Colonia del Sacramento: Handcrafted Heritage Typeface

Colonia Typo is a typeface project rooted in the visual identity and handmade artistry found in the historical city of Colonia del Sacramento, Uruguay. The font is meticulously designed based on an extensive photographic archive of the city's iconic hand-painted street mosaics.

This project goes beyond simple tracing; it’s an effort to capture the organic, a priori inconsistent nature of the lettering system created by non-designers over decades. Colonia Typo explores the relationship between the craft of hand-lettering, colonial forms, and contemporary digital design.

By defining design parameters (such as weight, proportions, and axes) from the analysis of these varied strokes, we created a coherent digital typographic system that pays tribute to the original diversity. The result is a highly usable font that functions as a tool for identitary conservation, bridging a unique historical craft with the modern world of design.