Vogue font

Where the Didone answer comes from

In Eye magazine's 2007 essay on fashion and type, the designer Abbott Miller looks at how Vogue's covers changed. He writes that as late as 1955 the covers still switched between serif, sans serif, script and illustrated or photographic lettering. After that the magazine seems to have fixed on a consistent all-capitals banner in Didone lettering, which has stayed almost the same ever since. Miller calls it the trade dress of an international franchise. He describes the style, not a specific font, so we do not name one.

Didot and Harper's Bazaar

The fashion magazine most clearly documented using Didot is Harper's Bazaar. The same Eye essay says art director Alexey Brodovitch used Didot heavily from the 1930s to the 1950s, and that Fabien Baron brought the Didone look back in his 1992 redesign. Baron had Jonathan Hoefler draw a digital Didot that kept its thin lines at very large sizes.

A typeface named Vogue

There is also a typeface called Vogue, but it is not the masthead. Fonts In Use describes it as a geometric sans in the style of Futura, made at the Intertype company for Condé Nast's Vogue. It first appeared in the January 1930 issue and was sold to the public soon after, later growing to eleven styles.

How to get the look

Use a Didone serif in capitals: very thick vertical strokes, hairline-thin horizontals and flat, unbracketed serifs. Set it large and spread across the top of the page, with tight but even spacing. Black or white on a photo works best. Keep everything else simple so the contrast of the letters does the work.

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