Free Arabic and Farsi web fonts you can use right now!

The web is swarming with free fonts to download. But free doesn’t always equate to high quality. For instance, a simple google search shows 808,000 results for “free Arabic fonts”. But how many of these results are actually of value? 

Check out our recommendations for the best places to find fonts that are free, well-crafted, fast, browser-compatible and open source for your next web project.

1. Google Fonts
The Google Fonts catalogue hosts more than 800 font families in more than 135 languages. As of May 2017, there are 16 typefaces on there that support Arabic and Farsi characters and glyphs. 

The best part of the deal? These typefaces support Latin characters as well - which means they are perfect for bilingual design too!

Google Fonts allows you to filter through their catalogue, live-preview the specimens, embed the font or fonts you’ve chosen and even download them on your computer. An easy and friendly one-stop-shop.

2. Noto 
Even though it is technically a Google font, the Noto font family earned its very own website. Why? No biggie, only to showcase the 114 fonts it encompasses and supports. The fonts of most relevance to us though are Noto Kufi Arabic, Noto Naskh Arabic, and Noto Nastaliq Urdu.

Don’t be fooled by their names: Noto Naskh Arabic, for example, supports 69 languages. This includes Persian, Baluchi, and Kurdish (Arabic script).

Here’s a little tip: Use the Kufi script for headlines (as it is a ‘display’ font that works best in big size) and the Naskh script for body text (easier on the eyes, optimal for reading and big chunks of text).

Know of other places to download free and reliable fonts? Let us know on Twitter, we would love to hear from you!  

This blog was written by Richard Kahwagi. Richard is a creative director, visual artist and Arabic typography expert whose work has been exhibited, sold, and published across the Middle East and Europe. In the course ‘Design for change: Graphic design for human rights', Richard shares tips on working with dual languages, which you can enrol for here.