Branding is a big deal. Whether for a small business or an international megacorp, branding presents to the public who you are and what you do. Make the logo, choose the colours, and set the style, but the typeface needs certain qualities in order to hit all the right notes. In this article, José Scaglione gives ten suggestions garnered from his years in graphic design, teaching, corporate success, and designing custom typefaces for the world’s top companies.

We’ve come a long way over the past year. Look back on the events, awards, content, and typefaces of 2019.

Le Bonbon Nuit is a free monthly French magazine focused on culture, society, restaurants, fashion, and nightlife in Paris, and designed by République Studio. In the June 2019 issue the titles were set using the Italienne style from Quentin Schmerber’s Temeraire.

The annual Granshan competition has awarded TypeTogether with another bevy of awards for our hard work and consistent progress in multiscript typefaces. Among the winners are the families of Arlette, Adelle Sans, and Bree, focusing on their non-Latin scripts. A huge thank you to the Granshan judges and a huge shoutout to our eleven amazing designers. Such a rewarding close to a successful year!

One of the most distinct pieces of typographic branding in recent years is Literata — the type family we created for all Google Play Books. Its combination of form and function came about by solving a serious challenge: reading a novel on any number of devices. It was so well received that Google asked TypeTogether for a serious update and to release it for free on Google Fonts. We’re happy to announce that version 2.1 was released in mid-2019, and that version 3 is well on its way. On the docket: increased language support, more styles, small caps, more glyphs, and the new golden child of typography — a variable font version! Refresh your memory about the original four-weight version here, dive into the major update details here, and of course get the free font family straight from us here.

Throwbacks to the 1980s aesthetic have been trending for a little while now, and this takes it to another level. The promotional video for Megaverb, a digital plugin that simulates the “bad-quality” reverb synonymous with the 1980s, uses Eskapade Fraktur to create an unexpectedly effective result. Eskapade’s designer, Alisa Nowak, didn’t originally design it for this use, but it works surprisingly well.