Disclosure: Webby’s World is getting paid to write this review. We will try not to let this alter our opinion. I have to apologise for writing two paid reviews so close together, but I’d write about this site regardless!

Urban Fonts is a website which hosts 8000 Free Fonts and dingbats, all of high quality. I have indeed written about the service before, on 9rules’ notes, and I have installed a number of their fonts on my computer.

The site has a very Web 2.0 design and uses lots of light colours. This makes the site aesthetically pleasing which is good considering you would expect designers to use the site!

UrbanFonts has three types of fonts: free fonts, free dingbats and commercial fonts (provided by fonts.com).

The free fonts are of extremely high quality and spread amongst many categories, such as 3D, pixel/bitmap and retro. A category I’m not keen on is USA; I think it’s bad how they have a category devoted to a country but no category for fonts for other countries like the UK.

A useful feature is that you can preview a free font by typing in text of your choice, in the colour of your choice. The previews of the fonts are then dynamically updated.

The fonts themselves are available for both Windows and Mac (but not Linux, by the look of it).

Urban Fonts seems not to reward free font authors very much. They submit their fonts through a tiny link in the footer of the site, and all they get is their name on a massive list! But still, I expect many do it in order to assist fellow designers who’d do the same for them if they had the opportunity. The site also has a forum.

Tags: web 2.0, web2.0, web 2, web 2.0, free fonts, fonts, typography