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 your looking to establish an classic mood for a design, you may want to choose an elegant serif font. This article presents to you 30 of the best free serif fonts around.
Novello
Museo
AlexandriaFLF
Bienetresocial
Kontrapunkt
Serif Beta
Gentium Basic
Centabel Book
Divona
Andron Freefont LAT
Grandesign Neue Serif
TypoLatinserif-Bold
Bergamo Std
Contra
Sanford
Temporarium
Juvelo
Justus
Day Roman
Bitstream Vera Serif
Dustismo Roman
Portland LDO
Cardiff
Oxford
Queens Park
Athena Unicode
Imperium
RomanSerif
Slab Tall X
Liberation Serif
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62 comments
Patternhead
May 7, 2009Great resource, hadn’t seen a couple of these before so thanks for the share
Lisa
May 7, 2009These are stunning! I personally love serif fonts, as I believe sans serif’s are getting overused and killed. Nice collection! Thank you!
Paul
May 7, 2009No 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.
Fabio
May 7, 2009Thanks for the post, I tend to use Museo quite a bit recently. There is a great showcase of Museo here: http://francescomugnai.com/
kyle steed
May 7, 2009From this list Novello and Alexandria are probably the only ones I would use. But you left out on of the most beautiful serif typefaces there is, Archer. Check the link to feast your eyes on true beauty (especially in bold): http://www.typography.com/fonts/font_styles.php?productLineID=100033
Duh
May 7, 2009@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.
Henry
May 7, 2009@kyle steed
Thanks for pointing out Archer…shouldn’t have left that one out.
Paul
May 7, 2009I 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?
bigyaz
May 7, 2009Paul: 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.
Kirsti Scott
May 7, 2009I love Trajan! Modeleted after Roman carved letters from the first century AD–still popular after 2000 years!
Art2code
May 7, 2009nice fonts! i love Kontrapunkt
thx
Paul
May 7, 2009bigyaz: 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.
SOS Media Web Design
May 7, 2009Interesting 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.
Giu vicente
May 7, 2009AMAZING TYPEFACES!
Tim Bennett
May 8, 2009These are some nice substitutes for the regular old fonts I see so much of. Thanks for posting!
Dumitru Brînzan
May 8, 2009Very good collection!
Gonna use 4-5 of these in my future works
Thanks for the set!
Gopal Raju
May 9, 2009Thanks a lot for sharing this
Gopal Raju
productivedreams.com
twitter.com/gopalraju
henry pitts
May 9, 2009this is the problem with fonts, once you place them side by side all looks the same.
Dawood
May 9, 2009Couldn’t believe you missed the ” TRAJAN PRO “
james
May 9, 2009Imperium seems to have changed since you looked at it
likethegoddess
May 9, 2009Hey, 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.
Torley
May 9, 2009@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.
Karen
May 9, 2009I liked Queens Park when it used to be called Palatino.
tasarhane
May 10, 2009good resources.. thanks..
likethegoddess
May 10, 2009That’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.
Patricia
May 10, 2009For those complaining about the authors use of the word “Elegant” perhaps a better term, like “Contemporary?”
likethegoddess
May 11, 2009To clarify, I was complaining about “extremely” rather than “elegant,” although I like Patricia’s suggestion of “contemporary.”
honour chick
May 11, 2009wow… i hadn’t even heard of most of them. thanks for sharing the list.
david
May 11, 2009Hello,
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.
Michael Angrave
May 11, 2009Very 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…
killthemessenger
May 12, 2009thanks 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
Vesa Nikkanen
May 14, 2009Always good articles here! Thanks & keep up the great work!
patrick james
May 14, 2009Great collection! I really love the Museo, and Kontrapunkt typefaces.
khoma
May 20, 2009slab tall x? are you serious?
grazz
June 9, 2009Italic Queens Park almost looks like Garamond, nice.
Anja
June 17, 2009This list is absolutely fantastic!
I really liked most of the fonts on it.
Sam
June 26, 2009Thanks for the superb list, some of these serif fonts are gorgeous.
sandman6665
June 29, 2009Great selection! I’ve been using serif but only few I have pick, with this list i see there are other more beautiful serif fonts around..
Matt
September 4, 2009Thanks for this post! I’ve been on this site for just a few minutes and already I have several new sources for free fonts. Good stuff.
bo
September 24, 2009i 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!
mta
October 1, 2009Thank 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.
Cara Dixon
October 14, 2009Great selection of fonts here! Would work really well with an elegant web design. I particularly like ‘Sanford’.
Rich
November 27, 2009Awesome 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.
CGB
December 31, 2009How 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.
olis
January 8, 2010Nice post
btw also nice serif fonts http://www.fonts2u.com/category.html?id=16
neer
January 20, 2010Please let me know. Are these all fonts web-safe.
Web Catch
February 16, 2010Great List of fonts, Contra looks amazing.
Juno Web Design
February 27, 2010Its nice to see new and really cool fonts. Thanks for sharing really nice and cool ideas here.
Daniel N.
May 5, 2010What font did you use in the title of this article?
Lisa
October 19, 2010wow this is lame why are people fighting over fonts…. what a shame…..nerds