Schedule

Letters in Latin America have tumbao’: rhythm, expression, and resistance. Borrowing its title from Celia Cruz’s iconic song “La Negra Tiene Tumbao,” this presentation uses the phrase as a conceptual framework to explore how Latin American letterforms move, express themselves, and respond to their social and political contexts.

Gráfica Latina is a digital, print, and traveling archive that brings together posters from Latin America dating from the 1960s to the present. Drawing from this archive, the presentation examines posters featured in the traveling exhibition Voces Gráficas de América Latina. It also explores the poster as a record of cultural and graphic histories and as an active expression of individual and collective identities shaped by Indigenous roots, African rhythms, colonial histories, cultural celebrations, and contemporary struggles.

Examples of calligraphy, lettering, typography, and vernacular letterforms demonstrate how letters create meaning and communicate cultural identity. Their connections to traditional and contemporary printing practices also reveal how material processes contribute to their rhythm, texture, and expressive power.

The presentation will also be accompanied by a poster exhibition titled La letra tiene tumbao’ at Impronta Casa Editora, as part of the Letrástica 2026 program.

Type is often classified by its most apparent features; thin serif fonts signal “elegance,” grotesque sans-serifs allude to professionalism and rounded, heavy serif fonts suggest fun and nostalgia. But how can we go beyond these broad methods of characterization to choose (or design) typefaces that capture more specific emotions?

As humans, we have an innate tendency to spot faces all around us, even in inanimate objects. Letters are no exception. This talk offers a new way of looking at letterforms; one that explores their similarities to the human face and their resulting potential to evoke nuanced emotions. At a moment when design feels less human than ever before, typographic expression opens the door to communicating feeling instead of just information.

This talk will offer a glimpse into the chaotic and colorful world of DonCarrrlos, exploring the duality of his two careers as a graphic designer and lettering artist, as well as the lessons learned and benefits of trusting your instincts. He will also discuss his first typeface family, Carrraizo, inspired by the neighborhood in Puerto Rico where he was born and raised.

As designers, all of us are ultimately borrowing from somewhere: a typeface we love, an old sign, our own handwriting, or something we saw years ago and forgot about. So then if everything we make draws on something that came before, what does it mean to design something “new”, and what happens when we keep borrowing from the same places?
This talk explores how familiar letterforms can become something of our own when we mix them with our experiences, the cultures we come from, or the work of past printers and type designers, all while remaining deeply mindful of the fact that where we borrow from matters; whose work do we keep returning to? Why do certain European traditions get treated as the starting point, while other cultures and communities barely enter the conversation? What might change if we paid more attention to the letters, stories and people around us? Through these questions, we’ll explore how type design can make room for more voices, give credit where it’s due, question who gets to decide what counts as good design, and how the things we choose to remix in our work can help us design something worth adding to the mix.

Through projects involving type design, lettering, editorial design, and graphic interventions, this talk explores the possibilities of using letterforms as a starting point for experimentation. It takes a look at different processes and applications in which typography goes beyond its communicative function to become an expressive tool capable of transforming spaces, objects, and identities.

An exploration of lettering as both a craft and a form of artistic expression. Through personal projects, commercial sign painting, and brush lettering, a look into a creative practice shaped by a fascination with letterforms. From traditional techniques to contemporary applications, it explores how letters can become a source of inspiration, experimentation, and artistic expression.

Since the systematization of written language production, typefaces have been deeply embedded in the dynamics of generating, establishing, and shifting power. These technological tools have played a decisive role in both the indoctrination and liberation of ideas and people. From individual thought to collective narratives, are we the ones who shape letters, or are they the ones shaping us?

Drawing on specific experiences, I’ll share interests, reflections, and questions about the power surrounding typefaces, in a talk that may ultimately raise more questions than answers.

Reflections on how moving from the clean and quiet visual environment of my native Switzerland to the joyful cacophony of New York City has changed my way of looking at, and thinking about, letterforms.