Humdrum

I know you crafters. Sometimes you want a clean, simple — dare we say humdrum — neutral serif font that you can make alphabet set products from. Monograms, split monograms, decorated letters — they’re fun to make and popular with customers, but it’s hard to find fonts that allow that type of set to be made! Most paid font licenses either require significant transformation, or don’t allow it at all. And most freebie licenses (like the SIL OFL or the Apache license) have vague licensing terms about this type of use; they mainly appear to allow you to make modified versions, but require that you give away your new versions under that same freebie license!

I’ve tried to bridge the gap with HUMDRUM. It’s a super simple pair of fonts, which only contain A-Z. No numbers, no punctuation, no extras. Just four sets of the 26 uppercase Latin letters: two different sets in the uppercase and lowercase spots of Humdrum Regular, and lighter versions of those two sets with slightly different serifs in Humdrum Thin. You can even mix and match the letters from the regular set, since they all have the same serifs and weights. Same goes for the thin set — 52 characters with the same weight and serifs, just different styling.

I’ve written a special license just for this font; it allows you to use the letters in a new alphabet product set (SVG, PNG, etc.) as long as the letters don’t appear as-is. You can merge graphics or illustrations on top, chop parts of the letters out, merge decorative embellishments into the letter shapes, or draw over the letters as guides for a hand-drawn set. Everything I’ve done in the promo images would be allowed with this font.

As long as you’re infusing your own creativity and handiwork, and modifying the letters in some way, you’re good to go! (And if you aren’t quite sure, feel free to drop me a line at my contact form, or email me at missymeyerfonts(at)gmail.com)

And of course, you can make words and phrases from the as-is letters, and incorporate those into text designs just like with other fonts. This one allows everything that you can do with a regular commercial-use font … plus a little bit more.