ALL fonts are 100% free for both personal and commercial use.
Although grotesques and clear-lined sans-serifs are associated the most with brutalism, used in the right combination and composition almost any typeface would be a good fit. So this article is an extensive but not exhaustive collection of the best free fonts to use in your next brutalist web project.
This list will be kept up to date with new fonts, so be sure to revisit. If you’re a type designer or just know a great font that should be included, just email me at [email protected]. Thanks & enjoy!
Updates:
- Added VCR OSD Mono font in the Monospace/Duospace category
- Added Michroma font in the Unusual category
- All IBM Plex fonts are now available in Google Fonts! view on Google Fonts
- Added Eczar font in the Serif category
Grotesque/Neo-grotesque/Sans-serif
Grotesque fonts, also known sometimes as gothic or grotesk are the earliest sans-serifs, created in late 19th century and early 20th century. They have clear, straightforward lines, limited variation of stroke width, and most of them feature a spurred uppercase G and two-storey lowercase g with ascending ear.
What makes grotesques a perfect match for an unusual design is not only their clear lines and great legibility, but also their rather raw and quirky appearance compared to other sans-serifs.
Bold and Black widths are perfect for headings and they are also ideal for an awesome CSS outline text effect (see code snippet on CodePen) using text-stroke and text-fill-color.
The neo-grotesques, also known as transitionals or realists, include many of the most commonly used sans-serifs. They are less quirky and much more refined than the grotesques, with almost no stroke width variation, and most often a single-storey lowercase g. The most famous neo-grotesque typeface is Helvetica.
Chivo
- 8 styles (4 weights + matching italics)
- Language support: Latin Extended
- this font is used in Glitch theme for body text
Franklin Gothic FS
- 4 styles (2 weights + matching italics)
- Language support: Latin Extended (see font page for language list)
Archivo
- 8 styles (4 weights + matching italics)
- Language support: Latin Extended, Vietnamese
- see also Archivo Narrow
Questa Sans
- Beautiful grotesque typeface
- 1 free weight (Regular) + 9 premium styles (4 weights + 5 italics)
- Language support: Latin Extended (see font page for language list)
IBM Plex Sans
- 16 styles (8 weights + matching italics)
- Language support: Support for 110 languages
- Update: All IBM Plex fonts are now available in Google Fonts! view on Google Fonts
Nimbus Sans L
- 4 styles (2 weights + matching italics)
- Language support: Latin Extended (see font page for language list)
Work Sans
- 9 weights
- Language support: Latin Extended
In the CodePen snippet above, Work Sans is used in weight 900.
UnB
- 10 styles (2 variants + 5 weights + matching italics)
- Language support: Latin Extended (see font page for language list)
Rubik
- 10 styles (5 weights + matching italics)
- Language support: Latin Extended, Hebrew, Cyrillic
Karla
- 4 styles (2 weights + matching italics)
- Language support: Latin Extended
Hanken Grotesk
- 10 styles (5 weights + matching italics)
- Language support: Latin Extended (see font page for language list)
- Previously known as HK Grotesk
Cooper Hewitt
- 14 styles (7 weights + matching italics)
- Language support: Latin Extended (see font page for language list)
Barlow
- 18 styles (9 weights + matching italics)
- Language support: Latin Extended
- see also Barlow Semi Condensed
- see also Barlow Condensed
Arimo
- 4 styles (2 weights + matching italics)
- Language support: Latin Extended, Hebrew, Cyrillic Extended, Greek Extended, Vietnamese
Overpass
- 16 styles (8 weights + matching italics)
- Language support: Latin Extended
Didact Gothic
- 4 styles (2 weights + matching italics)
- Language support: Latin Extended, Cyrillic Extended, Greek Extended
Alegreya Sans
- 14 styles (7 weights + matching italics)
- Language support: Latin Extended, Cyrillic Extended, Greek Extended, Vietnamese
Monospace/Duospace
Duospaced fonts (also known as duospace fonts) are fixed-width fonts, just like monospaced ones. The difference between monospaced and duospaced fonts is that in duospaced’s case some characters can occupy two widths of the fixed horizontal space instead of just one. This extra horizontal space allows better accommodation of wider glyphs (such as m or w).
For example, BrutalistThemes uses one monospace serif font (Knif Mono) and one duospace font (iA Writer) not used anymore — replaced with Colfax, which is a geometric sans-serif typeface
VCR OSD Mono
- 1 weight
- Language support: Latin Extended (see font page for diacritics list)
Space Mono
- 4 styles (2 weights + matching italics)
- Language support: Latin Extended, Vietnamese
IBM Plex Mono
- 16 styles (8 weights + matching italics)
- Language support: Support for 110 languages
- Update: All IBM Plex fonts are now available in Google Fonts! view on Google Fonts
iA Writer Duospace
- 4 styles (2 weights + matching italics)
- Language support: Latin Extended (see font page for language list)
Lekton
- 3 styles (2 weights + 1 italics)
- Language support: Latin Extended (see font page for language list)
Roboto Mono
- 10 styles (5 weights + matching italics)
- Language support: Latin Extended, Cyrillic Extended, Greek Extended, Vietnamese
Cousine
- 4 styles (2 weights + matching italics)
- Language support: Latin Extended, Cyrillic Extended, Greek Extended, Vietnamese, Hebrew
Nimbus Mono
- 3 styles (2 weights + 1 italics)
- Language support: Latin Extended, Cyrillic (see font page for language list)
Courier Prime
- 4 styles (2 weights + matching italics)
- Language support: Latin Extended (see font page for language list)
Unusual fonts
This section includes fonts that although are classified as sans-serif, monospace, or display, they are non-typical.
Asul
- Sans-serif
- 2 weights
- Language support: Latin Extended (tested succesfully with diacritics, but only Latin is specified on Google Fonts page)
- this font is used in Glitch theme for titles
Kalenderblatt Grotesk
- All-uppercase sans-serif
- 1 style
- Language support: Latin + German diacritics (umlauts and ß as ss)
Press Start 2P
- Display
- 1 style
- Language support: Latin Extended, Cyrillic Extended, Greek
Serif
Serifs are much less used and somewhat more difficult to integrate in a brutalist design. The best fit are OS defaults (if you want to create a website with the raw early 90s look for example), atypical/quirky serifs (like Knif Mono, a monospaced serif font used on this website) or with a more raw, unpolished or spiky look.
If you want to use system defaults and offer support Linux users, please consider that Georgia is not included by default and not all users install the extra package that includes Georgia. The problem is that the default serif fonts in Linux distributions such as Ubuntu are not metrically equivalent with Georgia, and your website will look different (for example a small text in Georgia can become too small and unlegible on Linux). A better alternative would be font-family: Georgia, "Bitstream Charter", Times, "Times New Roman", serif;, because Bitstream Charter is closer metrically to Georgia.
In general, if choosing serif in a brutalist website number of fonts used should be limited to only one.
Eczar
- 5 styles (5 weights)
- Language support: Latin, Latin Extended, Devanganari
IBM Plex Serif
- 16 styles (8 weights + matching italics)
- Language support: Support for 110 languages
- Update: All IBM Plex fonts are now available in Google Fonts! view on Google Fonts
Cormorant Garamond
- 10 styles (5 weights + matching italics)
- Language support: Latin Extended, Cyrillic Extended, Vietnamese
To be continued 🙂