Speakers
Letrastica believes in and actively encourages the idea of inclusivity and plurality. Our speaker selection is made up of individuals who share the same values as we do. They are prominent professionals with a similar vision of generosity towards contributing and with a determination that has put them on the forefront of the creative industry. We are pleased to welcome our non-Spanish speaking, Latin American and Mexican guests.
Cecilia del Castillo
Ellen Lupton
Ellen Lupton is a designer, writer, and educator. The all-new edition of her bestselling book Thinking with Type launched in March 2024. Other books include Design Is Storytelling, Graphic Design Thinking, Health Design Thinking, and Extra Bold: A Feminist, Inclusive, Anti-Racist, Nonbinary Field Guide for Graphic Designers.
She teaches in the Graphic Design MFA program at Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore (MICA), where she serves as the Betty Cooke and William O. Steinmetz Design Chair. She is Curator Emerita at Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum in New York City, where her exhibitions included Herbert Bayer: Bauhaus Master and The Senses: Design Beyond Vision.
Marte
Marte is a Latin American Graphic Designer and Lettering Artist from Argentina, now based in NYC. Inspired by 90's cartoons, graffiti, 60s psychedelia, and the candy packaging of her childhood, Marte infuses fun and vibrancy into her designs, creating a perfect blend of nostalgia and contemporary cool.
Her art has attracted attention from an impressive list of clients, including artists such as Paul McCartney, Lizzo, and Red Hot Chili Peppers, as well as brands like Adobe, Nickelodeon, and Disney. In 2023, she was recognized as a TDC Ascender and Young Guns winner.
Kalapi Gajjar
With an art curator mother and a graphic designer father, Kalapi Gajjar was immersed in visual culture from an early age.
After studying graphic design at the Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda, in his home town of Vadodara in Gujarat, Gajjar spent a year as an art director at Wieden + Kennedy's Delhi office.
Frustrated with the lack of contemporary typefaces available for Indic scripts, he left India to complete a masters in type design at Reading University – where he met Universal Thirst co-founder Gunnar Vilhjálmsson.
After leaving Reading, Gajjar relocated to London to work on projects for international foundry Monotype, before joining London type specialist Dalton Maag, where he oversaw the production and engineering of typefaces for brands including Nokia, Intel and HP. In 2016 he launched Universal Thirst with Gunnar Vilhjálmsson.
Francisco Gálvez
Francisco, known as Pancho, lives in Santiago, Chile. He studied Graphic Design after the end of the dictatorship in 1990 and discovered his passion for type design in a self-taught manner while working. This interest led him to teach typography at Diego Portales University and the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, and to publish the book Educación tipográfica in 2004.
His career was solidified when he won first place in the Morisawa type design competition in Japan in 2002. Since 2014, he has been part of PampaType, and in 2018, he published Hacer y componer, which was also released in Polish in 2019. He has traveled across South America sharing his expertise in typography and type design.
Alicia Márquez
Alicia Márquez is a letter and text artist who uses typography, lettering, and calligraphy as tools to constantly search for expression.
Graduated as a graphic design from the University of Buenos Aires–where she also taught typography–she worked as an art director in different advertising agencies and in-house design departments in Buenos Aires, Miami, and Chicago.
She has learnt and practiced calligraphy and lettering for 14 years, and letter carving for 6 years. She defines herself as an intense observer and eternal student. As an artist, Alicia thinks the journey is more important than the outcome itself, and she encourages an open interpretation and constructive criticism. As a designer, she is always looking for the clear, simple, minimalistic way to communicate. The artist and the designer in her meet every day, in every project, and usually (but not always) they get along well.
Cyrus Highsmith
Cyrus Highsmith is a letter drawer, teacher, author, and graphic artist. He teaches type design at Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). He wrote and illustrated the acclaimed primer Inside Paragraphs: Typographic Fundamentals. In 2015, he received the Gerrit Noordzij Prize for extraordinary contributions to the fields of type design, typography, and type education. In 2017, he and his type foundry, Occupant Fonts, joined Morisawa.
Sandra Morales
Sandra Morales is a Mexican type and graphic designer with a strong interest in history and linguistic diversity. Her passion for letterforms took her to Argentina, where she pursued a Master's in Typography at the University of Buenos Aires. Her graduation project, Malinali, was recognized with the 2024 Gerard Unger Scholarship Merit Award by TypeTogether.
In 2022, her collaboration in creating the "Bice" typeface, along with Camila Pire and María Laura Olcina, was recognized at the Novena Bienal de Tipos Latinos. A year earlier, in 2021, Sandra was the recipient of The Malee Scholarship, funded by Sharp Type, a grant funded by Sharp Type to support women from underrepresented racial and ethnic groups who show a strong commitment to a career in type design.
Sandra is also a member of Alphabettes and Times New Woman, communities dedicated to promoting exchange, support, and visibility for women in disciplines related to lettering, calligraphy, and type design.
Kel Troughton
Kel Troughton is a type designer, lettering artist, graffiti writer, and educator, living in Oakland CA. Kel was a co-curator of the exhibition “Subscription to Mischief” at Letterform Archive, showcasing the 1990s graffiti community and the independent publishing that documented it.
He started writing graffiti in 2000 and has continued to add letter-based interests ever since. He studied Type design at Type@Cooper West, worked at Monotype, and currently works on freelance type and lettering projects. His company Overlap Type focuses on type design that utilizes ideas from his graffiti experience. In short, Kel is a letter person.
Alexis Qrear
Alexis is an art director specializing in branding. On the other hand, 'Q.rear' (Q.) is a former purist designer obsessed with letters and their anthropological context.
As an art director in advertising by day and a creative director in fashion by night, he has gained extensive experience in a wide range of projects. His work spans from collaborations with international brands on advertising campaigns and rebranding to designs for artists in the U.S., England, and Russia, as well as the development of collections for various clothing brands in Mexico and the U.S.
With a mutable approach, he always seeks to explore stylistic canons, push boundaries, and develop proposals that fall between what is technically correct and intentionally 'imperfect.'
Antonio Mejía Lechuga
Antonio is originally from Huauchinango, Puebla, and currently resides in Querétaro, Mexico. As a graphic designer, his main interest focused on corporate identity, and he traveled to Barcelona to pursue postgraduate studies in that field.
During his early professional practice, when he avoided touching a node out of respect for the letters, he gradually developed an interest in typography to apply it to identity and branding. Later, he pursued a master’s degree in Typeface Design and had the opportunity to start publishing his first commercial retail projects, which allowed him to become independent and develop custom typeface projects for clients such as La Salle University, Gatopardo Magazine, América Móvil, and others.
His work has received national and international recognition, and in recent years, he has been teaching, giving talks, and conducting typography design workshops at various universities and companies across the country. He is currently continuing to develop custom fonts and publishing retail fonts through his independent foundry, LechugaType.
Elliot Tupac
Elliot Tupac is an artist from Lima – Peru; his versatility in silkscreen printing, calligraphy, lettering and urban art from Lima, Peru. Without formal education in arts or design, Elliot was raised by the family tradition of Huancaino artisans, thus becoming a true promoter and creator of popular art. His spontaneous calligraphy and colorful prints are easily recognizable in any of his large murals or chicha posters.
Elliot Tupac's work and career have re-signified the craft of drawing vernacular and popular letters from Peru and South America.
He has exhibited in many galleries in Latin America, the US, Europe, Asia and the Middle East, as well as participated in many urban art events and developed conferences on Art and Lettering. His work has been published on many websites.
Obsessed with lettering and typography; he participates in many design projects such as for Marca Perú, Google, Creative Review, Puma, Lollapalooza, Dunkin Donuts, Saga, BBVA, Panamerican Games 2019, etc.
Beatriz Lozano
Beatriz is a designer, typographer, and educator exploring how technology can push typography to exist at the intersection of the physical and digital world. She teaches interaction design at Parsons and was formerly a design director at Sunday Afternoon.
Originally on the path to becoming a mechanical engineer, Beatriz shifted to graphic design as her involvement in immigrant rights activism exposed her to the power of visual communication. Her work has been recognized by the ADC, TDC, Communication Arts, and PRINT. In 2022 she was awarded the Art Directors Club Young Gun Award, which recognizes the world’s best creatives under the age of 30. In 2023 she was a recipient of the TDC Ascenders Award and the Cooper Hewitt National Design Award. Some of her clients include ESPN, Target, and NPR.