8 Alternatives to Noe, Saol and Canela: Open Source Similar Display Fonts

The fonts Noe and Canela are two of the most popular serifs used by both print and screen designers right now, however, they come with an agency price tag. So if you’re looking for alternatives for your personal portfolio site, or for design exploration, below are 8 options that can be sourced directly for free from Google Fonts or activated in Adobe Fonts if you have Creative Suite.

1. Calluna
   Designed by exljbris Font Foundry, who also designed the popular (peak 2010) open-source Museo fonts. Comes in Light, Regular, Semibold, Bold, and Black, including OpenType features. Licensing is free for both personal and commercial use.
2. Lora
   One of my free favorite serifs: Lora is a free, open-source serif typeface from Google Fonts. The italics of Lora have a calligraphic style and the terminals look great on screen. Lora is available in four weights with matching italics. Licensing is free for personal usage.
3. PT Serif™
   PT is the second pan-Cyrillic font family developed for the project “Public Types of the Russian Federation.” The first family of the project, PT Sans, was released in 2009. Heads up :) Available on Google Fonts.
   - The fonts are released with a libre license and can be freely redistributed.
   - The fonts include standard Western, Central European and Cyrillic code pages, plus the characters of every title language in the Russian Federation. This makes them a unique and very important tool for modern digital communications. PT Serif is a transitional serif typeface with humanistic terminals. It is designed for use together with PT Sans.
4. DM Serif
   The other half of DM Sans, and achieves the nice fat, editorial bold headline display of Noe and Calluna Bold. Available on Google Fonts.
5. Cormorant
   Just like Garamond, but rights free. A Google font. Looks especially beautiful on Moyo-studio.com
6. Caslon
   Check out Big Caslon and Caslon Italics, as well as the classic usage of Caslon small caps with refined airy letter-spacing for a letterpress feel.
7. Sabon
   by Jan Tschihold and Monotype, from Adobe Fonts, with an Adobe Creative Cloud Subscription. A time-tested true classic.
8. Freight Display
   “Originally drawn in 2005 by Joshua Darden and expanded several times over, the Freight collection of typefaces is renowned for its historical innovation and ongoing popularity. Freight turns the traditional gradations of contrast and width into a stylistic device.” Adobe Fonts.

The full Adobe Fonts library is cleared for both personal and commercial use, so as long as you are a Creative Cloud user, you are opted-in to the personal commercial usage rights. Feel free to email me if you ever have any font licensing questions and I’d be happy to help: hello@jennrichter.com.

Please follow if you found this at all helpful as a design guide. Thank you!