Top 10 Free Hipster Fonts

The late 80s and early 90s heralded a creative explosion in typeface design. The Macintosh had become firmly entrenched as the graphic designer's tool of trade and Fontographer, a type design package originally released by Altsys in 1985, was revolutionary in opening up vector based design to the masses. It was the beginning of the end, if you would have asked any type purist. It was true: ugly, incomplete fonts designed by enthusiasts who didn't care for the finely honed discipline of letter kerning, nor paid heed to the conventions of consistent letter metrics, were in abundant supply. It was an awesome time!

Now over a decade later, in the midst of an ascendancy of the kitsch and whimsical, these home-spun typefaces are just what you need to complete that soon-to-be-best-selling Threadless tee or highly collectable indie gig poster. Best of all, there are thousands of such fonts that can be downloaded free. Of course not all hipster fonts are created equally, so I've scoured the web to present you with my top 10:

Download:

• Salter [20KB Truetype]
• Oceanview [12KB Truetype]
• Woodplank [39KB Truetype]
• Headhunter [19KB Truetype]
• Pinewood [108KB Truetype]
• Nixon in China [14KB Truetype]
• Snowcaps [35KB Truetype]
• Action Jackson [22KB Truetype]
• Lee Caps [33KB Truetype]
• Rope [64KB Truetype]

Note: many of these typefaces don't contain complete character sets. Some consist of capitals only whereas others may have both cases but are missing punctuation. But hey, let's empathise, drawing letterforms out of jolly looking bones is going to become tired at some point.