Font choice can absolutely impact the mood conveyed in a design.
Which reminds me... I teach my college students about this in my web development course. Here's one of my favorite slides:
Seriously though, font choice matters. This article will go over both safe-to-use for commercial purpose fonts, as well as how to install them (because Windows keeps making it more and more difficult).
Where To Find Fonts
Here's a list of 5 websites I often use on my quest for the right font:
- 1001fonts
- Fontspace
- Fontspring
- DaFont
- Google Fonts
(every Google Fonts font is released under open source licenses)
They're all for the most part easy to use, and have a great way of helping you find what you need.
Adobe also has a huge font selection (Adobe Fonts) that I worked with quite a bit during my 9-to-5 as a web developer.
When creating branding or logos, you'll want to pay specific attention to selecting a font for your logo that you can use throughout not just your logo, but any additional branding that will follow.
You can search for font styles by including tags such as "funny" or "handwritten".
And my favorite part is how you can enter your own text and they will change the preview of each font to display those text characters provided.
Here are some results when I searched for "funny fonts" using my favorite display text "HUG DEALER":
(The above picture is taken from 1001fonts)
*** Once you find a font you love, the last step is to ensure it's available for commercial use ***
Every website has a different method of converying this, but they all will in some way.
The picture below is 1001font's method... just hover over the "$" symbol - typically if the symbol is GREEN, it's free for commercial use!
Alternatively, if you see a RED label, it's most likely for personal use only (you typically won't find fonts listed that aren't at least made available for personal use).
The truth is, many people don't pay any mind to whether or not a font is available for commercial vs personal use, and I've never heard of font creator policing the use of their fonts.
That said, the safe + legal long-term play is always to abide by the rules, so I would advice AGAINST using fonts explicitly for personal use on your for-sale dropshipped print-on-demand items.
Installing Fonts on Windows
One of my favorite things about using Microsoft Windows is the ability to click into the bottom-left corner to summon Cortana, typing in what I'm looking for, and immediately finding it.
In the past, any time you needed to install a font you could just click Cortana, type "Fonts", and click to go directly to the folder.
Today, this is how I install a font on my Windows PC:
- Click into Cortana (bottom left corner of the Windows UI), type "Control Panel", & Click the result
- Find the "Fonts" folder & click to open it
- Drag & drop the font files into the Windows Fonts folder to install them
- You can now search and find your newly installed font! (Photoshop example below)
That's it - now go find the perfect font for your designs, & get uploading!
