    @Paul @likethegoddess Your comments would’ve been helpful if you explained your understanding of “elegant” and precisely why some of your fave fonts should’ve been in place of (or in addition to) these.

    Then again, this article could’ve shared more narrative on that, too. Let’s help each other out.

  10. likethegoddess Reply

    That’s a big ask, Torley. One can only go so far within the confines of blog comments.

    I’d say the first change I’d make is to the title, dropping “extremely” and adding “free.”

    “Elegant” is such a subjective term. One could write a book on typeface elegance!

    To me, an elegant serif face must first be effortlessly readable as a paragraph font and would have an innate beauty of its own. Look at how well each letter relates to the others, how well kerned out of the box, the style expressed in each individual letter.

    The serif typefaces that I find most mark elegant, as Paul mentioned and I alluded to, are Garamond, Baskerville, Caslon, Goudy, and Bembo. To those, I could add Bell, Mrs Eaves and Warnock. I’d add Bodini, as SOS Media Web Design mentioned, as a classic modern serif. I’d say the list is missing classic slab serifs like Rockwell and Lubalin Graph.

    Compare the fonts I’ve mentioned to those on this list for yourself and see what you think. Remember to check the italic, bold, and italic/bold versions. Some may measure up, some not. It’s up to you.

  11. david Reply

    Hello,
    I would like to point out that

    NOVELLO lacks numbers,
    ALEXANDRIA is a stolen STYMIE,
    BIENETRESOCIAL is a blended GEORGIA and TIMES,
    DIVONA is extremely bad drawn (bad curves),
    GRANDESIGN is a MYRIAD with serifs added, very amateurish and the special characters are all MYRIAD,
    BERGAMO is a stolen BEMBO,
    SANFORD is a tweaked AMERICANA,
    TEMPORARIUM is a stolen GENTIUM (why would anyone rename a free font?),
    JUVELO has no special characters,
    JUSTUS is a stolen WALBAUM,
    DUSTISMO has broken characters and the bold weight has a corrupt i,
    PORTLAND is identical to QUEENS PARK and they are both stolen PALATINOS,
    CARDIFF is a stolen TIMES ROMAN,
    OXFORD is a stolen PERPETUA,
    ATHENA UNICODE is a stolen NEW BASKERVILLE,
    SLAB TALL X is a stolen and scaled SERIFA.

  12. Michael Angrave Reply

    Very nice collection of serif fonts. I’ve used a couple of these before. Certainly some new ones that I’m sure I will utilise in the future.

    Nice post Henry, look forward to more…

  13. killthemessenger Reply

    thanks for providing these fonts free. i can’t believe what a bunch of jerks are here bitching about a gift horse. get a life! i’m taking my own advice and am off to continue mine 🙂

  14. bo Reply

    i just decided on centabel for a logo. this list helped me feel more confident in my choice, since i’m a beginner. and bonus, david didn’t have anything nasty to say about it. thanks for the list!

  15. mta Reply

    Thank you for your selection.

    Is just an individual matter of taste.

    Nobody can say you on how to choose your shares

    I like Centabel and Juvelo.

  16. Rich Reply

    Awesome list of resources! Thank you for sharing.

    I would just like to add one more set of typography resources and that is the forum of http://www.pilo.me

    It is a private typography forum with an unbelievable amount of free fonts, premium fonts and exclusive typefaces. I think it was voted the best typography forum of 2009. If you are a font lover/addict, check it out. Like I said though, it is either private or invite only. I have never seen a typography site like it with all it has to offer. Anyhow, check it out, pilo.me

    Anyhow, great article, I definitely will be referring to these time to time.

  17. CGB Reply

    How could you leave off Copperplate Gothic Bold? Some of the fonts you’ve picked certainly are pleasing to the eye, but nothing is more pleasing, elegant and sophisticated than Copperplate. You’ve broken our hearts.

  18. Scott Reply

    I don’t agree. Changing small details in a font makes it a new font entirely, so they should be “ripped off” and republished.

  19. Scott Reply

    I agree with the other Scott.
    But they left out some fancier ones:
    Espinosa Nova Regular, Cambridge Serial Regular

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *