I’ve titled this blog post “best Google fonts in 2021,” which is shameless clickbait. What is “best”? Who made me the authority? Nobody, lol. What I really mean is my current favorites, which I’ve put into a specimen PDF that might be useful to you. It shows how each typeface looks in headlines and body copy, so you can get a feel for the style and readability.
When I’m picking typefaces for a client’s brand, I usually choose fonts that aren’t free. Premium, professional fonts are often better designed, with a bigger set of weights and styles. But sometimes ease of access and smaller project budgets mean choosing from Google’s free font library. It contains thousands of options, many of which are not useful.
To save you some hunting, I’ve made a PDF showing my favorites in use. If you use Adobe Illustrator, you can open the PDF in that program and change the fonts to test others.
The placeholder text is Star Trek Ipsum from a generator created by Vlad Saling. The magnificent quotes are sourced from actual TV show transcripts.
At the time of this writing, all fonts shown are free for commercial use, though the availability of Google Fonts may change.
Download the Google Fonts specimens PDF
My favorites shown on the pages:
Body typefaces
- Inter
- IBM Plex Sans
- Barlow
- Epilogue
- Poppins
- Sarabun
- Space Grotesk
- Source Serif Pro
- Lora
- IBM Plex Serif
- Alegreya
- Mirza (also good for display uses)
Not shown but worth investigating: Merriweather, Montserrat, Lato, and Roboto. I didn’t add them since they’ve become a bit overused, but they’re popular for a reason.
Display typefaces (best for headlines only)
- Shrikhand
- Syne
- Coiny
- Mogra
- Chango
- Titan One
- Bellota
- Ceviche
- Modak
If you found this post useful, you might enjoy my once-a-month (ish) newsletter where I send out freebies like this, plus stories, tips, and musings about design, culture, and life running an independent design business. Many non-designers have told me they enjoy it, too, so possibly it’s not a total snoozefest if you don’t know what a serif is.