We all know there are times when Times New Roman just won’t cut it and you want a font that’ll spice up your document just a little bit. Whether you’re creating a greeting card, a party invitation or a garage sale flyer, you have to admit that font variety is a necessity. Windows does provide a solid number of choices, but it doesn’t give you anything with letters made out of candy canes.

If you’re looking for fonts that will help you add some flair to your creations, I’ve listed some of my favorite font sites all of which offer FREE font downloads. Some are very, very cool and some are a little weird, but with thousands to choose from, I’m sure you’ll be able to find a few you like.

As always the comment section is open for you to share some of your favorites.

(Windows Users: to download and use the fonts you have to open and unzip the folder. Drag the font file into your ‘fonts’ folder (c:/ drive > WINDOWS > fonts) and you’re done! You can now use the font in any of the programs on your computer.

Mac Users: read these step-by-step instructions.)

DAFONT.com – this is my favorite free font site. At the time of this writing there are 8,200 fonts listed on their site. So far I haven’t found one that wasn’t free. They are easily categorized and have large examples so you can quickly browse through. The organization on this site is what I like best about it. If there’s a particular theme I’m going for, I can see what’s available right away.

They’ve got some pretty cool font management tools that they link to as well. Most of them cost some money, but there are a few that are free. Those seem to be a bit outdated, so use them at your own discretion. I haven’t tried any of them out yet.

1001FREEFONTS.com - I like the set-up of this site. It’s very similar to dafont.com in how it’s presented, and there are some fonts listed on both. However, there are enough unique fonts to make it worthwhile to check both out.

The cool thing about this site, which I thought was a pretty good idea, is that you can pay $19.95 (USD) and have all 10,000 fonts downloaded at one time. If you’re planning to download them all anyway, that may not be a bad thing to do. It will probably save you hours.

At the bottom of the homepage they list a number of font related articles and news. I know what you’re thinking. There’s news about fonts? Well aparently there is and 1001FreeFonts found them.

URBANFONTS.com – Don’t let the name fool you. This site isn’t only graffiti type fonts. There are over 8,000 different fonts here. They are broken down very carefully into similar types and themes and the choices are extensive. I have seen a few of the same fonts on this site as are on 1001 and dafont, but I guess that’s to be expected when you start dealing with that many styles.

The best part of this site is the selection of Dingbats they have available. For those who don’t know, dingbats are different shapes, symbols and pictures. Many of them are things we see routinely, like the symbol for recycling or a smiley face. You may not use them often, but when you do you’ll be amazed at how helpful they are.

There’s also an UrbanFonts Blog and Forum that you might find useful.

Another site that I think is pretty cool, but doesn’t offer free font downloads is the What The Font Forum. There you’ll find an open forum where you can enter images that contain a font you’re trying to identify. This can be very useful for a number of different reasons. It may take some time for your question to be answered, though, currently there are about 85,000 unsolved cases. Just in case, the site does have some other font-related content for you to check out while you wait.

New and exciting fonts are not only for graphic designers. Anyone who uses the computer for any type of word processing can enjoy the benefits of the look of a new font. They’re very easy to install and can give you so much creative flexibility. If you’re not currently using fonts that don’t come with Windows, I suggest to try it. If you already are, then I encourage you to use the sites I’ve listed. You won’t be disappointed.