I though that too, but a lot of fonts on those two sites are pay-fonts with another name. Like these fonts:

Chopin Script is Polonaise
English is English Script Regular
Renaissance is Poppl Residenz
Old Script is Flemish Script
Adorable is Isadora
Exmouth is Palace Script
Brock Script is a combination between Amazone and another font.

You see my point? All of these fonts say they are free, but they actually aren't.

Can you describe what you mean by "royalty-free" - I'm not aware of any mainstream fonts that require royalties for general use (print, publishing, graphics). In general royalties may be due when redistributing the font or building it into a product. If that's what you have in mind you there are a whole other set of reasons for avoiding much of what the "free font" sites offer.

You mean the EULA allows for commercial use. :^)

Here are some other "free fonts" I found on Abstracfonts.com:

Olde European ES is Lucia
La Jolla ES is Flemish Script
Grand Prix ES is Flemish Script
Beautiful ES is Bickham Script
Wedding Bliss ES is Aristocrat
Sorrento Script ES is Florentine Script
ALS Script is English 111
G-Unit is Snell Roundhand and
Comm Script TT is Commercial Script

Nearly every fonts is re-used.

Quilline looks very familiar. Can anyone else tell me if it is original or not?

I don't recognize it, but that was well before my time at Current. Looks like the caps were more of an afterthought in its design.

There are some free fonts out there that are reasonably designed and not just copies of commercial fonts, but you would have to do a bit of research just to know. Then again, when you take into account proprietary fonts from Hallmark, American Greetings, and other large studios its difficult to know even with researching.

James... most of what you see on the cover of cards from the larger companies is hand lettering. As to the "fonts," they are very much original faces designed by the in-house lettering artists who are very talented. The larger companies have/had dedicated staff that did nothing but craft fonts from the stylings of resident artists. Hermann Zapf designed several exquisite proprietary fonts for Hallmark years ago. He is one of a number of outside contributors to these many companies.

In the past decade there have been a number of commercial fonts released that are obvious rips of proprietary fonts from the Card Companies. Stephen has addressed this in one of the threads.

Stephen! You're up.

Michael

There are both knock off versions and leaked version of proprietary fonts. People who work as interns and such come and go and often need to use proprietary fonts outside the building. Its very easy for disks of proprietary fonts to get spread around and the subsequent users have no idea if they are commercial or proprietary. Either way its an infringement. We've seen television commercials and newspaper ads using our fonts.

I've also had to address issues of type designers doing knock off versions of our fonts. Even that can be hard to stop.

An interesting side note, recently it was brought to my attention that several fonts of American Greetings were listed on a free font site and credited to American Greetings. After a bit of research it seemed that these were released legitimately. Shortly after that I got a call from a French package design firm asking if indeed they could use these fonts. After running it by our creative director, permission was given. I guess it never hurts to ask.

Ones with the CAC are part of that. I think the one the French company was looking for might have been CAC Pinafore.

Helvetica Script?

I bought several
I think you wasted your money:
http://www.typophile.com/node/50969#comment-308402
;-)

Back in my days as a font collector, I at least strove to make sure any fonts I acquired were with legitimate licenses. This was difficult in the days before the internet became widely available. For a long time in the late 80s and early 90s I would buy floppy discs of "shareware" at swap meets and surplus electronics stores, and it was hard to determine what was what.

The Font Fairy index guided me to many fonts that were released without charge by their own foundries. That list has not been updated in several years, and some of those links may no longer work, but it was among the most well intentioned of the free font sites. Many designers still release free fonts, but sometimes with some limitations against redistribution or commercial use which you must be aware of.