Client: Google

Typeface Design for Google Play Books

Built for Google Play Books, then rebuilt entirely for variable font technology

Literata is a serif screen typeface family by TypeTogether designers Veronika Burian and José Scaglione, originally commissioned as the custom typeface for Google Play Books. Version 3 is a full redesign built from the ground up within a variable font design space, covering Display, Subhead, plain-weight text, and Caption optical sizes suited to intensive digital editorial use. The family ships as just two variable font files—roman and italic—while supporting Latin, Greek, Cyrillic, PinYin, and Vietnamese scripts, and is released under an Open Font License.

Set in Literata

Insights

Version 3 was designed from scratch within a variable font design space defined by masters at the extremes of the grid; character rendering interpolates between those masters depending on axis position.
The two variable files use compression to pack more than 15 times the number of styles available in the equivalent static OTF release.
An upright italic—uncommon for screen fonts—was included to address limitations imposed by the square pixel grid.
The family spans four optical-size groupings (Display, Subhead, unlabeled text weights, and Caption) across eight weights, totalling 48 named styles.