Studio DRAMA’s typefaces for Vogue Brasil marry the nation’s cultural legacy with modern type tech

In tandem with the magazine’s 2022 redesign, London-based studio Studio DRAMA crafted a pair of bespoke typefaces for Vogue Brasil, typographically exploring the unique harmony between two distinct concepts – vernacular and elegance. Having been tasked with developing a rigorous typeface optimised for both print and screen, Vogue Brasil provided Studio DRAMA with an extensive research document, the contents of which recalled and collated authentic typographic influences found in Brazilian culture – from art, architecture and design to literature, film, and music. Drawn to the emphasis of the country’s hand-painted typographic vernacular, they utilised the tactile, human impact of the craft to form the unconventional foundation for the bespoke typefaces, ultimately distilling each and every letterform uniquely with the rich cultural typographic heritage of Brazil. The result of Studio DRAMA and Vogue Brasil’s extensive research and exploration is an expressive, artful typographic interrogation that both draws on the nation’s legacy and recontextualises it within the inextricably contemporary standing of the magazine itself. The central challenge Studio DRAMA tackled was to seamlessly merge their two contrary themes, achieving as much through the identification of two distinct typographic axes, with vernacular embracing the emerging movement in Brazilian typography and elegance aligning to Vogue’s worldly identity and output. As a result, these axes gave rise to two equally distinct styles: Vogue Brasil Sans and Vogue Brasil Serif. Having built the typefaces out, Studio DRAMA introduced geometric forms and alternate letters to both styles, alongside a number of technical OpenType features built around the nuances of Portuguese script, excitedly pulling from the typographic archives of their research. In interweaving the cultural and the technical, their meticulous approach ultimately balances the opposing design philosophies of the type pairing’s binary concept, providing Vogue Brasil with a toolkit more nuanced, expressive and relevant than variations on weight and width.