Yves Typeface
Inês Pinheiro, Letícia Marques Santos and Maria Julia Ribeiro
Yves is a variable serif typeface developed collaboratively in the Type Design course, with the aim of creating a contemporary digital font that preserves the visual identity of its historical source while meeting today’s editorial standards of legibility and versatility.
The project revives an anonymous early-twentieth-century typeface found in a Portuguese edition of Victor Hugo’s “The Last Day of a Condemned Man”, printed by the Sociedade Tipográfica Portuense.
The original has no known designer, foundry or archival documentation, so the method relied on observation, comparison and interpretation rather than direct reproduction. Reconstruction began with the lowercase “n” and “o”; images of the original print were digitally enhanced before being vectorized in Glyphs and FontLab.
The result is Yves, a variable transitional serif ranging from Regular to Extra Bold. The reconstructed design keeps tall ascenders, irregular cupped serifs, teardrop terminals and unconventional figures, introducing optical refinements that improve legibility and evenness of text.
Alongside it, a type specimen takes the form of an editorial artifact: a fictional catalog of impossible plant species, combining scientific visual conventions with imaginary narratives. The concept explores the dialogue between the lyrical qualities of historical book typography and a contemporary, fantastical editorial language, demonstrating Yves’s versatility across weights, scales and editorial hierarchies.
Imprint / Technical Rider:
Year: 2026
Dimensions: 100 × 270 × 30 mm; 57 pages
Materials: Munken Pure 120 g/m² 4/4 and tracing paper 1/0.
Production and finishing: Digital printing; stapled binding.
Resources and credits: Glyphs, FontLab, Adobe InDesign CC 2026.
Curricular Unit:
Type Design (1st year)
Supervising Professor:
Pedro Amado
Keywords: Typeface, Type Revival, Digital Type Design, Variable Font
See this project in the Material Archive interactive archive →