Helvetica, Only Not – One of This Week’s Free Fonts 

When your design project is text-heavy, it’s tempting to go with tried and true Helvetica. But really, we’ve seen it so often it might be nice to mix things up a bit.

Try Aileron by Sora Sagano, a Japanese artist who’s been doing open source type design since 2007.  Aileron features 16 weights and styles with a clean, simple design similar to Helvetica, but with some unexpected stylistic twists. It’s great for typesetting text-heavy designs, with plenty of weight and style choices to make it easy to create a polished, uncomplicated layout. Download for free from TipoType.

Another alternative to heavy body copy, as well as other uses, is Geomanist Regular from Atipo. The clean, linear design was created for contemporary contexts. It’s great for both body copy and larger type because it’s readable at small sizes, and its clean lines and geometric shapes also make for engaging headlines. Download Regular & Italic for free, or pay what you like for the entire family at Atipo.

Enjoy this week’s picks, and check out our previous Free Font Fridays. And as always, shows those artists some love!