Clean Modern Fonts

filed under game design and layout on 11 Jun 2021
tagged fonts and layout

You generally cannot go wrong pairing a blocky, spare header font with a clean, standard serif font. The biggest drawback is that you cannot rely on your font choices to “sell” your work as part of a specific genre or as targeted towards a stylized market like OSR.

All the fonts on this page should be free and openly licensed.

Headers: Jost, Libre Franklin, Bebas Neue, Staatliches, Thicccboi (yes, seriously)

Body: Inria Serif, BaskervilleF, any of the body fonts in the last post

1 Montserrat & Lora. Urban Modern Fantasy uses Montserrat for headers and examples, and Lora for the body text. It’s a clean, simple pairing of fonts that have plentiful weights and faces that gets the point across that this work is about the text, in a modern setting, while remaining approachable and friendly.

2 Ysabeau & JuniusX. JuniusX is very classic, and though it lacks italics, you can sub in one of the earlier versions of it when calling for italics, or just use one of the earlier versions of itself.

3 Built Titling & Erewhon. Built Titling (and Steelfish) are great fonts from typodermic fonts; read their license, it’s clear and easy to follow. Erewhon is a “Bembo-like” font, from Michael Sharpe, who also makes plenty of other excellent classic-style fonts.