Around the world with vivo brand

Multiscript custom expansion of vivo Type

In 2019 the well-known mobile phone company vivo launched a new visual brand identity in the Chinese market. vivo Type, a font family created by Danish national treasure BO Linnemann in collaboration with FounderType, was an important part of vivo’s brand refresh. vivo Type is a unique visual language, displaying the technology and youthful fashion of the vivo brand.

With the further globalisation of vivo, they once again needed to expand the multilingual characters of vivo Type. So TypeTogether, FounderType’s professional global type design partner, designed and developed three additional custom scripts (Greek, Cyrillic, and Arabic) based on the Latin character style of vivo Type.

COORDINATEd CHARACTER 

Through observation and research, José Scaglione, co-founder of TypeTogether, summarised the general design style and detailed design features of vivo’s Latin characters. He then led a team of global type design professionals to design the three other scripts.

The Latin characters of vivo Type are not purely geometric; they have a wide and flat structure with an open zhonggong, the Chinese equivalent of the Latin x-height. The typeface has a square shape, the apex of triangular glyphs are rounded and de-sharpened, the shoulders and feet are shaped with a special beveled contour, and the stroke endings are cut vertically, which supports the sense of technology while also incorporating humanistic elements.

Script extension

The three scripts of vivo Type take Latin characters as their stylistic predecessors, and give detailed treatments to line thickness, vertex shape, stroke connection, and stroke ends. Each of the three scripts contain five weights (Light, Regular, Medium, Bold, and Heavy) to better match the needs of complex information design.

VIVO TYPE GREEK

The Greek characters of vivo Type, designed by Kostas Bartsokas, continue the “best of both worlds” Latin character style. The typeface adopts a wide body proportion, and the counter is full and open. By integrating the characteristics of Latin into Greek, a consistent visual experience is maintained.

In terms of its details, vivo Type Greek adopts the same horizontal stroke design and vertical cut approach as the Latin, with the straight line cut at the end of Latin characters serving as the inspiration for the instroke and outstroke of Greek characters. At the same time, vivo Type Greek retains the Latin character’s diagonal top connecting point approach, so these humanistic details tie together the visual commonality between Greek and Latin.

VIVO TYPE cyrillic

The Cyrillic characters, designed by Vera Evstafieva, also follow the Latin character features with both technological and humanistic attributes: the two are completely consistent in cap height, x-height, ascender and descender length, and overshoots.

In addition to matching the size of the Latin characters, the Cyrillic also expresses the visual style characteristics of vivo Type in many details: the horizontal curve of the characters are flattened, and the word shape presents as flat and geometric; joins between a curve and stem adopt appropriate contrast to prevent strokes from being too blobby, which helps readability; and the shape of the serif at the shoulder and foot of Cyrillic characters is the same as that of Latin characters.

VIVO TYPE arabic

In the design of vivo Type Arabic, TypeTogether designer Azza Alameddine found that the Arabic typeface that best matches the Latin is Naskh, which has a simple structure, wide body proportions, no overt changes in line thickness, and the stroke tension follows the squarish structure of the brand’s original character set.

For instance, vivo Type Arabic’s letter alef is straight, with no change in thickness, and the corners are cut in a crisp horizontal way. The letter waw changes the traditional triangular counter to a square. The letter hah imitates the structure of Latin characters, with a more rectangular main body rather than the traditional circular structure, and its dot shape is the same as found in the Latin.

Vivo Type has become a customised typeface family with five different scripts: Arabic, Chinese, Cyrillic, Greek, and Latin. Character matching and style that is echoed across scripts ensure the wide applicability of vivo Type in different countries and regions, with a long lifespan and far-reaching influence. The expanded vivo Type shows the combination of technology and human care, helping the vivo global brand to connect people through the technology they use every day.