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Letras Hechas a Mano by Roxana Martinez Vergara was reviewed by Ivan Castro in BLAG 04. This is pasted in full below.
Specifications
- 170 × 240 mm (6.7 × 9.5 in)
- Hardcover, 272 pages
- 750 g (27 oz)
- ISBN: 9789587981841
- Published 2022
Review
Letras Hechas a Mano (‘hand-made letters’) is written and compiled by Roxana Martínez Vergara, co-founder of the Populardelujo collective.
The book, which is the result of many years of research, is not just about sign painting; it is about the relationship between the act of writing or painting letters and the human being.
The volume consists of four parts. The first features a history of the teaching of handwriting in Colombia. This is followed by César Augusto Peña’s review of an array of texts about the connections between education, ideology, and popular graphics in Latin America.
The text then moves more firmly into the realm of sign painting, with the third section forming the core of the book. In it, Roxana seeks to dispel the popular narrative of sign painting around the world being eaten by the digital monster; the truth is that this is only a very partial view and, in Latin America, hand-painted signs have never actually vanished.
Through interviews with three Colombian sign painters, we learn that, due to economic and social reasons, not everyone has access to computers and digital printers. Also, it’s often just easier and cheaper to keep painting signs by hand with rules and aesthetics that run parallel to graphic design.
Complementing the interviews, Roxana facilitated some activities to raise the collective voice of the painters. These workshops, and an instructional booklet, are discussed in the book.
The icing on the cake comes from Fernanda Martins, closing out the text with a photo gallery and an essay about the letters painted on fishing boats in the Brazilian Amazon. (See the review of Letras que Flutuam in BLAG 02.)
This book is beautifully designed and produced, and offers a magnificent contribution to our understanding of sign painting traditions beyond the predominant Anglo-Saxon tendency.
Reviewed by Ivan Castro
