16 High Quality Retro And Vintage Fonts

Yesterday I wrote about retro designs on the web. A major factor in achieving that retro look is choosing the right typeface.

Today, as it’s Typography Friday here on Sitepoint, I want to follow it up with a pile of free fonts from some of the best retro font makers out there. There are a number of excellent font foundries providing retro fonts and often they’ll provide free typefaces to let you get a chance to see how good the quality is. I’ve picked out a few that you might find useful for your design work.

 

I was lucky enough to attend a talk by Rich from House Industries a couple of weeks ago and their work is amazing. The amount of care and research they put into their typefaces is incredible. To get their free fonts you must sign up for their catalog, which is also free.

Fontoville have some really nice work. Their fonts are distributed through Font Bros and that’s where you can get your mitts on some cool free typefaces like the one’s below. Font Bros h

Another particular favourite is Font Diner. Font Diner was launched in 1996 by typographer Stuart Sandler. He has created more than 400 typefaces and is heavily inspired by 1950’s culture. You can download over 30 of their fonts for free here, including the samples you can see below.

 

Girls who wear glasses have quite a few free fonts available for download and they also sell retro clipart. The site seems to be a little bit out of date but the fonts are good.

And finally, the Hitchcock font based on the iconic work of Saul Bass.

While it’s great to get fonts like this for free, it’s also nice to buy some fonts occasionally so these hard working typographers can pay the mortgage.

Do you like these fonts? Have you come across other font foundries producing cool retro work?