Playwrite DE VA
Designed By
TypeTogether, Veronika Burian, José Scaglione
4 Styles Handwriting
A little note,
before you go.
Playwrite DE VA · Regular
Try a short note, a name or a line of your own to compare the strokes and spacing.
4 styles available. Compare the specimens below, or enter your own text.
Download Playwrite DE VA ↓TTF · SIL Open Font License 1.1
Set Your Own Text
Change the style and size to compare the letterforms.
Liebe Oma, danke für das Buch
A Note On The Page
Playwrite DE VA · Regular
A short letter, set in the family.
Thursday afternoon
Dear Alex,
I left the book by the window. There is a note on page twenty-three that I thought you would like. Bring it along on Thursday; we can finish the conversation over coffee.
See you there.
4 Styles,
One Family
Every available style is shown below in its own font file.
Thin100
Liebe Oma, danke für das Buch
Extra Light200
Liebe Oma, danke für das Buch
Light300
Liebe Oma, danke für das Buch
Regular400
Liebe Oma, danke für das Buch
Watch how the t is built in Playwrite DE VA. It is the German school t, written in 1 go without lifting the pen, and it is 1 of the small giveaways that this font follows a particular classroom model, the Vereinfachte Ausgangsschrift, or simplified starting script.
Germany has no national handwriting model. Each state sets its own, and in most of them a school can choose between 3 cursives: Lateinische Ausgangsschrift, Schulausgangsschrift, and the VA that this font draws. Since 2010 there has also been the Grundschrift, a print-based hand with small exit strokes added, proposed by the association of primary schools and used in about 10% of German schools. Whatever the route, a child is supposed to leave fourth grade, at 10 or 11, with a joined hand of their own.
The VA as TypeTogether drew it is a continuous cursive with a medium slant and short ascenders and descenders. Some details:
- m, n and r start without a curved lead-in stroke
- ascenders and descenders are looped, but f drops straight down with no loop
- z gets a looped tail
- the capitals stay fairly restrained, with a cursive flourish here and there
Veronika Burian and José Scaglione built it for Playwrite, the school font series that came out of their Primarium research, and Google added it in May 2024. Weights run from Thin to Regular. Switch on contextual alternates in your app or the letters will not join.

Characters & Figures
486 glyphs reported in the reference style. This selection shows 400 recorded characters.
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
0123456789 & @ ? !
View The Recorded Character Selection
The Font Files
Download
Playwrite DE VA
4 TTF styles with the accompanying CSS, README and license information.
Download ZIP · 427 KB ↓- Version
- 1.003
- License
- SIL Open Font License 1.1
Install On Your Computer
Extract the ZIP first. On Windows, select the font files and choose Install from the context menu. On macOS, open the files in Font Book and choose Install.
Use On A Website
Keep the font files and the included stylesheet together. Update the stylesheet path to match your project.
<link rel="stylesheet"
href="/fonts/playwrite-de-va-2/playwrite-de-va-2.css">
body {
font-family: 'Playwrite DE VA', cursive;
}Keep the copyright and license notices with redistributed files.
Heading & Body
The family provides the heading; Inter carries the supporting text.
Playwrite DE VA Heading · Inter Body
Thursday, Half Past Four
I left the book by the window. There is a note on page twenty-three that I thought you would like. Bring it along on Thursday; we can finish the conversation over coffee.
