In August of 2009, I was commissioned by Zoo York, a New York City based skateboard company, to visit Buenos Aires to study and document street typography. As soon as my taxi driver took the bustling street Entre Ríos, it was clear that the city and I were going to be good friends. Many of the independently owned businesses on Entre Ríos are adorned with handmade signage. These signs are painted in a style called Fileteado which is a century-old Argentinian type of lettering and floral ornamentation.

Nowadays, Fileteado is still a prominent part of the city’s landscape, coloring the façades of restaurants, bars and coffee shops. Calaveras and Diablitos are two new typefaces that were inspired by Fileteado. Stylistically, the fonts are a return to a rhythmic and playful sensibility reminiscent of Vitrina and Cuba, two fonts that I designed in 1996. Along with dynamism and dance, these new fonts incorporate a rigor and functionality essential to labelling any font a ‘workhorse.’

The names Calaveras and Diablitos, came from the name of a song by the infamous Buenos Aires rock band, Los Fabulosos Cadillacs. —Pablo A. Medina