Virus DejaVu is a family of typefaces based on the collaborative open-source project DejaVu. The family includes a range of weights and styles including sans-serif, serif and monospace. The DejaVu fonts are themselves modifications and developments of Bitstream Vera, originally designed by Jim Lyles in 2002. During the development of Virus DejaVu, the 13 weights of the original DejaVu were manually respaced and certain characters redrawn and adjusted.
Virus DejaVu was developed by the design studio Barnbrook as a key element of the visual identities for the Ukrainian cultural centre, Mystetskyi Arsenal and for the first Kyiv international biennale of contemporary art, Arsenale 2012. The decision to develop a pre-existing open-source font project as the typographic bedrock of these visual identities was an active acknowledgement of contemporary developments in digital technology and creative online communities. An approach that placed the notion of collaboration ahead of refined aesthetics.
Virus DejaVu is released under the same open-source license as the originals, allowing derivative works (as long as Bitstream or Vera are not in the names), and full redistribution (so long as they are not sold by themselves).