Greetings designers and type geeks. It's time for a What's This Font post and this time we'll be looking at Vogue Paris. Definitely an upgrade on Vogue U.S if you ask me. There are lots of interesting things in there, especially layout and font wise. The first font we will be looking at is the font used on the cover. On the one hand you have the VOGUE logo which is a slightly altered version of Didot (T1) HTF M42 Medium (who knew right?) and on the other we have a mix of Miller Banner light, roman and semi bold for the headlines.
I don't find there is much to say on the Vogue logo itself, it's pretty iconic and speaks for itself so for now I will just focus on the use of Miller which was designed by Matthew Carter and Richard Lipton in 2010. The first time I discovered Miller I was working as an intern at Victoria's Secret and it was one of the fonts they used the most. You would think I would have recognized it but the way Vogue uses it is so different that to me it looked like a completely different font. It's modern yet has got all the right curves. It works very well for them and all in all it's quite a gorgeous typeface. Not only that but the price range is quite reasonable, you can find Miller Banner here.
Now despite all these good aspects this font does have a major flaw which comes to light in a more obvious way as you flip through the pages and Vogue Paris doesn't seem to have noticed it: readability. If this reads well on the cover I'm afraid the same thing can't be said on the inside of the magazine. That is mostly due to the layouts, a lot of cramped text everywhere whether it be big or small, not the smartest choice. Vogue also decided they wanted a customized version of Miller specially designed for them and that's how they ended up with...let's say interesting, alternates.
While some of the alternates work quite well and give the page a little more beauty and vogue, one in particular is just plain weird. You can guess from looking below, it's the B. It looks like a J and a B stuck together and reads really weird. No one's perfect right?
