Volkswagen Group Fonts

The Volkswagen Group in Wolfsburg, Germany is the company that owns Volkswagen and 11 other automotive brands (Audi, SEAT, Škoda, Bentley, Bugatti, Lamborghini, Porsche, Ducati, Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles, Scania, and MAN). In 2015, the Berlin-based MetaDesign agency brought FontFabrik on board to create custom adaptations of two LucasFonts typeface families, as part of their retooling of the Volkswagen Group’s identity. Each of these custom typefaces was adapted from a family in our library: TheSans and TheAntiquaB.

DRIVE is a 4,500 m² showroom inside the Volkswagen Group Forum located at the corner of Friedrichstraße and Unter den Linden in Berlin, Germany. Its website is set with the customized version of TheSans we developed for the company.

Our custom version of TheSans for the Volkswagen Group featured special changes and details made per MetaDesign and Volkswagen’s request, but the changes we made in the adaptation of TheAntiqua were even more significant. We created a new high-contrast version of the typeface, which the Volkswagen Group would use for headlines.

Then we did the technical preparation, like the hinting. It was a lot of work, as Greek and Cyrillic were included, as well as small caps. Projects like these are big and really satisfying. It makes for an ideal combination when you have a qualified team of corporate designers working closely together with us type designers. It results in the best possible outcome for a brand.