Board candidate Leonardo Vázquez

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Please provide us with your bio.

Leonardo Vázquez is an editorial designer. He is a Typographer by the ANRT (Atelier National en Recherche Typographique). Leonardo holds a Master’s degree in critical theory from 17.org. He is the founder of the Asociación Mexicana de Tipografía and creator of Wikitype, a visual online platform for a collaborative multilingual type classification. Leonardo works at his studio in Mexico City.

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Give us a sentence that perfectly describes your love for type.

Type researcher / critical typography.

Before this year, were you a member of ATypI? If so, when?

Yes, maybe last year.

Were you previously a member of the ATypI board, or a country delegate? If so, when?

No.

Describe your experience/involvement with ATypI activities.

Tell us about your current and past involvement with other type and design organizations.

For me, everything started seriously since we (Isaías Loaiza, Gabriel Martínez Meave, and myself) attended TypeCon in Seattle in 2006. At the time, we presented ”Forging the Character,” a timeline of Mexican typography up to the first decade of the 2000s.

Since then, I’ve learned and grown professionally. At the same time, I taught at many different schools and produced some typefaces of my own (in 2005, my typeface Bunker won the TDC award) and others that have had some local success here in Mexico. I have published in Myfonts the typeface Algarabia for a magazine of the same name (2016). Over time, I realized that the reality of type education and the development and evolution of the type of business in Mexico was completely different than in other countries. Among other things, in the awareness of typography by the “public.”

I helped fund and have been President of the Asociación Mexicana de Tipografia up to now (until 2025) when my second period ends (three years in each term). As an educator, I realized that there is a need to have a tool to understand the ADN of any typeface beyond marketing trends, so after two years of research and study, I developed a project called Wikitype as part of my research to become a Critical Theory Master. José Scaglione was one of my tutors. Wikitype is a visual tool to understand, learn, and teach typography in a different way made by type users, designers, programs, and educators. It’s in progress.

Describe your leadership experience with other nonprofits and work with conferences, workshops, publications, teaching, or other activities in the type, design, tech, and related communities.

In 2002, we founded the AMT (Mexican type association). The aim of this organization is to develop the education of graphic visual culture and typography nationwide. We did this just when the COVID pandemic started. So, for two years, we held online conferences to create awareness of the topic and invited friends and international personalities (international friends 🙂 to give lectures about their work from France, Spain, Portugal, Argentina, etc.) We invited friends (locally) to talk about topics that are interesting to us, that are interesting locally, like, the link between editorial design and typography, or experimental type, technology, the role of Latin American women in the editorial and typographical field, and, of course, indigenous languages, a topic that we are aware Mexico has a lot to work on.

It’s my second three-year term as president, and 2025 will be my last year. I can say that the Mexican type scene is more complex than it seems. It is very fragmented because a lot of elements intersect with it: Differences between generations (age), visual culture in general, technology, exterior trends, the way typography is taught, and other kinds of festivals of type events that have their particular agenda, among other things.

Fortunately, we have made advances in the topic of indigenous languages. My aim is to one day have a “Mexican set” that will become a standard for all the almost 70 languages that are still spoken in the country. We know this issue is NOT solved by “designing” a new typeface with new signs. It is way more complex than that. We are in touch with the Secretaría de Educación Pública, who has done a lot of work on this matter. I like to think that in the next decade, Mexico will be an important pole of type design in the continent, but this has to be done as a community, not as individuals. There are a lot of type designers, but no one to produce according to Mexican possibilities ($$$) and to produce to the world a different point of view about typography.

Talking about decolonization: The site of the AMT: https://www.tipomx.org/em/

Why should ATypI members elect you to represent them on the board of directors?

I’ve been part of the naissance, development, and evolution of type design in my country. I lived in Europe (Paris) for several years, giving me a vision of what design can do for society. I know that Mexican type has the potential not only as a business but also to add something new and valuable to the world of languages and typographic design in the world. We need to have allies to the cause and to have another point of view besides the mainstream discourse that we know pretty well.

My interest is to widen the scope of designers in my country and vice-versa through activities, publications, workshops, grants, conjoint research programs, artist residences, student exchange programs, conferences, field trips, etc. The association I helped to create also has these objectives in its goals. It could be useful. Thank you.

_{Answers and materials were provided by the candidate as part of their self-nomination for the ATypI board election. Candidate is a paid ATypI member in good standing and agrees to remain so if they are elected.}