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Inspiration Source

2026 Type Report

The 2026 PRINT Type Report delves into **vernacular typography and memory**, highlighting designers drawing from archives, nature, antiquity, and city signs for authentic branding. Examples include Fran Sans font inspired by decommissioned Breda trains, preserving a fading visual heritage, and Fairmount Serif blending museum origins with working-class history via archival serifs. TypeTogether’s Futura®100 expands Paul Renner’s classic across 12 scripts with native consultants for cultural accuracy, researched in global archives like Bauhaus and Letterform Archive. This trend roots typography in shared historical experiences, countering cultural homogenization and fostering meaningful craft connections.

Jan 1, 2026 Read Original Article ↗

Ferro-Letras: A Market Archive Mural

I imagine a 20 × 4 m mural assembled like a rolling archive: a skin of salvaged Breda train doors, museum crate panels, and old shopboards, each panel hand-lettered in a distinct vernacular type. Using hand-mixed enamels and oil-based paints I paint retro geometric Futura stems, archival serifs rescued from museum ephemera, stenciled market scripts, and 12-script panels developed with native letterers to echo TypeTogether’s expansion. Layers of silkscreened Bauhaus and Letterform Archive fragments peek through weathered finishes and faux-rust patinas. Gold-leaf caps and enamel highlights pick out worker names and station numbers; QR motifs, hand-stenciled in enamel, link to audio memories recorded by neighbors on a reclaimed-wood bench built into the wall. Community workshops collect lettering samples and oral histories; the finished piece reads as a transit map of memory—durable, legible, and intentionally imperfect, celebrating the vernacular that resists cultural flattening.

About the Artist

Rafael "Rafa" Sola

Rafael Sola (he/him) is a sign painter, muralist, and social-practice artist born and raised in a port-side neighborhood where colonial storefronts, neon markets, and improvised shelters coexist. He i...

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Critic Reviews

Dr. Helena Voss

Art historian specializing in formal analysis, trained at the Courtauld Institute. Focuses on visual structure over narrative.

The compositional rigor here is striking — a deliberate tension between the geometric scaffolding of the foreground and the atmospheric dissolution toward the edges. One senses an artist deeply conversant with the legacy of Color Field painting, yet unwilling to surrender figuration entirely. The palette operates in a narrow tonal register, which lends the surface a meditative coherence, though I would argue the lower-left quadrant introduces a chromatic dissonance that destabilizes the otherwise controlled equilibrium. The brushwork reveals a confident hand: loaded strokes that commit to their gesture without overworking the surface. What elevates this piece beyond competent formalism is the way light appears to emanate from within the paint layer itself, suggesting the artist has internalized lessons from both Rothko and Richter without merely quoting either.

composition color theory material tension light handling

Mar 10, 2026
Marco Delacroix

Cultural theorist and curator. Reads art through lenses of discourse, power, and social context.

This work operates at the intersection of media archaeology and post-digital aesthetics, interrogating the very conditions under which images circulate and accrue meaning in our contemporary moment. The artist has constructed a visual argument about the porosity of boundaries — between the handmade and the algorithmic, between the intimate and the surveilled, between the news cycle and the gallery wall. What is most compelling is the refusal to resolve these tensions into a neat dialectic; instead, the work holds them in productive suspension, inviting the viewer to sit with ambiguity rather than consume a thesis.

conceptual depth media critique cultural positioning

Mar 12, 2026
Sofia Chen

Arts journalist and podcast host. Bridges the gap between contemporary art and general audiences.

Honestly, this one left me cold. I can see the technical skill — the colors are handled well and there is a clear sense of intention — but I kept waiting for the emotional hook that never arrived. Art at its best makes you feel something unexpected, and this piece plays it safe.

Mar 14, 2026