What Are Google Fonts?

Thanks to digital technology, there are more font types now than have ever existed in the entire history prior to the industrial revolution. With a quick search, you can easily find at least half a million fonts to select from. Many of them have to be bought, but most of them are available for free. Thankfully, Google Fonts falls into the latter category. It’s a collection of over 1,000 free, open-source font families. A font family just means that a font type contains further substyles – varying degrees of letter thickness and italics. Some font families contain a single style, while others contain multiple styles, as you can see in the case of Roboto – 12 styles within a single font family! It bears remembering that the Google Fonts collection was formerly called Google Web Fonts when launched in 2010. The goal was to expand and enrich the variety of web content by making it take advantage of API (Application Programming Interface). Every time your web browser connects to the Internet, it sends a request from the server to access content, which is then represented accordingly. Web APIs process those requests and display the content, drawing from the available font sets on the server. This means that Google Fonts are completely free!

Why Would You Need Google Fonts?

The better question is, why wouldn’t you use a free resource that doesn’t require any licensing? Google Fonts are free for both personal and commercial use, making them a go-to tool for any web designer, student, or office worker. Those who are students of marketing know very well the importance of typography in delivering any type of message – from launching a new product to scholastic work. Each typography represents a brand personality, making your content stand out from the crowd.

How to Download and Install Google Fonts on Windows 10

  1. Go to the Google Fonts page.
  2. Select the font family that is most appealing to your needs. You can preview each font style to make double-sure it is the right one. Roboto is quite a readable, generalist font, suited for a wide range of uses.
  3. When you are ready, click on the “Download family” button.
  4. A File Explorer window will pop up, asking you where to save the font family. Remember the folder where you saved the downloaded font.
  5. The downloaded file will be compressed in .zip format to save bandwidth, so you will first need to uncompress/unzip it. Right-click on the file and select “Extract all.”
  6. You will then be asked where to unzip/extract the file. File Explorer will automatically create a new subfolder, named as the file name, so all you need to do is confirm it by clicking “Extract.” With downloading and extracting out of the way, it’s time to actually install the font family, so it becomes accessible in all of your applications, like MS Word, OneNote, Notepad, etc.
  7. Click on the Windows icon in the bottom-left corner of your desktop.
  8. Select the “Personalization” category and “Fonts.”
  9. Split the screen between File Explorer and Settings by dragging the windows to either the left or right edge of the screen. Select all the font files by pressing Ctrl + A and drag them into the “Add fonts” box. (Unselect the license file, as it is not a font type file.)
  10. That’s it! To double-check if it is installed, just type the name of it in the search bar, and it will show up as an available font.
  11. If you’ve downloaded fonts containing only a single style, it is easier to simply double-click on them to install them. After they open, just click on the “Install” button.

How to Install Google Fonts on macOS

The download and extracting procedure is the same as for Windows 10.

  1. Once downloaded, open the font file by double-clicking on it. This opens the Font Book app, which allows you to preview the font you double-clicked to install.
  2. After you are satisfied with your selection of fonts, click on Install.

How to Install Google Fonts on Linux

Follow the same steps to download the fonts zip file, then follow the instructions here to install the fonts in Linux.

Managing Your Fonts

Lastly, to streamline the management of your font library, you can install a free program, FontBase, supported on Windows, Mac, and Linux. If you have the needs to use Windows fonts on Linux, here is how you can install Microsoft TrueType fonts on Linux.