The upcoming episode of My Type of Music is delayed due to our recent Amazon EC2 cloud woes. To tide you over until I have gathered all the album covers and commented on them I invite you all to participate in the Rocking FontFont's Free Fonts contest. One of the cool aspects of the FontFont library is that – besides being the home for some of the most popular versatile, often expansive text families – it was never afraid to take risks and foster imagination and experimentation. Amongst its releases are some daring designs, some of them very much children of their time. Inevitably these specific typefaces grew out of fashion. This is why FontFont has retired 24 families from the regular library, converted them to OpenType, and are now offering them at no cost. As a token of respect for the creativity of their designers the fonts are however still bound by a EULA.

This is the list of FontFonts that have become available for free:

FF Baukasten (1995) by Alessio LeonardiFF Chelsea (1994) by Frank HeineFF Dig, FF Dog, FF Hip (1991, 1994) by Paul SychFF Double Dutch (1992) by Marianne van HamFF DuMoore (1992) by Dung van MeerbeeckFF Ekttor (1994) by Fabian RottkeFF FancyWriting (1996) by Timothy DonaldsonFF Flèches (1993) by Pierre di SciulloFF Jacque (1991) by Max KismanFF Koko (1998) by Kai ZimmermannFF Motter Festival (2000) by Othmar MotterFF Murphy (1995) by Fedor HünekeFF Ottofont (2001) by Barbara KlunderFF Peecol + FF Peecol Pocket (1998) by Steffen Sauerteig & Kai VermehrFF Penguin (1995) by Nick CookeFF Pullman (1997) by Johannes ErlerFF Readout (1999) by Steffen SauerteigFF Revolver (1993) by Rian HughesFF Singer (1995) by Matthias ThiesenFF Spontan (1991) by Manfred KleinFF Steel (1995) by Fabrizio SchiaviFF SubVario SubMono (incl. FF Screen Logger) (1998) by Kai VermehrFF Trombo (1995) by Andreas JungFF Tronic (2003) by Hyun ChoFF Yokkmokk (incl. FF Yakkmakk) (1993)

Submission by Michael Smith

To announce this change in policy FontFont is organising the terrific Rocking FontFont's Free Fonts contest.

Embodying the somewhat nostalgic spirit of these font families, try your hand at redesigning an album cover using at least one of the free FontFonts. Although many of these fonts conjure up the heyday of the grunge-era, your album can be from any time period – pick from the range of Bieber to Bach – or create an album you wish existed.

Submissions should be uploaded to FontShop's Flickr Group Rocking FontFont's Free Fontsby 11:59 PM (PDT) on Sunday, May 1. If you do not have a Flickr account you may email your submissions to moc.pohstnofnull@tsetnoc. Only three submissions per designer please (if you submit more than three, only the first three chronologically will be entered). On Tuesday, May 3, voting will be opened to the public via a survey link on the FontShop.com blog, Twitter, and Facebook pages. Voting will close at 11:59 PM (PST) on Sunday, May 8.

The winner will be announced on Monday, May 9 and will receive a$500 credit toward FontFontson FontShop.com.