How Studio DRAMA broke the type design rulebook for Vogue Brasil

Nott and the entire team at Studio DRAMA are no strangers to tackling a rebrand. However, this was the first time they’d been given such a hefty amount of research. In fact, Nott explains how it’s the “richest” research document he’s ever received for a typeface project: “Research is such an important part of any project for us, especially for something like this.”

The studio received a PDF with bundles of documents and archival research to dive into, including Cordel literature, graffiti, independent zines, posters and artworks for film, music and architecture. From this, the team started categorising recurring typographic themes and details, which went on to inform the typeface and the particular embellishments we’re seeing here today — elements like condensed grotesques, early 19th and 20th-Century forms, and heavily weighted, vernacular hand-painted type. “Which we just did not expect,” he adds. “We realised it’s very unique to Brazil.”

If it wasn’t for the research, the font family may not have fit the brief, especially since the studio is based in London, not Brazil. “It really started to inform the decisions that the studio made and the wider typeface story,” says Nott.

Besides authenticity, another core request from the brief given by Vogue Brasil was to include a level of “articulation” within the design. Articulation is usually achieved through varying weights, where emphasis is created within a bit of text — “It’s a very common thing within editorial, when you want to make something stand out,” says Nott. When tackling this specific type family, Studio DRAMA referred back to the brief’s rich source material and decided to do things a little differently; the team landed on two different styles with the same proportions, which could then be used independently or combined to create high contrast. “There are all these things you can do with articulation,” he continues, “and we settled in the end on two different styles of sans and sans serif.”

Traditionally, serif fonts are seen as elegant and classic, while sans serifs are viewed as more modern and bold. In this family, Studio DRAMA decided to combine both for a merging of personalities and expressions. “It evokes that sense of being vernacular, of not being polished or the right thing to do,” explains Nott. “The serif styles differ so much, but it really depends on the purpose and where you’re using them, and the themes and feelings you want to evoke from the kind of typeface you’re using.”

As Brazil is a Portuguese-speaking country, the language uses diacritics in its letterforms. These are the marks that are added above the letters to change pronunciation, and are applied across writing systems in Latin, Greek and Cyrillic scripts. “We made those accented characters and diacritics fit snugly into the same space as irregular capital letters, rather than sitting above and below,” says Nott. “This enabled Vogue Brasil to create tightly spaced headlines, pull quotes and other large set copy without clashing between lines.” If it wasn’t for this system, such a tightly fitted typeface with loads of accents would start overlapping. “Doing something like this is probably against the type design rulebook because you shouldn’t really mess around with the heights of things like that, but we wanted to do something different,” explains Nott.

The process from start to finish was smooth, and its success is in part down to it being a relatively new process to Vogue Brasil. “When that happens with a client and it's something they’ve never done before, you need to take them on a journey,” Nott says. “Obviously that can take a bit more work, but it makes it feel more collaborative; it feels like the outcome is even better.” To achieve this, Studio DRAMA unpacked and “almost” rewrote the brief, and worked up a statement to base the project on, which was: “Through the lens of elegance, our concepts are inspired by Brazil’s national topographic lexicon and influenced by Vogue’s rich and evolutionary design. We extract core typographic DNA from authentic and appropriate source material, and then these extracted characteristics are used to form the basis for each typographic concept.”

Elegance was a key factor in determining the look and feel of the new typeface family for Vogue Brasil, and this was something that the studio had to unpack collaboratively in order to decipher the word’s meaning and therefore bring it into the design. “What are elegant typographic characteristics? For example, is it something more elongated or condensed, or something that has exaggerated proportions and a bit of contrast?” Determining these elements was crucial in designing the typeface. As Nott puts it, “Involving the client from the beginning, especially if they’re going to be using it for a long time, not only future proofs it but it makes them feel part of the process. Collaboration within typeface design is super important.”

From Nott’s point of view, working with a client like this brought many positive experiences. “It’s a lot easier when you’re working with a brand that has heritage or an archive,” he shares. So for those seeking to embark on a similar journey with a brand, he has a couple of boxes that you should think about ticking off. The first is to keep up to date on what’s happening in the world — “Look at contemporary references, you don’t want it to feel like a super old school heritage thing in the end,” he adds. The second is to always remain true to the brief, brand and yourself. “If you can show where you found these links and have authentic reference material, that is such an important part of a collaboration like this.”