Typeface Design for Bree
Upright italic with handwriting DNA
Bree is a handwriting-influenced upright italic sans serif designed by Veronika Burian and José Scaglione at TypeTogether, originally released in 2008. Its defining structure pairs restrained capitals with more expressive lowercase letters, an extra-large x-height, and wide character stance. A major 2019 update added two weights, variable font formats, and new Cyrillic and Greek scripts designed from scratch; Arabic and Thai followed in 2021. The Latin family spans 14 weights; the full multiscript family also covers Cyrillic, Greek, Arabic, and Thai, with Devanagari in development.
Set in Bree
Insights
- The upright italic construction creates asymmetry between calm capitals and lively lowercase, a deliberate structural choice rather than a stylistic accident.
- Handwriting influence is encoded in specific glyphs — single-story 'a', cursive 'e', outstroke curves on 'v' and 'w', flourished 'Q' — with neutral alternates available via OpenType.
- The 2019 expansion redesigned Cyrillic and Greek from scratch to match the Latin's tone rather than adapting existing letterforms.
- Variable font format was introduced in the 2019 update, offering continuous weight control while reducing file size in megabytes.
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