"The old posters and signs in the traditional
neighborhood of Buenos Aires called Montserrat
inspired me to design a typeface that rescues
the beauty of urban typography from the first
half of the twentieth century. The goal is to
rescue what is in Montserrat and set it free,
under a free, libre and open source license, the
SIL Open Font License.
As urban development changes this place, it will
never return to its original form and loses
forever the designs that are so special and unique.
To draw the letters, I rely on examples of lettering
in the urban space. Each selected example produces
its own variants in length, width and height proportions,
each adding to the Montserrat family. The old
typographies and canopies are irretrievable when
they are replaced.
There are other revivals, but those do not
stay close to the originals. The letters that
inspired this project have work, dedication, care,
color, contrast, light and life, day and night!
These are the types that make the city look so
beautiful.
This is the Alternates family, a sister to
the Regular and Subrayada families. Many of
the letterforms are special in this family, and
'Subrayada' means 'Underlined' in Spanish."
- Julieta Ulanovsky