Telling the story of Portuguese literature in a typeface

The Writer’s Font has been created as part of a project to brand new company Tell a Story – a bookshop on wheels that travels around Lisbon selling books by Portuguese authors translated into English, French, Spanish and German.

Tell a Story’s aim is to promote Portuguese writing to tourists. MSTF Partners says it wants ‘to make literature known as a “postcard” of our culture’.

To promote the business, MSTF Partners also developed a new typeface, which can be downloaded for free, that uses the hand-writing of famous Portuguese authors.

Daniel Palma, creative director at MSTF Partners, says, ‘We have enabled everyone inspired by the Portuguese writers to write like them – using the author’s own letters.’

MSTF Partners studied the hand-writing of different authors and used them as the basis for individual letters. For example the ‘A’ is by José Luis Peixoto, the ‘B’ by José Saramago and the ‘C’ by António Lobo Antunes.

The consultancy says, ‘A vowel may have the mild stroke of one author, a consonant might show the strong personality of another, but they are all genuine.’ The font can be downloaded for free here.