The Past is Always Present: Chosmos—Time Travel in Heavyweight Type with Cristian Vargas

Designer Cristian Vargas of Typozon reveals the decade-long journey behind his latest typeface, Chosmos. Beginning with graffiti explorations in the ’90s, this talk traces a path through carved stone signage in The Hague, painted elevator letters in a Mexico City art deco building, house numbers in San Francisco, and sketchbooks filled with forms sparked by a 2024 trip to Japan.

Blending personal memory with typographic research, Chosmos is both expressive and archival—a hybrid of vernacular references and original design thinking. Cristian will present photographs, sketches, and process work that show how Chosmos evolved into a family of bold, organic styles. Alongside this, he will showcase historical type specimens from Letterform Archive and highlight the work of other designers who’ve explored the fluid edge of letterform design.

Released in April 2025, Chosmos features three styles—Backslant, Regular, and Slant—that invite rhythm, contrast, and motion into contemporary display typography. The result is a meditation on how type can hold time—how letterforms serve as artifacts that connect places, people, and eras.

The Past is Always Present lecture series is part of The 10th Anniversary Symposium celebrating ten years of Letterform Archive.

This event will be recorded. Please register for the event and you will receive an email when the video is available.

You may also like the following events from Letterform Archive:

• Next Tuesday, 22nd July, 07:00 pm, For a long time, there was type and there were pictures - with Ksenya Samarskaya in San Francisco, California
• Next Thursday, 24th July, 06:00 pm, The Past is Always Present: Digital Witness—Revolutions in Design, Photography, and Film with Staci in San Francisco
• Next month, 7th August, 06:00 pm, Writing with Thread: Khipu, the Sacred Records of the Inkas with Ashok Khosla, Saoirse Byrne in San Francisco

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