Thanks for the new Typography section!

I immediately thought it would be a good idea to have a sticky post like this, for listing free font resources (both high-quality and not-so-high-quality).

One of the easiest to navigate free font sites is www.dafont.com. I would NOT recommend any of these fonts for body copy, but rather for display copy and logos, when necessary.

nice find

I'll be sure to check out some of those farther.

If yer gonna use free fonts for anything large (ie a logo, a poster, a banner), print them out, or at least several pieces of them, on 11" x 17" paper and look for badly drawn outlines. I've seen more than my share of display fonts that look fine under 1" cap height, but large? Yuck.

Peaks and valleys, but worst of all, loops and crossovers. Some people just don't understand you can't spin those bezier handles or pull them too far (clipart is notorious for this too.) It drives some vinyl plotters and most CNC machines absolutely nuts. And the ones it doesn't drive nuts? Well, have you ever seen what happens when a tool path follows the outside of a shape with a crossover or loop? Slices made through vinyl shapes or big honking chunks taken out of your 3D letters.

And I've also seen more than my share of Freeware that doesn't rip. So you might want to check before committing a large project to a freeware font.

You get what you pay for.
(and some freeware fonts want you to pay if they are used commercially)

Pardon my ignorance, but what does "rip" mean? I've seen you use it a few times here and there and I'm scratching my head...

Raster Image Processor.
It's the thing that translates your computer file into an image on paper (simplified version). Some font codes are so bad that they don't translate properly and you get dropped letters, partial letters, missing punctuation, or nothing at all.
Check here for terms you don't know.
http://prepressure.com/dict/dictr.htm

I find it exceedingly irksome that you graduated from college without hearing the term... Not at you. At your college.

Thanks for the info. That page has a lot of useful information. It is very irksome. I left school thinking I knew everything just to find the exact opposite. That's why I'm doing everything I can do know to educate myself in every aspect of design. Thanks again for the answer!

Apart from the 'core' fonts used by probably most people, I have used Zekton for display recently with some success.

This free font comes in several weights and styles, and a good selection of characters. It is excellent for display at sizes above 14 pt.

It's rubbish at smaller sizes, but its usefulness is far outweighed by this negative point.