You’ve already outlined the structure of your app on paper, picked the best mobile app prototyping tool and created first mockups. Now you realise that you need to find a perfect font.
There are not too many free fonts that are good to be used for mobile app design. Actually you don’t need much to choose from, I did not want to make another 20+ font list you should use. Instead I tried to include only the best free app fonts that I’ve tried before and got some suggestions from other designers.
For the app I have designed in London called Wöbu I have decided to go with Open Sans as it has many weight options, is very clean and crisp and works well with flat color palettes.
Why typography is important?
Typography is a “make or break” for the design, it brings design to life. It is your brand’s voice and sends a strong message to your user. It is very important to think about the following things when choosing a typeface for your app.
In typography, a typeface (also known as font family) is a set of one or more fonts each composed of glyphs that share common design features.
Legibility
Legibility is extremely important in mobile design because of the small screens that app’s content will be shown on. That is why it is better to use sans serif fonts instead of serif ones.
Weights
This is very handy when it comes to creating contrast and visual hierarchy for your app. Light, Normal, Italic, Semibold, Bold and Extra Bold are the options you should look for in fonts for apps.
Special characters
If your app will have users or foreign language content you must choose a typeface that has special characters designed.
Licence
Make sure you always double-check the license of the font you intend to use. Some fonts are available for free but to use them commercially you need to pay for the commercial licence.
So there you have it. A quality-based list of the best free mobile fonts to use for your design projects.
Bariol
Open Sans
Exo 2.0
Lato
ADAM
Montserrat
Bebas Neue
Ubuntu
Bosun
Source Sans Pro
Want to Learn More About Mobile Fonts?
If you found this article anyhow useful you might be interested in the Mobile Design Book I wrote together with Paula Borowska.
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