55 once-in-a-career typefaces

There are no bad dogs, just bad owners; likewise there are no bad fonts, just bad designers.

Well, that’s not entirely true, fonts are regularly distributed with all kinds of flaws — inadequate hinting, poor consistency, a lack of optical adjustment, are all common mistakes — but those fonts fall by the wayside pretty quickly. The ones that survive the Darwinesque world of typography are usually technically very sound.

But even the highest quality fonts are open to misuse and the best font in the world can perform poorly in the wrong context.

So how do we avoid being bad designers? How do we avoid misusing fonts? The simple answer is that we choose a typeface that is appropriate for the task at hand. Yes, that means not using Comic Sans for your résumé; but just as importantly, it means not using Helvetica for everything.

Once in a while you’ll come across a brief that asks for something with real character. It may only happen once or twice in your career, but when it does, leave your go-to fonts on the shelf and seize the opportunity to set your type in something truly unique.

Here we’ve collected 55 fonts that offer a selective typographer the potential to produce truly original designs. They won’t work for every project. They definitely won’t work for body text. Heck, some are even downright ugly. But if you can match the right one to the right design job, well, then you’ll end up with something really quite special.

Paranoid (free)

Coco (free)

Sequi (free)

Colo ($29)

Neo Deco ($20)

Lullaby ($20)

Accent (free for personal use)

Deibi (free)

Sketchetik ($39)

VAL (free)

Port ($15)

Adamas (free)

Days (free)

Cube (free)

Qalto ($53 approx.)

Drop (free)

Tartan Cabaret (free)

Roke1984 ($13 approx.)

Hannah (from $19.99)

Metropolis 1920 (free)

New Modern ($32 approx.)

Razor ($5)

Lovelo (free)

Qub ($94 approx.)

Valistika ($94 approx.)

Acorn ($16 approx.)

Bobber (free)

Che’s Bone (free)

Shelton Slab ($19)

Low Poly Font (free)

Tomahawk (free for personal use)

Baurete (free)

Paris (from $60)

Ogaki (from $67 approx.)

Lukano ($32 approx.)

Tetra (donation)

Nougatine (free)

Cubic (from $35)

Henry (free)

Stitching (free)

Movant Barks (free for personal use)

Kaori (free)

Rolka (from $29)

Nomed Font (free)

Geogram (free)

Hyped (free)

Wide Display (from $20)

Blox (free)

Multicolore (free)

Color Lines (free)

Origram (free)

Five Minutes (free)

Intro (from $47)

Val Stencil (free)

Yuma ($10)

Have you used any of these typefaces in a project? Have you used anything equally left-field? Let us know in the comments.

Ben Moss

Ben Moss has designed and coded work for award-winning startups, and global names including IBM, UBS, and the FBI. When he’s not in front of a screen he’s probably out trail-running.