Letrástica Recap!

Healthy distraction inside!! ↓

Hey everyone, 

It’s been a while! I am sorry to be sending this on such a bummer of a week. I am afraid for the future of my country and everyone who will be affected by the new regime’s policies — myself included. It’s feeling very dark and very bleak but I still think it’s important to cling to any little bits of community we have. This has always been a place for me to feel like I’m communicating with likeminded humans and I hope I can offer you a bit of distraction on this beautiful Friday. 

I thought it would be fun to share a Letrástica recap! I had the wonderful privilege of attending this year for the first time and I must say that I had such a good time!! I literally cried in my hotel room the last night because I wasn’t ready to leave. It was a jam packed few days but so amazing and so fun! I met so many wonderful people — some new and some who I have only met online. It felt so good to be around people who have a similar job/passion. That is so rare for us type nerds!! 

First, we need to set the stage. I think it’s important to mention that I went on this trip by myself and had never been to Guadalajara before. Also, I don’t speak Spanish outside of a few phrases including “do you speak English?”. With all that said, I felt safe and had an easy time getting around by myself. I mostly walked places and used Uber at night or if the walk was too far. I am mentioning this because I have heard from a handful of people (mostly women like myself) that didn’t go to the conference because they were nervous to travel alone. I think that’s totally fair but I am here to tell you that it was easy peasy. Every local I met was super nice and helpful even if we couldn’t communicate easily!

Guadalajara is a wonderful city with lots of interesting architecture, great food, and an awesome vibe. I stayed in the Colonia Americana neighborhood as it was just south of where the conference was being held. The neighborhood was very young and hip feeling with lots of cute restaurants and bars. I got there a day early and had a chance to walk around the neighborhood and see some of the local sights, like the main Guadalajara Cathedral. It was quite beautiful and you can even walk down into the crypts! Personally, I liked having a day to myself to get my bearings and see some things before the conference started! Alright, let’s talk about the conference: 

DAY ONE | Thursday, October 24th 

I began the day with Cyrus Highsmith’s “Letters as shapes” workshop. We made a bunch of contour drawings of hands, chairs, and then letters. It was an interesting way to draw letters and experiment with different techniques. The outcomes were varied and definitely unexpected! I love finding new ways to change how my brain expects things to work. It was very eye opening! He ended the first day with sharing his sketchbook process. It was very insightful to hear about how it connects with his type design practice. He talked about similar things at a conference last year, check it out here!

After the workshop, there were conference talks. Most of which were about the speaker’s journey into lettering or type design. It always cool to hear how others ended up getting into this! One of my fave speakers of the conference, Marte, began her career in geology and then found her way to lettering. She has a very impressive body of work. Check it out here!

DAY TWO | Friday, October 25th 

I started with Cyrus’s workshop. The second day was even more fun because we made stencils and coke can pens (tutorial here if you’re interested!). I didn’t think that stencils would be that appealing to me as I thought I would have to be really meticulous while cutting them out and would get frustrated that they didn’t look a certain way. Cyrus makes his out of newsprint though and the ephemeral quality of them means you can have a lot of fun and experimentation without any guilt or feelings of preciousness. I could’ve sat there for 8 hours just trying out different shapes and ways of filling in the stencils. Cyrus uses a brayer on an ink pad to fill his in and I think that’s a genius method. I actually went to my local art supply store when I got back and bought a little brayer! I already had ink pads in my art supply stash, of course. 

The talks on Friday were great! My friend, Kel Troughton, gave a very insightful talk about finding inspiration outside of type design. He talked about graffiti, show card lettering, and all the other places he finds interesting type. I often get asked where I find type design inspiration from my students and Kel’s talk was an answer to that question! It’s usually outside of the type world for a lot of designers. For me, it’s local signage, vintage knitting magazines, boat lettering, and in antique stores. 

Ellen Lupton also gave her talk that night and she is very funny. She shared a lot of her thoughts on type and her Type Mom series. I loved it! I agree with everything she said and got to have a lot of laughs! She had an updated version of her book, Thinking With Type, come out this year that I will definitely be checking out!

DAY THREE | Saturday, October 26th

I slept in on the last day! I was wiped out from 2 long conference days. I went to the conference around noon and shopped at the community market. There were lots of fun type goodies being sold! My favorite thing I got was a sketchbook by Romina of Tortilla Studio. She made it with lots of different kinds of paper and it’s spiral bound so it lays flat! I am very excited to get through my current sketchbook just so I can use it!! 

I caught the end of Kel’s “Drawing bolder with overlapping shapes” mini workshop and it was fun to participate in the last exercise of the workshop. We drew the negative space of a word with strips of white sticker paper on black cardstock. Very fun!! 

The talks from the last night were so awesome! I couldn’t get enough of hearing everyone’s experience. There were a lot of themes of collaboration and self discovery. The last talk of the night was by Elliot Tupac who is a Peruvian artist and his work is insane! His use of color and the scale of his murals is very impressive. His presentation was almost overshadowed by his grand finale where he cut letters out of construction paper, live with no guides — just paper and scissors in front of an audience!! He cut out a letter/A4 sized S that was perfect! All our collective jaws were on the floor!! It was an incredible way to wrap up the conference. Check out his work here!

I’d like to give a special shoutout to Jesse Ragan of XYZ Type for spending a whole hour searching for food with me!! We’re both pescatarian and most restaurants close around 8pm in GDL so it took a lot of wandering around to find food but when we did finally find a place, it was quite delicious! Then we rushed back to the after party where the speakers and people involved with the conference were taking swings at a piñata! What a very fun way to end such a wonderful conference! 

I met so many cool people and heard so many great stories of their journeys! I feel so grateful that I got to go, and that Gen, Zrinka, and the whole Letrástica team works so hard to put this conference on. It’s very special and hope it goes on forever! 

Alrighty, that’s enough blabbing for now!! 

Talk soon, 
Libbie