Guides and licence explainers
Free-commercial font guides: risk-avoidance handbook, never-use watchlist, SIL OFL explained and web-embedding compliance by 365Lab.
Free Commercial Fonts: From 'Free Download' to 'Safe for Business'
Font-infringement claims haunt nearly every designer, editor and e-commerce operator. This guide distinguishes the four licence grades - free download, personal use, free commercial, open source - and hands you a five-step self-check plus an evidence routine that drives font risk close to zero.
Never Use These Fonts Commercially Without a Licence: A High-Risk Watchlist
Which fonts dominate infringement claims? Which look free but hide paid clauses? This watchlist collects the fonts and scenarios most likely to end in a dispute, each paired with a compliant replacement from our library.
SIL OFL 1.1, Clause by Clause: Boundaries and Duties of the Open Font Licence
SIL OFL is the de facto standard for open fonts - Source Han, LXGW WenKai, Smiley Sans and Inter all ship under it. We unpack it as four permissions, two prohibitions and three duties, then explain reserved names, embedding and derivatives in practice.
Embedding Fonts on the Web: @font-face, CDNs and Subsetting
Putting free commercial fonts on a website means juggling licence scope - not every free-commercial grant allows web embedding - and performance, since CJK fonts run to tens of megabytes. This covers licensing checks, Google Fonts embedding, subsetting, fallback stacks and performance.
Picking Open Latin Fonts: OFL Choices for Body, UI, Display and Code
Bilingual Latin-CJK layouts are the default in modern design, yet the Latin half is often picked in one throwaway sentence. This guide walks four scenarios - body, UI, display and monospace code - with OFL picks that also play well beside CJK faces.
The Open Chinese Type Map: Hei, Song, Calligraphy, Rounded and Pixel
CJK libraries are heavy and enormous; choosing one is picking a foundation. This guide divides the Chinese faces in our index into hei, song/fangsong, calligraphy, and rounded/pixel, mapping each family's niche and how they complement one another.
Building a Brand Type System with Free-to-Use Fonts
Real brand typography is not picking one nice font but composing a durable, coherent type system. This guide offers a two-step method - structure first, character second - and five ready-to-run CJK/ Latin pairings using newly added free font families (Glow Sans × Inter, Source Han Serif × Cormorant Garamond, JasonHandwriting × Dancing Script, Swei Rainbow Leg × Bebas Neue, LXGW Neo XiHei × Lexend), then closes with licence evidence and a hand-off checklist.
The Complete Latin-CJK Pairing Guide: Size, Baseline and Temperament
How do Chinese and Latin keep size, baseline, leading and temperament in step on one page? A four-step recipe: set proportions, align baselines, manage punctuation, match temperaments - plus a copy-paste pairing list.
8 FAQs on Free-to-Use Fonts: Licences, Trademarks, Web and Traps
Free to download is not free to use commercially, and open-source does not automatically mean trademark-safe. Eight questions answered at once: licence differences, logo/mark pitfalls, web and app embedding, and how to protect yourself if ever claimed.
Font File Formats: When to Pick TTF, OTF, WOFF, TTC and Variable
One font download often arrives as TTF, OTF, WOFF, TTC, COLR and more. Which one do you install, which do you serve on the web, and how do huge CJK packages split into pieces? This guide explains where today's format landscape came from and gives clear selection rules.
Free Japanese Fonts: Picks for Japanese-style Brands and Menus
Japanese-language materials need the skeleton of kanji and the flavour of kana, and choosing type can be tricky. This collection walks through the site's commercially-safe Japanese-font family in three groups - rounded gothic, gothic and mincho - with picks for menus, signage, brand headlines and body copy.
Font Licence Compliance Checklist: Tick Before You Ship
Turn font licensing from superstition into a checklist. This article offers a printable 14-item review table you can pin to your team playbook - file provenance, licence source text, scenario mapping, evidence archiving - each with the risk behind it, plus a notify-remove-replace emergency path.