Placa is Laura’s typographic interpretation of the most prevalent lettering style found on Barcelona’s street signs.

The origin

The development of the PLACA typeface family took place in two distinct phases, beginning as a specific commission for the documentary ‘Barcelona. The Rose of Fire’. This project, a collaboration between Mariona Omedes of Nueve Ojos and Media Pro’s production team, directed by Manuel Huerga, aimed to immerse the viewer in a 3D journey through the city of Barcelona. Music, three-dimensional sound, and narration in multiple languages were also key elements. Here you can watch the trailer.

The objective was to create a typeface that represented Barcelona. The key question was: Which typeface would best represent the city? At the time, and still today, Barcelona lacked a clear and strong typographic identity. Inspiration came from the streets of Barcelona were Laura identified that the predominant typeface in signage was a condensed geometric sans serif. The result was an incised sans serif typeface, designed with stylistic details that make it stand out in display use while remaining functional and readable.

Expansion as PLACA Typeface Family

Years later, Laura decided to revitalize Rosa de Foc, expanding it into a complete typeface family. The PLACA family now ranges from Final (Light) to Gruixuda (Black) styles and includes a Variable Font, improving its performance in small sizes and on screens. It is also used as a custom typeface on her personal website. The name Placa, meaning “Plate” in both Spanish and Catalan, was chosen in a conversation with Ferran from Toormix.

Third Phase: Expansion of the character set
PLACA is now available for licensing at Type-Ø-Tones

Placa in use: Visual identity in «Volta», designed by Toormix

The restaurant «Volta», located in Hotel Borneta, features a visual identity where typography plays a key role. The project incorporates Cigars serif typeface conbined with PLACA, as it was inspired by Barcelona’s street name plaques, reinforcing its local connection.The curved logo composition echoes the vaulted arches of Porxos d’en Xifré, symbolizing both the architectural space and the idea of a culinary journey. The typeface integrates seamlessly with a fresh, dynamic visual system, complemented by vibrant colors and subtle illustrations. You can see it here Restaurant Volta 

TypoMag. Typography in Magazines
Design, curating and editing of a publication devoted to the use of typography in contemporary magazines. Laura’s task was curating the content and design the book, with the help of Floor Koop, Claudia Parra, and Luis Mendo. The selection process was not easy, especially when there are so many new magazines every month, and many of them care deeply about good typography.

From an initial selection of 200 magazines we managed to narrow it down to 29; the design concept came from this process, from the logotype to the binding. For the logotype, I did a lettering job, customising the Poster typeface by Íñigo Jerez, with more contrast and a ‘g’ that descends lower to contain the subtitle.

The binding is simple, a paperback, both soft and handy, similar to most magazines. The cover and the jacket play together, mixing coated with uncoated, coloured paper that remains on the inside, for the addendum pages. A personal system of tags for magazine classification was created. Based on ‘typographic qualities’, these serve as a navigation system: by hand, classic, identity, custom type, logo, headline design, and designer. By quoting the designers, showing the fonts in use, and the details in actual size, the content helps to better understand magazine design.

The project received very nice reviews:

Fonts in use
Cuatro Tipos
and a video!

This book is probably one of the most recommended titles in faculties, schools, and courses that teach type design. So much so that the first edition went out of print. It takes you from a blank sheet of paper to a published typeface, covering everything from ideation, digital production, and tools to form and optical adjustments, software and distribution, typology, and best practices.

The first edition was published in Spanish by Tipo e in 2012. Now, in 2026, How to Create Typefaces is back in a revised, redesigned, and expanded edition.

From Type Designers, for Type Designers
From dipping toes for the first time to decades-in-business professionals looking for fresh insights, How to Create Typefaces always have something to consider. It is personal, approachable and insightful; a teacher, mentor and peer in book format. How are typefaces designed? What is the process? Which characters are essential? What is the difference between roman, italic and cursive? What is OpenType? In How to create typefaces Cristóbal Henestrosa, Laura Meseguer and José Scaglione answer these and many other questions in a straightforward and direct way. This publication, aimed at new and novice type designers as well as those trained in the field, unravels the fascinating task of creating a font, from sketch to screen.

Content
Foreword by Gerry Leonidas

• Motives
The thinking that happens before even starting the process of creating a new typeface.

• Writing, calligraphy, drawing and type designs
On the similarities and differences between methods of writing, calligraphy, drawing, and type design; shared characteristics, common elements and considerations when sketching typographical characters.

• Processes and methods
On approaches to sketching, proportion and structure, consistency, optical correction, planning and workflow.

• Digitisation
On digitising the sketches, principles of drawing with digital outlines, fundamental and complementary characters, sequences and derivations.

• Spacing
On basic methods to control and adjust spacing: sidebearings and kerning, the importance of counterform, numerals and vertical spaces.

• Typographic programme
On series design and family variations – italics, weight and proportional variants, optical sizing, superfamilies and other ways of extending a typeface family.

• Typography as software
On the role of digital technology in typeface design, from the basics of formatting to the possibilities of Open Type features and Unicode.

• Distribution
On legal issues and marketing, plagiarism and piracy, distribution models, custom typeface design and costings.

• Perspective
Reflections of each author on their personal experiences of the process of type design.

• Glossary and Bibliography

Reviews
→ How magazine, by Jason Tselentis (October 2017) [in English]
→ Alphabettes, by Jessica McCarty (September 2017) [in English]
→ Typedrawers, by Simon Cozens (July 2017) [in English]
→ Eye magazine, the blog (June 2017) [in English]
→ Graffica.info (2017) [in Spanish]
→ Criterion (2015) [in Spanish]
→ Eye magazine (2012) [in English]
→ Unos Tipos Duros (2012)[in Spanish]
→ TGM (2012) [in German]
→ El blog de Manuel Rivas (2012) [in Spanish]
→ Don Serifa [in Spanish]
→ Neo2 [in Spanish]

The book Cómo crear tipografías was originally published in Spanish by Tipo e in 2012 and since then it has been published in different languages.
—Cómo crear tipografías. Del boceto a la pantalla
Tipo e, March 2012, November 2012, March 2015.
—Jak projektować kroje pisma. Od szkicu do ekranu
d2d, 2014. Technical review by Adam Twardoch.
—Cómo criar tipos: do esboço à tela
Estereográfica, 2014. Translated by Priscila Farias.
—How to create typefaces, from sketch to screen
Tipo e, May 2017. Translated by Christopher Burke and Patricia Córdoba.
Item.zero, June 2026. (Revised Edition)
—Chinese edition
Citiq Press, expected September 2017. Review by Liu Zhao.

“The art is the newspaper + the newspaper is the art.”

This lettering project is part of the Anna Schuleit Haber’s public art project called “The Alphabet”. The Fitchburg Art Museum commissioned artist Anna Schuleit Haber to create a new work for the city of Fitchburg, MA, for which she proposed (and received the permission) to take over the front page of the city’s daily newspaper, the Sentinel & Enterprise, for 26 days. It is a project for the city of Fitchburg, MA (USA), revolving around the daily newspaper, a collaborative alphabet, an embedded visiting artist, a special group of reporters, and 26 typographers from around the world.

The concept of the “h”
Laura chose the letter “h” because it has no sound in the Spanish language and because of the graphic possibilities given by the two constructions. The lowercase h has a graceful and lively structure, the capital H is more serious and symmetric. Those opposites gave me a chance to make them speak to each other, instead of being silent, and also play around together visually, as a metaphor of communication. I decided to draw a lowercase h with a strong and dark outline but filled with two different, bright colors. When duplicated and reflected it creates an H, and this duplicated again. It is only discovered when the newspaper is unfolded, creating a magnificent and powerful capital H, but also a strong presence on the page. The paper has a weekday print run of 14,000 copies and many readers shared their photos of those covers as seen in their daily lives, fact that contributed even more to the purpose of the project.

The Alphabet ran from July 13 until August 11 and featured all 26 letters on the front page. Laura’s letter appeared on the 21st of July 2015 on the Sentinel & Enterprise. Laura was invited to participate in this project thanks to the recommendation of Cyrus Highsmith, one of her most admired type designers.

For the duration of The Alphabet, Anna Schuleit Haber will serve as an embedded artist at the Sentinel & Enterprise together with her interns taking the roles of reporters and designers for what is hoped is the paper’s most unusual run of front pages in its 177-year old history.

Each typographer was encouraged to make the letter as idiosyncratic and unusual, as legible or abstract, as colorful or monochromatic as is inherent to his or her style and wider creative approach. The aim is to assemble the most diverse and far-reaching collaborative alphabet ever created for the front pages of a daily newspaper.

The 26 Typographers:

A – Felix Salut, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
B – Andreas Schenk, Basel, Switzerland
C – Dan Keleher, South Hadley, MA
D – Matthew Carter, Cambridge, MA
E – Shoko Mugikura + Tim Ahrens, Garching, Germany
F – Nina Stoessinger, Den Haag, The Netherlands
G – Cyrus Highsmith, Providence, RI
H – Laura Meseguer, Barcelona, Spain
i – Therese Schuleit, Beirut, Lebanon
J – Joe Riedel, Northampton, MA
K – Francesca Bolognini, Cambridge, MA
L – Anna Schuleit Haber, New Orleans
M – Franz Werner, Providence, RI
N – Frank Grießhammer, CA
O – Russell Maret, New York, NY
P – Barry Moser, North Hatfield, MA
Q – Pam Glaven, Northampton, MA
R – Nick Benson, Newport, RI
S – Indra Kupferschmid, Saarbrücken, Germany
T – Geri McCormick, Rochester, NY
U – Catherine Griffiths, Auckland, New Zealand
V – Stephen Goldstein, Ipswich, MA
W – Nicole Dotin, Golden Valley, MN
X – Nico Bergmann, Cologne, Germany
Y – Esen Karol, Istanbul, Turkey
Z – Akira Kobayashi, Germany

Letters as big and bold as the entire newspaper page, reminiscent of illuminated letters, are intended to inspire a second and third glance from readers. After twenty-six days, any loyal reader of the paper will have a complete limited-edition set of front pages.

A limited edition of 100 sets of the 26 front pages are available for order here: http://annaschuleit.wordpress.com/contact

If you want to know more about this project visit the project website: fitchburgalphabet.wordpress.com

and watch this video “The Alphabet: Printing Process”

The Qandus multiscript font family is a modern typographic interpretation of the unique Maghribi calligraphic style as handwritten by the renowned Algerian Sufi calligrapher of the nineteenth century‭, ‬al-Qandusi‭ (‬d‭. ‬1861‭ ‬CE‭).‬ ‬The typeface and its name‭, ‬Qandus‭, ‬are a homage to this calligrapher’s unique body of work and its graphic expressiveness‭. ‬The strong graphic language of the typeface design emphasizes and explores‭ ‬the variety and visual potential of the Maghribi Kufi styles‭, ‬from its simplest to its most expressive manifestations‭. The Qandus multiscript typeface family was developed within the framework of the Khatt Foundation’s type design research project: Typographic Matchmaking in the Maghrib (2015—2017), which curator is Huda Smitshuijzen AbiFarès. The designers are Laura Meseguer (Latin typeface), Kristyan Sarkis (Arabic typeface), and Juan Luis Blanco (Tifinagh typeface).

Later, Qandus Latin (Solid, Original, and Fluid) were developed much further, and now they are available for licensing at Type-Ø-Tones

A Typographic Maghribi Trialogue

This multiscript typeface system aims at exploring a conceptual relationship between 3 different writing systems: Arabic, Latin, and Tifinagh rather than a purely visual one. It started off as an homage to the work of the brilliant calligrapher Al-Qasim al-Qandusi (d. 1861)—known as the creator of an exquisite, albeit unusual calligraphic script that is seen throughout the Maghrib—and expanded into being a study of the unique combinations of Arabic constructions in the Maghribi calligraphic style, and how to disseminate this feature of the duality of forms into the other two scripts.

The Arabic as the starting point
Based on the work of the calligrapher Al-Qandusi, we extracted 3 different textures. His work is specifically unique because he used wider pens to write this style, normally almost scrictly written in a thin pen. From Regular to Dark, basic skeletons change as well as the contrast and drawing/writing ratio in the structure of the letterforms. They all involve mixing solid and fluid constructions, highly stylised letterforms, rotations in the pen, sudden changes of contrast, but in different degrees. The Regular is the most humble with variations that are not too drastic. The Medium is the most peculiar in terms of contrast, with excess in rotations and thick/thin ratio, and is more drawn than the Regular while the latter is more written. The Dark is the one that involves drawing the most with a highly stylised interpretation of the calligrapher’s work and of the Maghribi style in general.

The Design Concept of the Latin
The biggest challenge for the design of the Latin was to create three different weights that could ‘communicate’ with the Arabic and the Tifinagh in a contemporary design context, but paying tribute to our referent, the Arabic calligraphy manuscripts, matching their spirit, energy and grace, but also to the own script. The starting point was a deep analysis of the construction of this specific sample of Maghribi writing, and the definition of how to reproduce that in a Latin Alphabet:
• Exploration of the reversed horizontal stress based on rotation.
• Definition of how to fluid and how solid it should be.
• Marking the limits between calligraphy and drawing.
• Built as a semicursive, kind of an upright italic, with some reminiscents of the calligraphic ductus in the serifs.

The expansion to Qandus Latin Solid, Original and Fluid

This ‘Original’ construction was the first to be designed, but while designing the three scripts simultaneously, the designers felt the need of designing several Stylics Sets for each weight, what eventually could become a problem for the user. The solution for the retail version was to split the fonts into three subfamilies:
• Original as a mix, in the pure style of Al-Qandusi
• Solid, Kufic structure (for the Arabic), carved (for the Tifinagh), and ‘constructed’ for the Latin.
• Fluid, more expressive (in Arabic), written on sand (for the Tifinagh), and full upright italic for the Latin.

Qandus emerged in 2015 within Typographic Matchmaking in the Maghreb, grew as a multiscript system in 2016 and earned internaational recognition. In 2021 Qandus Latin was refined and released at Type-Ø-Tones. Its development, with the Solid, Original and Fluid styles, strengthened coherence across Arabic, Tifinagh and Latin. The family was shown in The Beautiful People in 2020–21, 2021 and 2023, introducing it to a broader audience.

If you want to know more about the development of the project, I highly recommend you watch this movie “Typographic Matchmaking in the Maghrib” by Jan de Bruin.

Artistic Residence and Exhibition at AGA-LAB, Amsterdam

In Spring 2018 Laura did a graphic artist residence at the AGA LAB in Amsterdam. There, she had access to different printing techniques being silkscreen and risography the ones she used the most. This stay led to the conception of a (typo)graphic exhibition and its content. The result, all together, got the name of Expanding the Craft.

The concept and the ideas and process behind Expanding the Craft

The exhibition and its title represent what Laura started at the AGA LAB, where she used the context as a point of departure. As a type designer working in custom assignments, she defined a briefing and started sketching by hand or using calligraphy, for working later on with a computer to create the full alphabet or digitize the letterforms, whithout being the designer who will use them, but the “translator” of what the designer needs. By being a designer, he or she can also be in charge of the content, become the editor, and create a project that combines both the content and the translation, working in the full process. This is the expansion of the craft.
Her residence at the AGA LAB allowed her to work on a new project that goes from the idea to the print, a place where the available techniques had also influenced this “translation”.

Type in Art
One of Laura’s main concerns, was how to create contents in such an artistic environment (the workshop and the city).
It was a challenge! and I started the process with a close look at the work of some artist who used type and letterforms, as is the case of David Hockney, Hendrik Nicolaas Werkman, Robert Indiana, Depero or Sister Corita Kent, from pictorial to more conceptual approaches. I realized that, in many cases, they content was poetry essays or related to activism. I took pictures of lettering in Amsterdam as inspiration, and I had endless conversations with the other artists in residence, about their approach to art, type, techniques, etc. All those helped me to see my work from another dimension.

The process
Laura was fascinated by the fact that more designers are becoming producers —authors, publishers, instigators, and entrepreneurs— actively employing their creative skills as makers of content and shapers of experiences. She thought it was perfect for that moment and she did it through printing, as it was the most familiar way of production to her. She modestly started to reflect all those inputs in her sketchbook and used some of those and photos to learn and test the techniques. Later came the idea of creating an alphabet, it seemed natural as type design is  her expertise, but in a quite different way.

The artistic printing experience
She used risography combined with silkscreen for the posters and riso for the letrazine. The photographic chapter of the letrazine allowed her to get more experimental. Though she had to work with the restrictions in size and number of colors, she loved riso’s freshness and simplicity. Later she mixed it with silkscreen to expand my knowledge, the color palette and the “texture”. She did many test printings, resulting in beautiful posters and maculae that put together textures and bright colors. Finally, for the big format pieces, she mixed collage with the etching technique for the pressure. All together gave a tactile experience to my work, another dimension, much different to the one you can get with only digital techniques, and for sure of the one she expected at the beginning.

The Exhibition had 3 different parts:

“Lettering Extravaganza” is an ongoing project, consisting of a set of posters showing the ‘letters’ of a conceptual or imaginary alphabet, where every letter was designed to represent a concept or attribute applicable to letterforms, lettering, and type design. Sometimes are resolved with a letter, sometimes a word, or even a quote or a sentence from a song. Is a sort of exercise of visual poetry, where the letters and words mixture is open to associations and interpretations. All the letters are drawn by me except the O for the ‘ornamented’ one.

Description
—Size: A3+
—Printed at AGA LAB in 2 or 3 riso colors, in some posters in combination with a color printed in silkscreen
—Paper IGEPA Eos 2.0 Blauw-wit 120 g

“Personal”, the letrazine, is a sort of magazine that presents 3 different connected chapters for which I designed and wrote the content except for the presentation that was written by Elena Veguillas.
The first chapter (The power of design to change minds) is related to posters designed for protest that reflect the actual political and social moment, the second (Lettering in Amsterdam) shows photographies of the lettering of Amsterdam; and the last one features some of my Lettering Extravaganza posters, a way of showing something about myself.

Description
—Size: 22×29 cm (closed)
—22 pages, plus cover and back cover.
—Japanese binding done by hand.
—Printed in Riso at Knust Press in 9 colors: Yellow, Pink Fluo, Orange Fluo, Red, Bright Red, Green, Blue, Medium Blue and Purple
—Paper IGEPA Eos 2.0 Blauw-wit 100 g and Forever IR Orange 120 g
—Typefaces in use: Custom lettering / Memimas Dots, Multi Display & Multi Text, Navy (work in progress) and Vibra (work in progress).
—24 copies were printed
The letrazine is presented in a folder together with the poster of the P, what is also the cover, as a sort of artistic object.

The Collages (Collage 1 and Collage 2) are two big format pieces that came as a result of all the process, they are composed of different stripes coming from cropped posters put together, and placed on an embossed area on a canvas done with relief print that gives a tactile dimension to the artwork. These 2 collages felt like the real art pieces to Laura, only possible after this creative process.

Description
—Size: 100 x 70 cm
—Riso print, silkscreen and relief print
—Paper: Hahnemuhle Etching
—Unique pieces

Custom calligraphic texture for Diario Anne Frank by Gran Travesía

This is one of those special projects in which Laura could use the plasticity of writing to emphasize the design concept.
Carles Murillo, the art director of Editorial Oceano’s Gran Travesía collection, asked Laura to collaborate with him and work on a calligraphic illustration for the cover design of the title Diario. Anne Frank.

The concept behind the illustration is to imitate the writing you could find in a diary, which could have been written by Anne Frank, but without the words being intelligible. To do this, I used the authentic diary, copied some words and wrote lines in two paragraphs, which later could then be superimposed in two colours (red and black).

Questrial typeface for Google Fonts 

Questrial, originally designed by Joe Prince, is an open-source font for body text and headlines on a website. It’s modern style, suited with past characteristics of great typefaces, make it highly readable in any context. The full-circle curves on many characters make Questrial a great font to blend seamlessly with other fonts while still maintaining it’s uniqueness.

It is heavily influenced by Swiss design, similar to a grotesk style which is closely found in Helvetica. The numbers in Questrial are tabular figures so they can be used in tables and forms to enable maximum satisfaction.

Laura had the chance to work closely with the Google Fonts team on the improvement and the character set expansion of their typeface Questrial, becoming a typeface for all African languages using the Latin writing system.

The challenge of this project was to fulfill the goal of extending the character set from the basic to the Google Latin African, a task that required lots of research. The starting point was to prepare the project files to modern standards and review exemplar designs for the full glyph set, followed by the design of a prototype that extends the existing Latin design to Google Latin Plus, Google Latin Pro, and Google Latin African and Vietnamese (up to 1.351 characters).

Questrial language support includes African Latin and full coverage of Vietnamese, in addition to all Western, Central, and South-Eastern European languages. It is also provided all the monetary symbols, Small Caps, and tabular figures so they can be used in tables and forms to enable maximum satisfaction.

To download visit https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Questrial
To contribute see https://github.com/googlefonts/questrial

Read more about this subject in this case study:
Giving African languages more Latin font choices by Google Fonts, written by Susanna Zaraysky

Custom typeface and book cover series design

INTERVENCIONES is the essay collection of Trampa ediciones, directed by Nora Catelli and Edgardo Dobry. The proposal arises from the shared conviction that it is increasingly difficult to make room for some books that are considered important and that, as readers, we would like to find in bookstores, and in a careful edition in Spanish. The collection was born with the desire of giving a new life to some texts that were relevant at their time, and that, being unfindable, the publishers believe it was necessary to rescue in our present. They are sure to please and reconcile these readings with a broad public and to offer an experience that is as enriching as it is appealing.

The design proposal

It consisted of a combination of custom type, shapes and colors, representing the idea that the reader is immersed in a pleasant “trap”, meaning the desire to read, not only for its content but also for being an interesting and suggestive editorial piece. There are books, and well-designed books, that make great reads and provide the book cover with a recognizable identity, simple and with personality. The visual power brings new readers closer to classic works, from a more contemporary language.
These are the four first titles:
— Cartas a mujeres, Virginia Woolf
— Q.E.D., Las cosas como son, Gertrude Stein
— Lo imaginario y otros ensayos de crítica de la cultura, Jorge Belinsky
— Celebración. A través de la poesía americana, Edgardo Dobry

Custom wordmark and masthead for Plaza magazine

Revista Plaza is a monthly magazine edited by Ediciones Plaza. The art director, Herminio Javier Fernández asked Laura to design the masthead. The briefing was very simple: design a masthead based on personal writing, not as formal as calligraphy or brush lettering, but close to vernacular signs.

Later in time, and to celebrate the #100 issues, the magazine was redesigned but the masthead remained, although the typographic palette was renewed as a key tool in this redesign. You can more about this here (in Spanish)