Veja Serif

Text typefamily for Veja, Brazil's leading weekly news magazine. This project originated from a specific demand to improve the publication's reading experience on screen. Letter shapes could be changed but we couldn't afford to lose character count per line and the reading aftertaste should be kept very close to Times. The winner design route, Veja Serif, is light take on the regular lowercase of traditional Linotype Times, but a bold revamp of the face as a family. The uppercase has been fully redesigned to better match the lowercase, weights have been balanced to allow for better typography and the italics ended up being quite authentic – everything properly hinted • 2013, Jul–Oct, Rio de Janeiro, BR • Gustavo Soares (Creative Director), Eduilson Coan | dooType (Type Designer), Fernando Mello (Consultant), Paratype (Hinting)

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PROCESS

VJTimes was the old type used for text, a custom (increased x-height) version of the Linotype Times

As based on Linotype Times, VJTimes kept a lot of the inconsistencies and strange decisions accross the family...

... which were obvious things to improve

Contrast was far too high in certain parts of the letters for a text face. It was also a big problem in rotogravure printing

Also considering the family, the semibold was made lighter to better mark the transitions and allow for finer typography

Caps had their weight and proportions balanced to the lowercase – and gained a more contemporary look

Distinct sets of diacritics were made for upper and lowercase – they were also positioned correctly

Screen optmization (hinting) between the old VJTimes (first line of every group) and Veja Serif (second line)

Closeup of common screen reading sizes. VJTimes (first line of every group) and Veja Serif (second line)

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