The Phase Collective

YZR

Weekly sketch número 44.

Tags: embroidery, typography, yzr

TypoCow

Weekly sketch #33 – forgot to post this one. Cows in m’front yard. And a typography project I’ve been tinkering with for a few weeks.

Tags: costa rica, cow, typography, vaca

Cabuya

Weekly sketch #32. Found type, vectorized and dropped over a view of Cabuya, Costa Rica, from the rocks/reef.

Tags: AD, beach, cabuya, hand painted, ocean, typography

Caña

Flor de /Caña/ – sugar cane fields outside of Grecia, Costa Rica. Coca-cola-like script typography from Flor de Caña’s rum labels. This is weekly sketch número 30.

Tags: caña, costa rica, script, sugar cane, typography

MAT No 942

Some raw, hand-stenciled, painted typography pulled from the side of a water taxi on the Río San Juan in Nicaragua. Weekly sketch número 26, a few days late, but rushed with care.

Tags: nicaragua, paint, stencil, typography, wood

Bridge

Weekly sketch número 21. Bridge over water on the road to Arenal. PHase’d up.

Tags: photography, typography

Grove

A nice little pine grove wrapped in magentas. Weekly sketch #19.

Tags: magenta, quatro, spanish, trees, typography

Roadscape15

Fifteen weeks of sketches, 35+ to go. Custom numerals over a roadside iPhone snap.

Tags: costa rica, roadscape, typography

CU BA

Typography sampled from a wall mural (wonderfully irregular), Soviet apartment blocks, Caribbean colors and Greek Orthodox mosaics. So many visual ways to slice the cultures and layered histories of Cuba. Here’s one narrow attempt in sketch número 14. Might try a few more of these along the way.

Tags: architecture, cuba, mosaic, typography

A\C

The typographic landscape in Costa Rica is dominated by bright colors and hand-painted typography. Some are done with machine-like detail, worked off of existing typefaces and vector references. Others are thrown up on whatever space is available, and the designer just goes to town with whatever flows from their hand. Loose or no rules, blatant inconsistencies in scale and repeating forms.

And it’s all wonderful. After a decade+ of computer-aided typography, I’m finding myself thoroughly refreshed. The sketchbook stage is the final stage, not just the exploration process. Here’s weekly sketch number 9, built off of iPhone snaps from the last few days, constructed in just under an hour to start my Monday:

Tags: hand painted, signage, technology, typography