Fonts by mood. 4 moods, 42 free fonts chosen by eye.
Pick the feeling first (friendly, cute & playful, retro, or angry), then compare real specimens in your own words. Every mood page says what each font is chosen for, prints the lab’s numbers beside it and checks the licence for the jobs that mood suits.
The 4 moods
Friendly fonts
10 fonts
Hello there, nice to see you!
Nunito · Rounded ends Nunito, Quicksand and Varela Round first; groups: rounded ends, open & humanist, and soft & hand-drawn
Cute & playful fonts
11 fonts
Bubbles, jelly beans & giggles
Fredoka · Round & plump Fredoka, Gluten and Sniglet first; groups: round & plump, bouncy, handwritten, and whimsical
Retro fonts
11 fonts
Fresh coffee · open late
Caprasimo · Soft & heavy Caprasimo, Shrikhand and Chicle first; groups: soft & heavy, art deco, wood type & western, and painted scripts
Angry fonts
10 fonts
Out of my way!
Permanent Marker · Rough brush & marker Permanent Marker, Protest Revolution and Knewave first; groups: rough brush & marker, stencil, impact & comic, and worn & spiked
Fonts by mood: questions
Is the mood of a font measured?
No. The catalogue has no axis for friendliness or anger, so a mood is our editorial reading of the letters. The pool each page starts from is a rule over tags, styles and measurements, the picks are chosen by eye, and the numbers on the cards (width, x-height, ink, contrast, weights) are the lab’s measurements.
Why are there only 4 moods?
A mood gets a page only where its answer differs from the job pages, and friendly, cute & playful, retro, and angry do. Elegant, romantic and spooky letters are already the core of the wedding invitation, signature and Halloween pages, and futuristic fonts wait until more candidates are checked.
Can I use the fonts by mood commercially?
All 42 are under the SIL Open Font License 1.1, Ubuntu Font Licence 1.0, and Apache License 2.0. Each of those says yes to a website, a logo, print, and products you sell, and yes to an app on a condition that the page spells out. Each mood page checks only the uses it is for.
Can a font be on a mood page and a job page?
Yes, a few: each font stands on one mood at most, and a mood page shares no more than 3 fonts with any one job page. Retro, for one, shares Righteous and Pacifico with the fonts for Cricut and Silhouette, where they were picked by a measured rule rather than by eye.