--- title: Purcari. The invisible repair · Design Academy url: https://rt.md/en/academia/purcari/ description: Microtypography on the PURCARI wordmark: evened-out stroke weights, organic terminals, revised kerning - without anyone noticing that anything changed. An internal study, started in 2020 and revisited in 2026. alternate: RO: https://rt.md/academia/purcari/ source: RT Design Studio, https://rt.md (contact: mail@rt.md) --- [← Design Academy](https://rt.md/en/academia/) Case study · Microtypography · August 2026 · 7 min read # Purcari. The invisible repair. The study We refine the PURCARI wordmark letter by letter: evened-out stroke weights, organic terminals, revised kerning - without anyone noticing that anything changed. An internal study, started in 2020 and revisited in 2026. [Citește studiul în română →](https://rt.md/academia/purcari/) ![The refined PURCARI wordmark in gold on a dark background, with the outline of the current version as a shadow](https://rt.md/academia/assets/purcari/01-cover.jpg) Every study so far has had a visible drama: a logo that needed replacing, a label that failed to tell the story, a website that deserved rebuilding. This one is different. Nothing here looks wrong. And that is exactly the point. ## A logo you know even if you don’t drink wine [Purcari](https://purcariwineries.com/) stopped being just the winery at Ștefan Vodă a long time ago. It is the largest wine group in Moldova and one of the leaders in Eastern Europe: revenues of RON 437 million in 2025 (roughly €88 million, up 14% on the previous year), six core brands - Purcari, Crama Ceptura, Bostavan, Domeniile Cuza, Bardar, Angel's Estate - seven production sites in three countries and exports to around 40 markets. The company is listed on the Bucharest Stock Exchange, and since 2025 its majority shareholder has been the Polish group Maspex. For our study, only one figure matters, and it appears in no annual report: the seven letters of PURCARI are, very probably, the most printed serif letters in Moldova. Millions of bottles a year. Labels, capsules, boxes, foil, embossing, illuminated signs, screens. At this scale, microtypography is no longer an aesthetic whim - it is production engineering. The necessary disclaimer: this is an internal study, done out of passion - started in 2020, left to rest, revisited now. We are not criticising the Purcari logo; on the contrary, we respect it enough to repair it only where the flaws show under a microscope. Perhaps one day it will land on their desk too. ## The diagnosis ![The current PURCARI wordmark](https://rt.md/academia/assets/purcari/wordmark-actual.png) The current wordmark. See anything wrong? Neither did we, at first glance. A classic serif with strong contrast between thick and thin strokes - a Didone* construction, elegant, right for a premium wine. The problems only appear once you put the dots on the map: * “Didone” - a term from the Vox-ATypI type classification (Maximilien Vox, 1954), formed from Didot + Bodoni: the category of serifs with extreme contrast, hairline unbracketed serifs and a vertical axis. References: [Didone](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Didone_(typography)) and the [Vox-ATypI classification](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vox-ATypI_classification) on Wikipedia, plus the [Google Fonts glossary](https://fonts.google.com/knowledge/glossary/didone). ![Analysis of the current wordmark - problem areas marked in red, blue, green, purple and yellow](https://rt.md/academia/assets/purcari/diagnoza.png) The diagnosis, colour by colour: red - the thin elements that disappear at small sizes; blue - the reference stroke weights; grey, green, purple and yellow - one-off details that are repeated in no other letter. ## Three findings - **Stroke weights vary** from letter to letter - and that undermines the consistency of the whole word; - **the elements marked in red** - hairline serifs and terminals - vanish entirely at small sizes; - **there are one-off details** that appear only once in the whole word and nowhere else - in a healthy type system, every form repeats and is confirmed in the body of other letters. ## Why thin strokes die A short theoretical aside, because this is where the whole game is played. High-contrast typefaces - the Didones, led by Bodoni and Didot - were drawn for a single situation: large sizes, quality printing, smooth paper. There, they shine. But scale them down on absorbent paper and two things happen: the ink spreads (a phenomenon called dot gain), and the thin strokes either fill in or disappear altogether. That is why newspapers abandoned Didones as early as the nineteenth century - and why the great type families have “optical sizes”: the same letter is drawn differently for 6 points and for 60. A wine label is the hardest case of all: textured paper, metallic foil, embossing, and a logo about 20 millimetres wide. At that size, a 0.1-millimetre line is not a line - it is a hope. ## The repair, letter by letter The general rule, valid for all seven letters: we bring the weight of the thin elements (red) closer to that of the reference elements (blue). **The typeface does not get bolder** - the average stroke weight stays practically unchanged; only the serifs and terminals become visible and consistent. Then each letter gets its own correction. ![The letter P - current, comparison, proposed](https://rt.md/academia/assets/purcari/litera-p.png) P: slightly wider, to stand up to the weight of the other letters. ![The letter U - current, comparison, proposed](https://rt.md/academia/assets/purcari/litera-u.png) U: slightly narrower. P borrowed width from U - and together they are now better balanced. ![The letter R - current, comparison, proposed](https://rt.md/academia/assets/purcari/litera-r.png) R: the leg no longer ends in an abrupt cut - it continues organically, in the spirit of the rest of the letter. ![The letter C - current, comparison, proposed](https://rt.md/academia/assets/purcari/litera-c.png) C: the lower terminal, aggressively sharp, is now softened. ![The letter A - current, comparison, proposed](https://rt.md/academia/assets/purcari/litera-a.png) A: gains the serif that was missing at the top left - and with it, balanced weight on both diagonals. ![The letter I - current, comparison, proposed](https://rt.md/academia/assets/purcari/litera-i.png) I: the simplest letter, aligned to the same system of weights. And one detail you will not see in the plates, but will feel in the word: **the kerning has been revised** . The old wordmark breathed unevenly - wide gaps between P-U and U-R, a squeeze at C-A. Now the spacing is optically even, and the word flows as one piece. ![Comparison - the current wordmark, the overlay and the proposed one](https://rt.md/academia/assets/purcari/comparativ.png) Everything together: top - current, middle - the overlay, bottom - proposed. The differences are measured in millimetres. Together, they change everything. ## The 20-millimetre test The final proof is not made at zoom, but the other way round: at the real size on the label, printing imperfections and all. Below we simulated exactly that - both wordmarks at about 20 millimetres, with the ink spread of ordinary printing: ![Print simulation at small sizes - the current and the proposed wordmark, at actual size and magnified](https://rt.md/academia/assets/purcari/testul-20mm.png) Left - current, right - proposed. Top - at actual label size; bottom - the same print, magnified. In the current version the serifs fade and the terminals melt; in the proposal the word stays whole. In numbers: the thinnest stroke in the wordmark grew by roughly 45% - from a weight that simply vanished in small print to one that holds up. The median stroke weight of the letters? Unchanged. That is exactly what “we didn’t make the typeface bolder - we made the serifs visible” means. ## The result ![The refined PURCARI wordmark with the Wineries Group lock-up - on a light background](https://rt.md/academia/assets/purcari/rezultat.png) ![The refined PURCARI wordmark with the Wineries Group lock-up - on a dark background](https://rt.md/academia/assets/purcari/rezultat-dark.png) The result, with the group lock-up - on light and on dark. If you hadn’t read the article, you would swear nothing had changed. ## Nothing changed. Everything changed. With [Gura Căinarului](https://rt.md/en/academia/gura-cainarului/) we were looking for a new sign, because the brand had not built up memory in any of its old ones. Purcari is the exact opposite: a brand with real equity, built over decades - and the last thing such a brand needs is a new idea. What it needs is for the sign people trust to be executed flawlessly, at any size, on any surface. This is the kind of design nobody makes spectacular presentations about: no one will post “wow, what consistent serifs”. But every time the logo prints cleanly on a 15-millimetre capsule, somewhere a printer will nod in respect. **Craft, at this level, is invisible - and that is exactly how it should look.** Postscript The study began in 2020 as an internal technical exercise - and took six years to mature. It has not been sent to the company; at some point, we probably will. Until then, it stays here: a lesson in how to repair a logo without changing it. The rest of the series continues in [Lending a Hand](https://rt.md/en/umarul/). Up next - [ Aug 2026 Process ### Gura Căinarului How we search for a logo Not the result, but the process: the rebrand analysed, the history of the bottles, six directions and the debate, doubts and all. ](https://rt.md/en/academia/gura-cainarului/) - [ Aug 2026 Logo ### Pelican Negru From a single line For Moldova’s only biodynamic wine, the pelican becomes a signature. Bonus: a label system made of feathers. ](https://rt.md/en/academia/pelican-negru/) [All studies](https://rt.md/en/academia/#studii) Contact ## See it differently? You can contradict us, add to this or suggest a brand for the next study. We always answer email. [Write to us: mail@rt.md](mailto:mail@rt.md)