Joshua Darden

Case Study: Virtuoso Life

As Virtuoso Limited rebranded their award-winning flagship publication, art director Deborah Pang Davis presented Joshua Darden with a simple but potent brief: to inaugurate the publication's new title (Virtuoso Life) with a new nameplate and to create a proprietary custom display typeface to unify the magazine's diverse typographic palette.

Wordmark Design

Inscriptional capitals seemed the natural counterpoint to the dramatic photography and authoritative editorial content of Virtuoso Life, and the long name necessitated a narrow footprint. With these combined criteria in hand, Darden presented Pang Davis with a dozen possible directions, taking inspiration from such disparate sources as modern Barcelonan signage and proto-Modernist lettering from the 17th and 18th centuries.

In the mid-19th century, Louis Perrin modernized Christoffel van Dyck's 17th century types as an alternative to Modern types like Bodoni and Didot. Other type founders followed suit, among them Chicago's Barnhart Brothers & Spindler foundry. Presented in variations for text and display, their "French Elzevir" stands among the most elegant reinterpretations.

A sketch in this rationalized oldstyle mode stood out from the other directions Darden presented. Taking inspiration from the BB&S types, Darden drafted several variations on the nameplate, ranging from compact to super-compressed proportions, permitting Pang Davis and the magazine staff to select the footprint most conducive to their planned treatment for the cover.

Ultimately, three different versions of the wordmark were created, each optically adjusted for optimal use on the magazine's cover, spine, or interior.

Custom Typeface Design

Designing a custom typeface gave Darden the opportunity to address the magazine's specific needs. Differing in proportion and weight, Virtuoso Roman applies the wordmark's mannerisms across a broader, more flexible system of forms. Additionally, Virtuoso Roman was designed to harmonize with the other fonts already in use by the magazine, ranging from Font Bureau's Throhand to the ever-popular FF Scala.

Deliberately "mismatched" proportions between the capitals and lowercase allow the single design to work across a wide range of sizes; an ahistorical combination of narrow capitals with a somewhat broader lowercase proved as effective a solution in recurring section heads as in titling applications. The new typeface, executed in just under four weeks, shows its mettle throughout the magazine, from 100 pt section heads to small subheads knocked out of four-color photography.

To learn more about Virtuoso Life, please visit http://www.virtuosolife.com/.