15 Best Free Font in 2024 for UI Designer in 2024

Fonts are essential in UI design, significantly influencing user interaction. Beyond mere availability, selecting the right fonts is crucial, as poor font choices can drive users away. Understanding the basics of fonts helps in choosing suitable options, fostering emotional connections, and enhancing user experiences.

Conversely, inappropriate fonts detract from brand image and user satisfaction. Despite challenges, mastering fonts is vital for differentiation and achieving successful design outcomes. Fonts play a pivotal role in UI design, capable of either enhancing or detracting from a design's effectiveness.

The right font choice communicates more to users than extensive text or branding, ensuring their engagement. Conversely, the wrong font choice repels users and disrupts their experience. Poor font selection is noticeable to all, affecting stakeholders and users alike.

Understanding human psychology is crucial in UX/UI design to anticipate user reactions and emotions. Hence, selecting the right fonts entails significant pressure.

In light of this, we've curated a list of the 15 best free fonts for UI designers to consider in 2024. Fonts are pivotal in UI design, capable of making or breaking a design. The right font choice can convey more to users than extensive text or branding, keeping them engaged.

What does a “good font” mean?

The general guideline for a good UI font is legibility, readability, and usability.

Legibility, which concerns the distinction between individual letters or characters within a typeface, is crucial. It's essential to prioritize legibility when selecting fonts for mobile apps, as it profoundly affects the overall user experience.

Readability focuses on how words and text blocks are arranged in a design, It involves spacing words and sentences to ensure easy interpretation and understanding. Even the most well-written text can become ineffective if character spacing is too high or too low.

Usability in font selection refers to the font's practicality and effectiveness in facilitating user interaction with digital interfaces. Prioritizing usability ensures that fonts enhance rather than hinder the overall user experience, leading to increased satisfaction and engagement.

What does a “base font size” mean?

Establishing your foundational font size, commonly known as the "base font size," is a crucial aspect of responsive design. This size serves as the standard font dimension across your website or application, applied to elements like paragraphs, labels, menus, and lists.

The standard choice for the base font size is 16px. This standard ensures optimal legibility for users reading text on screens, making it a solid starting point for designing user-friendly interfaces. Starting with this default size offers a solid foundation for creating modern, responsive designs.

Line height

Line height holds significant sway in UI design, dictating whether text is effortlessly readable or challenging to decipher. Excessive line spacing results in an overabundance of whitespace, potentially impeding readability. Conversely, inadequate spacing leads to cramped letters and diminished legibility.

X-height refers to the distance between the baseline and the mean line of lowercase letters within a typeface. For example, if a font boasts an x-height of 70%, it signifies that the baseline occupies 70% of the total font height.

In the realm of UI design, the preferred x-height typically ranges between 68% and 69%, ensuring an ideal balance of readability and legibility. Fonts with taller x-heights particularly shine in readability, especially at smaller sizes, thanks to the increased visibility of whitespace within each letter.

Meanwhile, line height, whether measured in points or as a percentage of the text size, dictates the spacing between lines of text. While a general guideline advises a line height of 130%-150% for optimal readability, the perfect spacing varies depending on the specific design.

What does a “Display” mean?

Display recognized for its capacity to seize attention and create a striking impact in designs, is frequently employed for titles, banners, and other standout elements within layouts. This ensures optimal readability and clarity for users engaging with the content.

As a general guideline, "text" styles are favored for most informational and body copy, covering paragraph text, labels, and UI elements, especially at smaller sizes within user interfaces.

1. Inter

Inter is a widely favored UI design font, proudly featured as a Google font and crafted by Rasmus Andersson. Originating as a side project during Andersson's tenure at Figma, Inter is renowned for its exceptional legibility and readability, boasting impeccably symmetrical letterforms.

Inter is not only great out of the box but also offers clever OpenType features under the hood. This allows users to tailor functionality and aesthetics to their specific needs, further enhancing its appeal and versatility.

Get Inter font here

2. Space Grostesk

Space Grotesk, a proportional sans-serif typeface, is a variant derived from Colophon Foundry's fixed-width Space Mono family (2016). Originally crafted by Florian Karsten in 2018.

Space Grotesk preserves the unique characteristics of the monospace font while enhancing readability for smaller text sizes. Space Grotesk is available for both personal and commercial use at no cost.

Get Space Grostesk font here

3. DM Sans

Crafted to excel in smaller text sizes, DM Sans is a geometric sans serif Google Font with low contrast. Developed by the Colophon Foundry, it originates from the Latin segment of ITF Poppins by Jonny Pinhorn.

DM Sans boasts support for special characters and a comprehensive Latin Extended glyph set, facilitating typesetting for English and other languages.

Get DM Sans font here

4. Satoshi

Satoshi, a sought-after modernist and geometric sans serif font, is the brainchild of Deni Anggara, a Jakarta-based typeface and graphic designer. Introduced to Fontshare in March 2021, Satoshi stands out for its bold contrast, making it a versatile option for various creative projects and UI designs.

Notably, Satoshi features a slightly reduced x-height of 66%, which affects its legibility at very small sizes. However, it still maintains sufficient legibility, rendering it a favorable choice for UI design.

Get Satoshi font here

5. Switzer

Switzer stands out as a distinctive neo-sans serif font, originally known as "Volkart" on the Indian Type Foundry website before making its debut on Fontshare's platform in 2021. This Latin script, neo-Grotesk font boasts an impressive array of 18 different styles, including nine matching italics.

While its application in single-word or single-line designs requires some finesse, its effectiveness hinges on the implementation of its lowercase characters. Featuring a towering x-height of 79%.

Get Switzer font here

6. Work Sans

Work Sans, a freely available typeface, is the creation of Australian type designer Wei Huang. Commissioned by Google Fonts, it was unveiled in 2015. Despite its slightly elevated x-height of 75%, Work Sans maintains excellent readability and scalability.

Similar to Inter, Work Sans incorporates subtle irregularities in its letterforms to infuse a touch of character without causing distraction.

Get Work Sans font here

7. Aileron

Designed by Sora Sagano of the Dot Colon type foundry, Aileron is a sleek neo-Grotesque sans serif typeface. Drawing inspiration from Helvetica, it features subtle modifications like rounded dots and periods, giving it a softer and more inviting aesthetic.

Available on Adobe Fonts and for direct download from the Dot Colon website, Aileron offers eight weights ranging from ultra-light to black, each accompanied by matching italics. Its versatility makes it an invaluable asset for UI design and website development.

Get Aileron font here

8. Public Sans

Originally based on the widely used open-source font Libre Franklin, Public Sans is a robust, neutral, and freely available sans-serif typeface tailored for UI and web design. Developed by the United States Web Design System, it received an update in May 2022 to include a variable font option.

Public Sans maintains the clarity and versatility of its predecessor but distinguishes itself with a more contemporary and neutral aesthetic, characterized by standardized stroke weights and angular vertices instead of rounded ones.

Get Public Sans font here

9. Mona Sans

Inspired by industrial-era grotesques, the Mona Sans Font family is a bold geometric sans-serif typeface crafted in collaboration with Github and Degarism. Versatile and dynamic, Mona Sans excels in various applications, including product design, web development, and print media.

Designed to complement its counterpart, Hubot Sans, Mona Sans offers a cohesive typographic experience. Notably, Mona Sans is a variable font, offering multiple variations within a single file. Supported by all major browsers, variable fonts provide performance advantages and precise design control over attributes like weight, width, and slant.

Get Mona Sans font here

10. Supreme

Designed by Jeremie Hornus and Ilya Naumoff, Supreme is a renowned typeface available on Fontshare, instantly recognizable for its distinctive style. This expansive sans-serif font family offers a constructed aesthetic, making it a versatile choice for various design projects.

Supreme serves as an excellent alternative to other fonts, introducing variety while maintaining visual engagement without being overwhelming. Originally associated with engineering and tech branding,

Supreme has swiftly gained popularity, owing to its unique features like the double-story "a" and single-story "g." Despite its slightly thinner appearance and a 67% x-height, Supreme maintains excellent readability across different scales.

Get Supreme font here

11. Geist

The Geist Font is a flexible sans-serif typeface family, offering a range of 10 weights from hairline to black. Inspired by the timeless principles of classic Swiss typography, it embodies a modern, geometric style ideal for headlines, logos, posters, and other prominent display applications.

Geist embodies the coding and design ethos of Vercel and Basement Studio, symbolizing innovation and precision. Tailored for developers and designers, Geist prioritizes precision, clarity, and functionality. By enhancing the visual communication experience, it empowers users to effectively convey their ideas with clarity and impact.

Get Geist font here

12. Lexend

Dr. Shaver-Troup, an educational therapist, is the creator of the Lexend font family. What sets this font apart is its deliberate focus on enhancing readability and improving the user experience for individuals with dyslexia and similar visual impairments.

Drawing upon her prior experience with early Lexend font designs, Dr. Shaver-Troup developed seven custom fonts (Deca, Exa, Giga, Mega, Peta, Tera, and Zetta), each tailored to enhance reading proficiency significantly. Lexend has become widely adopted in UI design for its effortless readability and strong emphasis on accessibility.

However, certain wider tracking variations, such as Peta and Zetta, might pose challenges on smaller screens due to their bulkiness.

Get Lexend font here

13. Open Sans

Designed by Steve Matteson and introduced in 2011, Open Sans is a humanist sans-serif typeface available as open-source. Its five weights, complemented by matching italics, contribute to its remarkable versatility, suitable for diverse applications.

Widely embraced across the web, Open Sans finds utility among prominent entities like Google and WordPress. Some even dub it the quintessential "flat design" font. Open Sans has earned comparisons to Arial, marking its significance in modern

Get Open Sans font here

14. Source Sans Pro

Source Sans Pro is a versatile sans-serif typeface designed by Paul D. Hunt and released by Adobe Fonts in 2012. It is part of the larger Source superfamily, which includes serif and monospaced variants as well.

Source Sans Pro is known for its clean and modern design, making it suitable for a wide range of design applications, from print to digital. It offers a variety of weights and styles, providing flexibility and readability in different contexts.

Get Source Pro font here

15. Helvetica Neue

Helvetica Neue is a revised and expanded version of the iconic Helvetica typeface. Originally designed by Max Miedinger and Eduard Hoffmann in 1957, Helvetica became one of the most widely used and recognizable typefaces in the world. Helvetica Neue was developed as an update to the original Helvetica design to address some of its limitations and adapt it for modern digital environments.

Get Helvetica Neue here

Conclusion

In the dynamic realm of UI design, selecting the appropriate font holds significant importance for crafting interfaces that captivate users and enhance usability. The fonts highlighted above encompass a blend of qualities, including readability, visual appeal, and adaptability, rendering them optimal selections for UI designers in 2024.

Whether you're working on a website, mobile application, or software interface, these freely available fonts serve as invaluable resources, empowering you to enhance your design endeavors and deliver exceptional user experiences.