The internet offers a wealth of amazing fonts that won't cost you a penny if you know where to look. They come in all manner of designs, ranging from the retro to the handwritten to name but a few. In this article, we're focusing on brush fonts, which can add a playful, human approach to your designs. Plus, they look great printed.
Here we've scoured the web to find the best examples of free brush fonts to put to good use in your projects. Enjoy!
01. Mustache
Mustache is a versatile brush font that works with opentype features
Brush fonts are a great way to give your lettering that handmade touch, and that's exactly what you get with Mustache. Designed by Joel Maker, Mustache includes a full set of uppercase and lowercase letters, plus a large range of punctuation and numerals.
What's more, Mustache comes with plenty of scope when it comes to personalisation. With the help of stylistic alternatives and opentype features, Mustache can be tweaked to look truly individual. Simply download it for free, activate Stylistic Alternatives and adjust to your heart's content.
02. Gallow Tree
Leave a spooky message with this horror font
Creator Simon Stratford wanted to capture a sense of horror mixed with grunge in his spooky display typeface, Gallow Tree. And having scratched it out with a Faber Castell brush pen before scanning it and converting it with Glyphs App, we'd say he's succeeded.
The full set includes 370 glyphs, including uppercase letters, numbers and punctuation marks, is yours to download for personal use for free in an .otf and .ttf format. Commercial use will cost you a mere £5.
03. Besom
Take a break with Besom
The beautiful Besom font was designed by Gatis Vilaks. Originally designed as part of an art project, this relaxing and fun font would be perfectly suited to travel media thanks to its scratchy and textured finish.
04. Fjord
Give your type a cool edge with Fjord
Unsurprisingly, the stunning Fjord typeface takes its inspiration from Norway's natural landscape. Created by painter Krisjanis Mezulis, the font was originally drawn with a thick brush on plastic to achieve its unique distorted look. Both beautiful and chilling at the same time, this font has a lot of flexibility.
05. Brux
Brux comes in a variety of languages
Bold, full of life, and hard to miss, meet Brux, a coarse, all caps font designed by Marcelo Reis Melo. Even though this font has some stylishly distressed brush work going on, it still remains easy to read. Available with Swedish, German and Spanish characters, this font is sure to find a wide audience.
06. Odachi
We love this beautiful Japanese-inspired brush font design
We love this beautiful Japanese-inspired design Odachi, by UI and type designer Mehmet Reha Tugcu. One of many stunning typefaces created by Tugcu, this has got to be our favourite of his brush fonts designs, not least because he's made it available for others to use in any project, even commercial endeavours.
07. Salted Mocha
Salted Mocha brush font has a fun, playful feeling
If the name isn't enough to whet your appetite, the design of this gorgeous Salted Mocha free brush font will. Created by Stephanie Arsenault on the iPad Procreate app, Salted Mocha features authentic brush stroke textures. With loopy strokes and a bouncing baseline, Salted Mocha has a fun, playful feeling, making it perfect for branding, invitations, quotes, and prints
08. Takhie
This font is multilingual, and supports Latin and Greek characters
Designer and illustrator Nantia is the woman behind this simple yet elegant free brush font Takhie. One of many beautiful fonts, Nantia's Behance page is full of free resources for designers and artists. Want more? You can purchase the pro version of Takhie over on Nantia's website for a very affordable $15.
09. Leafy
Leafy includes 95 individual characters
Leafy is a free handwritten brush font put together by Krisijanis Mezulis. It includes 95 characters, each of which is individual and unique. This all-caps font has a naive, neat feel that promises to 'make you feel warm inside'.
10. Brusher
Brusher sports some lovely smooth curves and edges
Brush fonts don't need to be sketchy and rough – this one sports some lovely smooth curves and edges, and a calligraphic aesthetic. Brusher is an elegant, flowing font that's a little more controlled than many other brush fonts. Download it for free on Behance.
11. Macbeth
Macbeth SVG format provides scope for plenty of authentic brush details in the hand-drawn characters
Macbeth is an SVG font that's gained plenty of attention and appreciation on Behance – and it's free for both personal and commercial use. The SVG format provides scope for plenty of authentic brush details in the hand-drawn characters. This brash and energetic font would be ideal for use on displays, clothing or music artwork.
12. Atmosphere
Atmosphere's slightly dry brush texture really brings it to life
There are plenty of reasons to love Yasir Ekinci's brush font, Atmosphere, not least that it's free for both personal and commercial use. The font features both uppercase and lowercase characters, as well as numbers and all the punctuation and symbols you'll need, all of them hand-drawn with an authentic and wonderfully scratchy brush texture. Atmosphere's slightly dry brush texture really brings it to life, and as an added bonus, Ekinci has thrown in a set of 20 watercolour splotches to help liven up your work.
13. Rustico
Make a statement with Rustico
Made by Hustle Supply Co, Rustico is a bold brush font that's designed to help you make an eye-catching statement, whatever you're creating. Free for both personal and commercial use, its all-caps letterforms are drawn at a slight italic slant, and the rough and realistic brush texture gives Rustico a lively and energetic feel.
14. Peomy
Peomy includes a bumper selection of logos and mini illustrations
Handwritten brush font Peomy includes an upper and lowercase set of characters and multi-language support, plus a bumper selection of logos and mini illustrations – including floral elements – you can use you supplement your designs.
15. Westfalia
Westfalia is great for any outdoor and exploration-themed design work
A hand-painted, free brush font, Westfalia was created by the team at Rambler Creative. Providing an authentic hand-drawn feel with its messy edges and varied line thickness, Westfalia is great for any outdoor and exploration-themed design work.
Next: 10 more great free brush fonts
