Custom Fonts & Icons

NIVEA Care Type – Character-Driven Type Design for the NIVEA Brand

Packaging with Nivea Care Type, body lotion

Juliasys Type Studio was commissioned by Beiersdorf AG to develop a digital handwriting style for their NIVEA brand. The “NIVEA Care Type” is seen as the imaginary handwriting of the NIVEA persona, the “NIVEA Woman”. The typeface has the function to subtly integrate the NIVEA Woman personality in the look and feel of the brand. The two fonts NIVEA Care Type Latin and NIVEA Care Type Cyrillic are continuously implemented internationally on product packaging, especially for new product lines.

sample of Nivea Care Type font, face range

From Letters to Emotions: Decoding the Magic of NIVEA Font

The font has been developed with great attention to detail. Sweeping shapes lend dynamism. Long horizontal strokes emphasize the energetic impression and little details, especially at the stroke endings, give NIVEA Care Type its distinct appeal.

showing Nivea Care Type font in details

NIVEA Care Type Font feels like a natural handwriting

When we write by hand, every character is a little different. But how do you get that into a digital font? Without OpenType feature coding and many alternative characters it wouldn't work. Together, the Latin and the Cyrillic NIVEA Care Type fonts contain over 4000 glyphs, among them about 2500 ligatures, with coding for automatic contextual substitution. Amounts like these are a necessity to convincingly simulate a natural handwriting style in all its variations as a digital font.

the word cocoa in Nivea Care Type font

Besides ligatures that are automatically inserted there are optional alternate glyphs for the word beginnings and endings (top).
For most characters there are at least four variants depending on their position in a word and in a line of text (below).

sample of Nivea Care Type font: alternates
sample of Nivea Care Type font: alternate glyphs of lower case g
sample of Nivea Care Type font: different versions of the word sensible
Word images can be subtly changed by partial deactivation of the “liga” feature.

Typeface with Extensive Language Support

NIVEA Care Type font supports most European languages. The font is also actively used in languages with Cyrillic alphabets. Localised forms support regionally differing Cyrillic writing traditions.

word Cherry blossom in different languages, set in Nivea Care Type font
für samtweiche und geschmeidige Haut, written in Nivea Care Type font
sample of Cyrillic local forms of Nivea Care Type font
Sample of Nivea Care Type font: Protective cream in Greek
“Protective Cream” in Greek
sample of Nivea Care Type font: body lotion in Russian language
Image source: Блог Анны Суворовой BLOSSOM.

Read the fascinating background story about NIVEA Care Type at alphabettes.org.

sample of Nivea Care Type font: promotional set of Nivea products
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