Bebas Neue
Ryoichi TsunekawaSphinx of black quartz, judge my vow
Display · 1 weight · OFL · Türkçe
Free Alternate Gothic alternatives
Morris Fuller Benton for ATF, 1903 — the condensed gothic that American headlines were set in for most of the twentieth century.
Why people look for a Alternate Gothic alternative
Alternate Gothic is the tall, tightly spaced condensed sans of American posters and newspapers. It is licensed, and the very condensed weights that make it useful for a headline in a narrow column are usually sold separately from the rest.
What a Alternate Gothic substitute has to get right
Extreme condensation with capitals that stay legible at it. The lowercase is nearly beside the point; a face that is narrow but keeps generous counters is not doing the same job.
The 2 in this archive
Listed only where the substitution would survive a designer looking at both — a flattering near-match is worse than a short list.
Oswald
Vernon Adams, Kalapi Gajjar, CyrealSphinx of black quartz, judge my vow
Sans-serif · Variable · 6 weights · OFL · Türkçe
Alternate Gothic and its free alternatives, at a glance
- How you get it
- Bought from a foundry under a commercial licence
- Pass it on, embed it or self-host it
- Only as the licence you bought allows
- On a website
- Usually a separate web licence on top
Alternate Gothic
| Property | Bebas Neue | Oswald |
|---|---|---|
| Licence | OFL-1.1 — free, commercial use allowed | OFL-1.1 — free, commercial use allowed |
| Weights | 400 | 200, 300, 400, 500, 600, 700 |
| Variable | No | Yes |
| Italic | No | No |
| Türkçe | Yes | Yes |
| Other alphabets | Latin only | Cyrillic, Cyrillic Extended, Vietnamese |
| Glyphs | 508 | 883 |
| Web font | 16 KB Latin cut | 39 KB Latin cut |
Questions
- What is the best free alternative to Alternate Gothic?
- Bebas Neue — it is the closest match in this archive, and the page above says which shapes the substitution turns on. 2 faces are listed in total, and which of them is right depends on the size you are setting and the mood you want; set your own words in each before choosing.
- Are these Alternate Gothic alternatives free for commercial use?
- Yes. Every font on this site is under a licence that permits commercial use with no fee and no attribution requirement, mostly the SIL Open Font License. That covers paid client work, products you sell, self-hosting on a website, and embedding in an application. The licence file is inside every download.
- Can I use a Alternate Gothic alternative in a logo?
- Yes. An open font licence covers the font software rather than the shapes you set with it, so a logo made with one of these can be trademarked like any other. What you cannot do is claim rights over the typeface itself.
- Will a Alternate Gothic substitute keep my layout the same?
- Only if it is metrically compatible — drawn so every character occupies the same width as the original, which makes a document reflow identically. Very few faces are, and where one is, this site says so on its page. Everything else will look similar and set differently, so a layout built to the original's widths needs checking rather than assuming.