Fonts that are Free to Use Commercially for POD Products

Introduction to Zip and Description of over 100 Fonts that are “Free to Use Commercially”

Print on Demand (POD) products like t-shirt and mugs usually have sayings or quotes on them. This requires that you use a font. While all of our PCs come with standard fonts, these often do not deliver the punch or enhance the statement we are trying to make with the product. As a result we end up collecting and buying fonts. There are literally thousands of fonts available on the Internet and most of them are free to download. The issue comes when you use a “Free for Personal Use” font on a product that you plan to sell (i.e. use it commercially). The creators of these fonts ask for and deserve to be paid if you use their font. These are Free to Use Fonts, but they are NOT Free to Use Commercially fonts.

This problem becomes more difficult when you purchase designs from a professional designer. Many of these designers have a large number of fonts that they have purchased over the years. They have the right to use them and sell them. I’m not at all sure if we have the right to use them on our products and sell them since we didn’t pay for them.

The solution is to either buy the fonts or use fonts that are described as “Free to use commercially” or “100% Free” or “Public Domain” or “Open Source”. You can also use fonts that are described as “Donationware” by paying a small amount to the designer.

INSTALLING Free to Use Commercially FONTS or Purchased Fonts ON A PC

There are usually just five easy steps involved to install a new font on your PC.

Download the zip file to a folder where you store all of your free fonts. In this case all of the font install zips will be in one folder where you uncompressed the zip file you downloaded from here. (Note: You don’t really need unzip the file, you can extract the files as you need them.)
Navigate to that folder and find the new zip file. Double click on it.
You will see a list of files that are in the zip file. If there is a read me or a license file, click on that and read it. Make sure I didn’t make a mistake here. (You might have to double click on a folder inside of the zip. You want to get to the xxx.ttf or xxx.otf files)
Read Me and TTF File Example

#1 – A “read me” file – you should double click on this and read it to make sure the license is okay.
#2 – Double Click this OTF file to see the pop-up “Install Font” window.
Double click on the xxx.otf file if you have a choice, otherwise double click on the xxx.ttf file. (OTF is the newer and more powerful format. I did find one font where the ttf was the better version.)
A window will pop up showing the letters in the fonts in different sizes. There are lots of screenshots of these windows below. (They just don’t include the INSTALL.) At the top left there is a button called “Install” – Click that.

Example of Pop-up “Install Font” Window For a font

The Red Arrow is pointing to the INSTALL Button.

NOTE: The PDF file mentioned below has a screenshot of this window for each of the fonts.

UNINSTALLING FONTS

One thing you may want to consider is removing any fonts that you downloaded that aren’t Free to Use Commercially. Here is a link to an article that shows you how. https://designbundles.net/design-school/how-to-uninstall-fonts-windows-mac

If you asked “How do I know?”, I only have a brute force method. Google for xxx font and you will often see several sites that offer the fonts. Sites like DAFONTS.COM show you above each font (upper right) the license the font operates under. When you see Free for Personal Use and you haven’t paid for font, it is worth getting it off your PC. The other method is to find the zip install file (if you still have it) and look to see if there is a READ.ME or License text file inside the zip file.

There are two reasons to remove the fonts.

It prevents you from accidentally using the font on a new design.
When you open a PSD file with Image Editors like Photoshop or Photoshop Elements, a window will pop up and tell you about any fonts that are in the image and that aren’t available on your PC. (I substitute a comparable Free Font when I see this happen.)

COLLECTION OF FONTS THAT ARE FREE TO USE COMMERCIALLY

Here is a collection of free to use fonts. I have generated a PDF that shows what each font looks like, where I obtained it, its license (Donationation ware or Free to use commercially). All of these fonts are contained in a ZIP file that you can download and unzip on your PC. You can then use the PDF to browse through options when you are designing a product or modifying it.

Several of the Fonts I use here came in one zip with 64 Free fonts. Since the author asks for you email I have not included those zips in my collections of fonts. You need to get them from the author. Here is the link: https://www.revolge.com/product/free-font-pack-64-free-fonts-by-vic-fieger/

What I have included in my zip file of fonts (that the author does NOT) is a PDF that shows you what each of the 64 fonts looks like).

PDF RESOURCE FILE SHOWING DETAILS OF THE FREE TO USE FONTS

Here is the link to the PDF file that shows all of the Free to Use fonts. http://HalePringle.com/pod-fonts-pdf

In addition to the list of fonts shown below in screenshots, a screen shot of the Installation file is included for each font. This lets you see the font in much more detail than the simple line I used in the list. The screenshots look just like the one shown above where I went through how to install fonts (except they do not show the buttons at the very top of the pop-up window.)

ZIP FILE CONTAINING ALL OF THE FONT INSTALL FILES

Here is the link to my zip file. The listing below and the PDF has 68 Fonts. The Zip file contains over 50 fonts files. Some contain more than one font in the list below. The others ask for your email in order to download them. The links to all the zip downloads are listed below. Here is the link a zip containing the zip install files: http://HalePringle.com/pod-fonts

SCREENSHOTS OF THE FONTS

First, here are some fonts that come with Windows 10. There are more, lots more

Now here are the fonts included in the zip file.

NOTE: These fonts are not sorted in any particular order.

This first file is not a font. It is a collection of PNG files, one for each letter (Caps only) and the number 0-9. You can create words on your design and do all kinds of crazy things with them.