Besley
Owen EarlSphinx of black quartz, judge my vow
Serif · Variable · 6 weights · OFL · Türkçe
Free Clarendon alternatives
Robert Besley patented it at the Fann Street Foundry in 1845, as the face to set in when the surrounding text needed emphasis.
Why people look for a Clarendon alternative
Clarendon is the archetypal slab serif and has been continuously in use since 1845, which means it is also continuously licensed. It reads as institutional and slightly Victorian, and the weights that carry that best are the ones that cost most.
What a Clarendon substitute has to get right
Bracketed slabs — the serif has to meet the stem on a curve rather than at a corner — and ball terminals. A square-cut Egyptian slab is a different nineteenth-century idea.
The one in this archive
One entry, because one is the honest answer. A face is listed here only if the substitution would survive a designer looking at both.
Clarendon 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
Clarendon
| Property | Besley |
|---|---|
| Licence | OFL-1.1 — free, commercial use allowed |
| Weights | 400, 500, 600, 700, 800, 900 |
| Variable | Yes |
| Italic | Yes |
| Türkçe | Yes |
| Other alphabets | Latin only |
| Glyphs | 457 |
| Web font | 51 KB |
Questions
- What is the best free alternative to Clarendon?
- Besley — it is the closest match in this archive, and the page above says which shapes the substitution turns on. It is the only one listed, because one honest match is a better answer than a longer list of near misses.
- Are these Clarendon 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 Clarendon 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 Clarendon 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.