Charles Borges de Oliveira was introduced to typography by way of his early career as an apprentice sign painter. As his experience grew, so did his appreciation for the science and methodology of type design. The architecture of letters and the principles behind design layouts eventually led him to pursue type design as his trade, although he still offers hand lettering and logos through his own studio, Borges Lettering.
Charles has seen an incredible amount of success throughout the course of his career so far, having completed bespoke projects for companies that include American Greetings, PGX, and NBC. His typography is visually striking, crafting fonts that are inventive and incredibly multifaceted at the same time.
One of his more recent releases through YouWorkForThem is the aptly-named Versatile, a family of three sans serif font styles, each with six distinct subfamilies for layering. The classic geometric design of Versatile stands with a relaxed, casual posture that leaves it feeling warm and welcoming. It’s comfortable and familiar, featuring an understated and clean construction that gives graphic designers an endless number of possibilities in their work.
Versatile is available in three styles that include Bold, Hatch, and Rust, all of which are ideal for a variety of projects that include displays, signage, logos, branding, identity, advertising, product packaging, book covers and content, merchandise, website design, mobile applications, infographics, presentations, and so much more.
Bold was designed to work effortlessly in print applications that include sign making, and for those who work with Cricut die-cutting machines, Silhouette, or vinyl plotters. The really cool thing about Versatile Bold is that each layer can be cut and stacked to craft multi-colored vinyl designs for unique displays and signage.
Versatile Hatch offers an inky, diagonal hatch for added texture. It presents with a slightly distressed effect, featuring natural ink blotches that give it a realistic printed feel, even in digital applications.
Versatile Rust offers the same sans serif structure with a weathered letterpress impression. The varied and mottled finish of Versatile Rust adds a perfectly aged finish to any design project that needs to appear subtly ravaged by time.
Each of Versatile’s three styles includes six layering options that enable designers to create truly unique lettering designs.
Cast offers a heavy lower right-side drop shadow, while Shadow provides a lower left-side shadow. Highlight Shadow offers an upper left-side shadow and Inside Shadow provides a thinner upper-left side shadow effect. Outline gives designers a outlined version of Versatile’s structure, and Lines offers the letterforms with horizontal lines that are drawn with a heavy hand at the top of the letter before fading out toward the bottom.
As if the font wasn’t flexible enough already, Versatile is crazy loaded with a host of additional features that include capitals to small caps, discretionary ligatures, localized forms, numerators, denominators, small caps, subscript, superscript, contextual alternates, and stylistic alternates. Versatile’s multilingual support is incredibly… well, versatile, covering Basic Latin, Western European, Euro, Catalan, Baltic, Turkish, Central European, Romanian, Pan African Latin, Dutch, Afrikaans, Igbo Onwu, Basic Greek, and Basic Cyrillic for exceptional global accessibility.
Borges Lettering currently offers 11 products through YouWorkForThem, an array of scripts, sans serifs, and display fonts to suit a wide range of design projects. Visit their portfolio to view the rest of their products and keep an eye on this one – if you love unique lettersets with a lot of versatility, you won’t want to miss any of their future releases!
