Christian Solorzano [01:07]

Hello, you're listening to Underscore, a show by the Chicago Graphic Design Club. I am your host, Christian Solorzano. And on today's episode, I share my conversation with Type designer and researcher Cris Hernández, and we explore how his early fascination with anime symbols evolved into a deep commitment to typography research and design, with a particular focus on indigenous languages and writing systems. Together, we discuss his work expanding typography support for underrepresented communities and his views on the current state of the type industry.

Through personal experiences across Chicago, L.A. And New York, Cris offers insights on different design communities and shares valuable advice for both emerging designers and industry leaders about the importance of considering who we might be excluding from our design decisions. This is a thoughtful and inspiring conversation about representation, responsibility, and the future of typography and design. As always, thank you for tuning in. Enjoy the conversation, and we'll talk to you soon. Hey, Cris, how's it going? Nice to see you again.

It's been a little bit over a week since we had our events here in Chicago where you gave an awesome presentation on your typography research and your background. But what I didn't get a chance to hear you speak about extensively was how you got into graphic design, into typography. I know that Pokémon, Digimon, Yu-Gi-Oh cards, and metal band logos were kind of like that catalyst that sparked your love for Communication, visual communication.

So can you walk us through that journey as a young kid being exposed to the power of visual communication and typography?

Cris Hernández [03:24]

I think I was around preschool and I come back home and I already liked to draw since I was pretty young. I think I spent most of my time at this little table in preschool where I would just draw all day. And, I, as I go home, I'd watch any kind of 4Kids show that was on, like Yu-Gi-Oh or Digimon or Pokémon. And I, that grasped my attention.

But for some reason, I think I just really gravitated to the, especially to the little symbols that were used for all of them. Like Pokémon had like little elemental symbols, or Digimon had their little symbols per character. Yu-Gi-Oh also had some kind of element or and I don't know, for some reason I really liked those. I think at some point I mostly focused on drawing those to myself.

I had like a little notebook, and I would— I remember even trying to draw like the fire symbol, which is like the kanji symbol for fire from like Yu-Gi-Oh, because I just didn't understand it. It just— I don't know if I'm in preschool thinking that, I think it's cool because it's cryptic, but I imagine that it was just so mysterious to me that was what intrigued me the most. This like little thing that I— and I didn't even know how to read yet. I'm in preschool.

I guess I know like the alphabet, but just this little symbol that like meant a lot to me, like meant a lot, as in like, it could mean fire or magic or spell, or, all those things. Yeah, that just like really interested me. So I don't know, from there on, I guess I just always liked looking at letters. I used to steal tags off clothing when I would like go shopping with my mom. It'd be like a Marshalls or something.

If I found like a little logo that I just liked what it looked like, or it could have just been like the colors or something about it, I just like kind of— I just plucked it off and I would put it in my pocket, and I'd have a little box where I just collected all my tags. As I got older, I drew more, but I didn't really like to draw letters.

I think I was really— I just drew the things that I felt most confident in drawing. And I felt like I just couldn't draw letters. I had people in my class that would draw like bubble letters and stuff, and even graffiti, and I just never wanted to attempt it because I just felt like, oh yeah, I'm not good at that. But I still liked these like cryptic symbols and imagery when I was little. So I went into like high school.

My freshman year, I went to this school in Chicago, De La Salle. I went there for a year and they had a laptop, like a ThinkPad, that was like a ThinkPad Wacom tablet. And you could turn the screen over and draw on it. And so I was just drawing on there. And at the same time, I'm like, hanging out with friends back in my neighborhood.

And South Chicago and East Side, and there's like a big metal scene happening, like a ton of like Mexican like death metal, metalcore bands all over the place just having shows in like their parents' garages. Now I go with my friends and I thought that was really cool, and I really liked how like the logos looked of like the more mainstream bands in those genres. And when I was in— so on that laptop I had a like a Photoshop Mini or something like that.

And I would just draw on there, and I just had an idea that like, oh, maybe I could like pitch a shirt to one of these bands. And so one of them actually was like, yeah, totally, make some shirts. And it was very simple. There was no— it was just you do on your own, you make the money off the shirts. We just want people to wear a shirt that has like our band name on it.

So I got free range to just draw like a really gloopy-looking character with some like also gloopy text, and I would get like an iron-on paper printed out and yeah, iron it on like a Gildan shirt, or like not even, like a Fruit of the Loom shirt or something that I would get at like a Walmart.

And then I would just go, they'd go to the show, they'd get a little table for me, and then I would just sell the shirts and I'd keep all the money. And I thought that was really cool. I guess my freshman year I didn't exactly know what I wanted to do. I just thought this was just like a cool thing I'm doing on the side or for fun.

But, I didn't really think I was gonna stay at that high school, or I didn't really want to stay at that high school. So I was looking for other options, and I had a friend from elementary school who was playing guitar at this high school, at this other high school, telling me, they're like, oh yeah, they have an arts program as well. Like a fine art program, you should try to apply and you can maybe get in. It was the Chicago High School for the Arts.

So I applied and I got in. And then, so that was— that is the first at the time, well, still is the first public art high school in the city of Chicago. There's another one, the Academy, but that's like a private school. So we would have been the first graduating class of this school. So I entered in my sophomore year and there was a graphic design course. And I, yeah, I like really, I really enjoyed it.

You'd have academic classes from like 8 AM or 9 AM to 1, and then from 1 to 2 you'd have lunch, and then 2 to 5 PM you would have your art classes. And I was really fortunate that like, I think on like every Wednesday I had a graphic design class with a teacher named Brian Swanson, who was like great, and he like just had really interesting classes and assignments.

And I familiarized myself with like Illustrator and some other software at the time, and it was a totally different way of— I had no idea what graphic design was. I just was like, oh, I'm making graphic tees. But that interest really transferred over because it just kind of widened my spectrum of like, oh, what other things you could do visually to communicate things. And yeah, I like really fell in love with that.

So Moving on after that, my junior year and senior year, you basically could choose to have like a quote, like a major, which just meant you get to ask what classes you'd like to take more of. And I decided that I wanted to take more graphic design courses, which were still taught by Ryan Swanson. And during my junior year, as I'm taking one of the graphic design classes, we're doing like a branding project.

According to Ryan, I think the projects were very similar to what he was giving in the colleges he was teaching. And so it was this branding project that we're all working on, and I'm just hacking up a logo. At the time, I think it was Century Gothic or something. I'm reading about it while I'm working on it, and it says it's geometric, and I don't know yet, but I'm thinking, this is not geometric. It's totally not a perfect circle, and it's not using perfect shapes.

And then my, and I'm hacking away at it thinking that I'm like correcting it, just totally wrong. But my teacher sees me doing that, Ryan, and he goes, well, have you ever thought about making your own? And that didn't even occur to me that like that was a career or a thing that people do. I guess, yeah, I just hadn't— I was just so busy on the graphic design part that I hadn't thought about— I mean, I'm 17, I don't really know any of that stuff.

And I missed the like Tumblr wave of graphic design. I wasn't on Tumblr for high school. And yeah, so that blew my mind. And then he— I think he had donated, or somehow the Helvetica documentary was at my school, and I could just request it from the head of the art department, which I went and I did, and I brought it home with me, and I watched it like every day for a week, and it like blew my mind.

And then I'm a 17-year-old in my parents' basement watching the Helvetica documentary, and I'm like, this is what I want to do. This is what I want to— like, this is my career. And then from there on, I go on to my senior year of high school and I'm working on typefaces, which are really just alphabets that I'm drawing in Illustrator. But from there on, afterwards, I'm looking for a college and I get into the California Institute of the Arts.

I found that their program was really interesting. There was no typeface design major. Majors in the United States, which I didn't know at the time. I just thought like, oh yeah, there probably is one. And as I was looking, I stumbled upon CalArts and I visited and I really liked the program, even if it, I wasn't going to find a type-centered program, but I did like what I saw in regards to type.

And so I went there and yeah, from there on I got into graphic design.

Christian Solorzano [12:04]

And pursuing typography, when it comes to graphic design, it's such a, in my opinion, it seems like a very unconventional path in the sense that usually when people pursue design, it's because they want to do commercial work.

They want to do, they want to work with the big names. They want to do advertising. They want to do, they want to design a billboard. I, when I was in, when I was in school, for some reason, designing a billboard seemed like once you've designed something at that scale, that's how you know you're very good and you've kind of— bigger is better kind of mentality.

When you were speaking about your research that you do today when it comes to typography and a lot of the work that fascinates you, none of it is commercial and none of it is something that has a goal of extracting or monetizing or any of that kind of stuff. So can you maybe talk to us a little bit about why you didn't want to pursue or why that wasn't a path that you wanted to do?

Because to me, doing band logos, especially for local bands, it's like a pretty grassroots, like DIY type of approach to design. Did you ever want to do the big companies? Did you ever have dreams of Doing the commercial stuff? Because I know you did that for a while, but maybe talk to us a little bit about that.

Cris Hernández [13:32]

I should have said, when I was talking about not knowing what I wanted to do, at least my freshman year of high school, I did have an idea before, I guess even before my junior year where I was like, oh, I want to be a type designer. I had a vague idea in my head during my sophomore or junior year that I wanted to go to school for architecture. I was really into architecture since I was— I mean, my dad went to school for architecture.

My dad works in construction management. It's been around me like my whole life, the books. And we have like Ricardo Legorreta books in our home, and my dad would, talk about it, and I'd see him draw at the table. And I wanted to see— when I was in high school, I just wanted to see what kind of architecture I could get into, and I'd look at stuff. And so I had this idea that I would get into that.

But yeah, once I got into graphic design that just felt more in line with my— I don't know, I think I just like things more at a smaller scale, which makes sense for type design. And I think I just was always into the details. I think I wanted to be— I think I got out of high school thinking that I was going to be this brand designer or something.

I was kind of lost in this, in the sauce at some point entering high school, or sorry, entering college because, I had been in— I had been gaining experience for like the last 3 years, and I had already kind of— I don't know, I'm trying to think what the— I thought I was the shit. I entered college thinking like, oh yeah, I'm gonna be like that graphic designer that's like in the lab coat, and I'm gonna be working for like the big brands.

I'm gonna be doing all the cool stuff. I thought I was gonna be like a Wim Crowell or something. And then I guess when I got to college, I don't know, something happened. I think it's just that, I had 3 extra— like I mentioned, I had 3 extra years to think about graphic design and type design. That's all I— even though I didn't really work as a type— like, I didn't really— I wasn't really drawing a font. I hadn't really drawn any font at all.

I just had the— I had just been mulling it over in my head for like 2 to 3 years. The same goes with graphic design. I was no practitioner despite having like an internship in high school. But I basically like, at some point in high school, my desire to like play video games and stuff like decreased in favor of me just like going on my computer and playing on Illustrator or something, or just like reading stuff or watching stuff or just thinking about it.

At some point I remember being 18 and I was trying to write down, write about my own little design manifesto, what I thought about typography. And oh yeah, I don't really remember. I think it was definitely nothing provocative. I was just trying to come up with in my own words how it's about each alphabet is a way to express yourself or something. I don't know. I had seen a meme before a couple years ago that someone made. I don't remember who it is.

It's depicting some philosopher, I think, and they're going like, a typeface is a Trojan horse for ideology. I think I was like 18 trying to say something like that. But yeah, basically I'm just saying that I had these 3 to 2 years to just think about graphic design, that by the time I was in a very specific way where I was like, yeah, I'm just gonna go and like become like some big shot in the studio doing like the cool big work, like the glamorous work.

But by the middle of my college, I had like burnt out on that excitement. I had no more steam to be interested in that kind of work. I don't know. I just hit some wall, and I just started to like sulk from there. I didn't know like I was like, why did I— why was I excited about this work? What does it even mean in the end?

I got like really like— I don't want to say nihilistic about it, but I think it ran across with me starting to think more about politics, and I just like didn't find it interesting anymore.

At this— yeah, at the same time, I want to say that the politics part plays with I had been taking some critical studies classes, which are basically your general ed classes, and I had taken a class— I mean, a lot of these are just critiquing these older— the way we've seen these practices for years, like the Madison Avenue for graphic design and advertisement. And the staff at CalArts, they're quite experimental, or they have at least an experimental background.

So they themselves are— their presence, they're always in class. Questioning those types of figures in design. Yeah, so what I think what really helped is that I had an architecture class for general ed class in college that introduced me to an architect named Lucien Kroll.

Now, Lucien Kroll was, I believe, a Belgium architect who just passed away a few years, but he was incredibly influential on me because the teacher presented him as an architect who focused on something called participatory design, which just meant either coming in on existing work or developing new projects that were for public service or for people who were already living there or were going to live there.

There was a work of his where he asked people living in a housing unit if they wanted to have either an expansion on their kitchen or if they wanted a balcony, and everyone got to choose one of the options. And so from the outside on the of the building, you just see like, random balconies and random extensions. It's up to interpretation if that looks nice or not, but the point was that it was specifically made per the— per person, like what they would— what they wanted.

And I thought that was really interesting, and I— at the time, I didn't know how that connected to how I could do that in graphic design, but that gave me an idea of like, oh, like I really like the idea of public service, that seems really interesting, but that's totally out of the way from what I see right now in my field of vision in terms of career options in graphic design.

I have classmates who— this is no diss at all— I had classmates who were interested in the Google job, the Nike job, the Apple job, and I didn't really care about it. It just didn't excite me at all. Something I just wasn't— or even like the big advertisement jobs or the pentagram and all that.

I just— none of the work interested me because I just felt like it was— I mean, it was just all— it just served— I don't have a fancier way to say it, but it was just like in the service of capitalism. And I think I didn't really get that in the moment, but I knew— but like at the time, like that's what was that's what I was thinking. I couldn't really form it into words, but I knew that I didn't like that idea.

Christian Solorzano [20:51]

So you've talked about design as being something that is more than just aesthetics and what it looks like, but more so about what it represents, what it means, and sort of its context. And I'd love for you to speak with us a little bit about your the research that you do today and why it matters. Why does typography research matter, and why should a graphic designer care about where their fonts come from?

Cris Hernández [21:27]

Yeah, I have always thought that— I wish, I don't know, maybe it's being done somewhere, and I'm happy if it is, but I wish it was more widespread that alongside— if people are going to do graphic design, this probably means for this probably applies to a lot of industries, but, I can only speak on graphic design at least. But I wish alongside graphic design people would take some sort of class that taught them about ethics and also like hegemony.

I feel like that's a big— like just a huge— that would make a huge difference because, most times, you get into a program and they kind of just give you something to draw. It's like you get into a program and it's like, okay, we're gonna just draw this character set and we're not gonna really discuss why we do it. Just know that like this is just the industry standard.

We all do it just because we all do it, and you're gonna draw it and just make it look as usable as you can or as cool as you can or whatever. And like we're just not expanding on anything. And that, that's, I think, really troublesome because like, I don't know, people get very comfortable once you've given them like a standard, and no one wants to like kind of step out of it. I mean, it's also difficult. I get it.

You're not— a lot of us, no one is really taught how to step out of it. We're mostly just taught like how to just do something, or just how to do that one thing, but not how to like explore other options. But yeah, I think like aesthetics are cool, but I always have to think about like, but who are they for, like who are you serving?

You can make a really cool font, but— and I get it, I'm not telling everyone that we all have to draw like every script, like that's pretty impossible. But at least, if we're talking about Latin, it's like things can look very experimental, but the accessibility of it is totally not.

Yeah, the font can look like super cool and do a bunch of things, but in the end of the day, it's still only being serviceable for the same amount of people that it would have been like 20 years ago.

Christian Solorzano [23:34]

The last time that you and I spoke, we talked about design as a political tool. Many of the decisions that we make, whether it's, the colors that we're choosing or the typefaces that we're using or the formats or proportions or stock imagery, like anything, everything that we use carries some— it carries some ramifications or like there's some consequence to what we create.

And I think sometimes those consequences aren't incorporated or they're not considered because having conversations about certain things might be a little bit uncomfortable or it might frame you as a buzzkill. If you're telling someone that maybe they shouldn't use Helvetica for this protest poster, that maybe they should use something else. Maybe they should make their own. Maybe they should do hand lettering instead. How do you see that intersection of politics, graphic design, typography? What do you see the responsibility of a designer today in 2025?

Cris Hernández [24:43]

I have 2 thoughts. And one is what I see in the process of, in the beginning, how do I say it? The first part would be the process of making new designers. I think there are issues there. And then the process of being a designer. I'm going to talk about the first part. I see— this is me speaking, I guess, mostly from the United States point of view. The point of view from this country probably applies to the West, most of the West as well.

I can't speak on how this works in any other areas. For the most part, you have these— I guess I would call them centers of capitalism, like New York City. Any other major city. This probably happens all over the country, but I'm gonna just use New York as the example, which is kind of like, yeah, so it's like this center of capitalism and the center of capitalism has industries that uphold it.

And these industries are gonna have designers that uphold the industry by just doing their job. It's a graphic designer who maybe works on an advertisement for so-and-so company, or as the art director. You make that industry look the best it can, and that industry can do its job to serve capitalism. And then these figures that are design practitioners, they end up working at institutions in these areas.

They become thought leaders, and they basically pass down their teachings onto the youth or onto new designers who want to get into this kind of work, who maybe they already have the idea that, yeah, I want to serve these industries. That's what they want to do. But some of them maybe don't know, or they don't even get the chance to think about any other options. But they basically fall into line and they learn to be that way.

And then we just have designers that come out just like those people. That serve these industries. And that becomes most of design education in the West, which also is already pulling from other sources from the West, like upholding things like modernism or the Swiss stuff, all the things that— all the best hits that come from the West. And that kind of puts it on this pedestal. So on top of that, there's this like— the Western canon is just being pushed.

And then that's spreading around the whole West in graphic design education. And then from there, you just have— so the second part would just be like you have graphic designers that then just now go out into the world and they have these backgrounds. They believe that modernism is the solution or that the Swiss stuff is the best or all this. They're just pushing on the Western canon. Yeah.

And for the most part, it's just this type of graphic designer that it's almost like they've separated themselves from other practices. It's just like they're this grand tastemaker and it's not about the politics, it's just about doing the job and doing the best thing you can. And maybe they do things because they do believe in it, which I may have disagreements with. But yeah, it's just, it's just this chain reaction, I think.

And I guess what I want to get at is that, a lot of the times, that's all it is. It's just it's just the production and the selling of these aesthetics, and that's all it is. There's People don't really read outside of that. They're just reading about graphic design. They're only looking at graphic design and everything else, nothing outside of their life touches it. And I feel like that's a big issue because that doesn't really get us anywhere.

Things can look nice, but they don't actually do anything.

Christian Solorzano [28:55]

Yeah. And there are so many different ways of things looking nice. It doesn't have to be— I think modernism has taken— it's just everywhere. We don't even question it. It's just kind of the standard of cleanliness or minimal or it's— I mean, I hear it all the time, like the buzzwords of make it clean, make it minimal, simple, less is more. There's all these All these standards that we don't really question.

And even I see tools such as Pinterest or any kind of those inspiration websites as just continuing the fabrication of this age of what I would consider like just this age of average in which everything kind of— It doesn't look bad. But you just ask yourself, does it need to look like this? And it's like this copycat culture, in my opinion. And I like that there's people like yourself that are kind of questioning that.

I want you to talk about your North American Indigenous language research and how that's, how that's something that you got interested in. And if you see any overlap between that and what everyone else is doing, like just graphic design in general.

Cris Hernández [30:27]

As I kind of crawled out of my sulking arc in college, I kind of saw like a little glimpse of a light of like maybe towards the end of my 4th year in college. I started to like realize like, oh, there's some work that I'm seeing that's like within the context of, or within the areas of education and public service. I don't want to use the word utilitarian stuff, but I don't know. I liked— I was starting to see that there were some options.

I didn't know how— it didn't look as carved out to me as maybe other majors or fields that I had seen people around me get into. It seemed like at the time, this is 2017 when I was graduating, that if you want to get into— if you wanted to get a career in product design, not that it was going to be easy, but it seemed like there were jobs everywhere for that.

But, if I wanted to get into, I don't know, some sort of graphic design for education, I don't even know where to look for that. But— or even type design, it's the same thing. There was just nothing for it. But so I had this idea that I wanted to get into educational public service work.

I think maybe all the way back to when I was younger, that whole thing of liking symbols and little items in typography, that still was maintained in college where I just— I was really into the— and I still am. I'm a big fan of Studio Euskrutins. They make really beautiful atlases, dictionaries, and a lot of like information texts. And I loved seeing like the keys that they would have with the symbols that would— and the different, translations. And it all looks super cool to me.

So I like the idea that like, oh, I just liked having this nice, mishmash, mix-match of typography and so I had an idea that like, oh, multiscript, that seems really cool. I didn't know exactly what I would draw, but I was interested in it at least. So, out of college, after like a year of like looking for work and having some work and just like not really— I just wasn't really enjoying the graphic design work that I was doing.

I decided that, I still— I definitely wanted to fully commit into type design. So, but I didn't think I was I just needed a little more of a push. So I went to the— I got accepted after I applied to the Type Cooper Extended Program, and I'm in the program in New York. And on the side, I'm like trying to like draw other scripts.

I was trying to be a bit economic with my time and like with at least what I knew, even though it's still a huge step. I just thought like, okay, well, I'm drawing Latin. What could I draw on the side just to like warm up at least, or like try to like learn a little bit.

And so I thought like, oh, I'll just draw like Greek and Cyrillic, which I have a really poor drawing for each that I presented at the end of my— of the program. But I was interested in it at least. I just wanted to just— I just love to see the text. It was like, oh yeah, Latin text next to the Cyrillic next to the Greek. That looks so cool next to some like shape symbols.

But I think at some point I also just hit a hit a wall where I was like, oh, why am I drawing this? I like it, it's cool, but why am I drawing Cyrillic and why am I drawing Greek?

And I got really lucky that— well, I'll say before I got lucky, for my project, when I was pitching my project my second term at Cooper, initially I wanted to pitch an idea for a dictionary that was going to be a translation book for like English, Spanish, and Nahuatl. An indigenous language from Mexico. But I think it just didn't work out in the time because it was just a dictionary.

And, our teacher Hannes just wanted— not just wanted, he just said like, it should have like an additional thing, like a dictionary is just too vague, which I agree. So I ended up just pitching a whole other idea. So I didn't go with it, but I had this idea that I liked other languages, and I guess I didn't know yet, Nahuatl is not as complex as the languages I would soon discover later. But I guess that was already kind of there.

I was like, my family is from Mexico, so I was just— I was dipping a little bit into that to see like, oh, what languages are there in Mexico? But I got really lucky because around, I want to say my third term, Jamra Patel had come to Cooper to do a talk. And so I sat in and it was a talk on their African language project. And I thought it was amazing. It like blew me away. I didn't know this— you could do this work.

You're making typefaces for underrepresented writing systems and underrepresented languages. And I was like, this is it. This is like that thing that I've been trying to find the whole last several years since I like founded Volition Crawl. This is like the public service work. This is like political. This is also type design. And it all kind of met. But, that I still, I still didn't know what it would be though. I just knew like, okay, this is it though.

It's going to be this, it's going to be typeface design for underrepresented writing systems and languages. And then I think I went home maybe that same night and I just wanted to see like, what else have they done? And I found that so it's Jamra Patel, Neil Patel and Mark Jamra.

And Mark Jamra had us talk the year before at Cooper where he spoke about his Cherokee Project, and it kind of clicked once I watched that video, or in the middle of the video, that I was like, wait, yeah, there are languages, so many languages, and so many writing, and so many writing systems. Well, there are some writing systems in the, in the, in North America, and I'm based in North America. That makes more sense than me drawing Cyrillic and Greek.

I mean, I get it, people can draw it, and I think that's fine. We live in a global world, like. That, and, or I would say like the industry we live in, our practice, the industry is quite global. I understand that. So it does make sense for some people, but for me, I wanted something a little more like geographically tied, I guess, to myself. And so I felt like, I'm in North America.

It's much more easy for me to communicate or engage with, collaborate with the communities around here than it would be like to just draw this script. That would be like from the other side of the world that I just don't have any— at the moment I don't have any association with. And I remember having a discussion with a type designer that I helped set up a gallery for like months prior or something, and I had, joyfully shared with them that I was drawing Greek and Cyrillic.

And I remember them telling me like, Greek doesn't make any money. Cyrillic it makes— it's pretty good for the— it's pretty good in the industry, something like that. And I was like, I wasn't even thinking about that, and I don't even care. And so I wasn't already gonna— I wasn't— I'm not like, yeah. So when I looked at the North American, at least the vague— my vague understanding of the landscape of typography in North America, I wasn't caring about that.

I knew someone was gonna probably tell me like, yeah. That's not going to make any money, but that doesn't matter to me. The money can be made somewhere else, like in type design and graphic design, whatever. I know that I'm very interested in this though. Yeah.

Christian Solorzano [38:13]

So what's your metric of success when you're working on any kind of project? How do you define if it's something that speaks to your heart?

Cris Hernández [38:25]

Yeah, so I guess I'm still in this I guess for my own practice, I'm still in the stage— like, a typeface hasn't been released yet, which I'm hoping to this year.

Christian Solorzano [38:40]

It's—

Cris Hernández [38:40]

I've just been kind of collecting data for the last 5 or 6, maybe. I— and a big part of it too is just trying to gain maybe enough confidence as well that like, oh, I have enough information now that I can like reach out to community and talk to them.

So, full satisfaction or fulfillment would probably be like, okay, cool, I get to like work with the community and I get to, I get to help them in their any process, anywhere in their process in like language revitalization or even just language support. That would be ideal. So right now I don't feel like I'm not unsatisfied because I feel like I'm just on the way. Even if it's just a font that's out that a community uses, I would love that.

I do feel quite satisfied, fulfilled in my current endeavor with working on the Tipotec Indigenous North American Typography Project because we're just we're like in the thick of this work. We understand that there's still much to grasp of the typographic landscape of this continent, but we are actively working with communities. And there's just so much that I could only do on my own. I mean, it's much better to have a team of people who all have different experiences and different—

Backgrounds and everything, that it's just a much smoother operation instead of just one person trying to do it on their own, which has been great. So I would say right now I'm very happy with this project.

Christian Solorzano [40:33]

And what is it like to work with those communities? What is their responds to what you're doing, their response to what your team is doing. I'm very— I would love to be a fly on the wall and hear what those conversations are like.

Cris Hernández [40:54]

Yeah, this is more a question for Kevin King, I would say. I have been myself mostly a fly on the wall. I have just, I get to sit in on many of these talks. These are, the connections we have right now have all been through my other teammates, so I can't really talk too much on it, but it is just like a sit-down talking about, the needs of communities, of these communities.

To be honest, yeah, I honestly, I would rather say this is more so a question for Kevin than myself. I am a fly on the wall. For now, yeah.

Christian Solorzano [41:35]

Because I'm so fascinated by the process of co-designing or participatory design where you're making decisions with the people who are going to be impacted by those decisions because it gives everyone more ownership over the entire thing. And when the thing is published or it comes out, there's a sense of, I was a part of this and I helped shape this and I see myself in it.

And often, I mean, there's pros and cons to just about everything, but usually, at least from how I was trained, for example, in school, design happens over here and away from the customer, away from the people that are going to be facing the consequences or just dealing with the impact of what you're making. So just the idea of just breaking down that wall and saying, we're going to co-design together, I think, is a pretty radical way of going about your work. It depends, though.

It depends on the context because sometimes you want less people in the room. Sometimes too many opinions or too many voices could kind of make things not move forward. Yeah. So what else? So in addition to your research work that you're doing now, what are some of the other things that are keeping you inspired or that are keeping you engaged?

Cris Hernández [43:16]

There seems to be more of a growing interest in this kind of work. I mean, I— maybe there always has been. I don't know. I want to— I don't want to totally put a— make a statement on it like that, but it does feel like, at least around me, I'm seeing a little more interest in this. There seems to be a bit of an arms race right now in general on, Latin support and, how to expand on it.

We have a lot of projects happening right now, expanding to, African support for Latin. Etc. But I would say things that keep me— that I'm excited about or keep me motivated, I mean, I have a— I would say, I'm very excited to see, my friends who are Indigenous, either get into typeface design or are already designing typefaces. That's super cool to see.

It's something, I mean, I didn't I don't think I saw maybe 10 years ago, not that I was fully observing this kind of work, but it does seem like we're kind of in this— there's like a— I'm hoping it's like a boom of Indigenous type designers surfacing. Even like last month— no, sorry, last year in September, alongside the 3 characters that Kevin King had assisted with adding into Unicode. I had found 2— well, yeah, 2 characters that were for 2 Californian languages, Cupeño and Luiseno.

And this is the S with slash. And even that surprised me that like, oh yeah, there's even work happening like that. And that was done by Kirk Miller. There's even work outside from us. There are other— languages being supported or getting proposals. There's still new letters coming out and that's exciting because that means you get to see— you're just seeing little bits of other people's endeavors in language revitalization happening.

I'm always trying to read up on what other people are up to and it's exciting to see either new content being made or stumbling upon content that communities are making just to see resurface of these language endeavors. I guess there's still so much that I'm learning all the time with all my— in my group, I learned from all my teammates, Mark Turin, Kevin King, Leo Vicente, Bridget Chase. They're all like— I'm learning things from them all the time. There's just so many gaps.

I mean, it just, it makes sense. I wasn't going to get it all. I was focusing on like orthographies and the language, but there was, there's so many other things to it, politically, like, language and data sovereignty. So just there's much to grasp.

Christian Solorzano [46:24]

Because I was, I want, I wanted to ask about, so when you do your research and you're working on, for example, like preserving a language or making sure that there's no that nothing gets forgotten about or replaced or just completely just history erased, which I think happens quite often.

How do you, how do you balance preservation but also evolution? How do you exist between, let's, preserve the past, but at the same time, let's find opportunities to expand or to evolve or to introduce new things? How do you go about that?

Cris Hernández [47:08]

Could you rephrase that one for me?

Christian Solorzano [47:10]

So, for example, if you're working on— if you're doing some research on, let's say, Indigenous language, Indigenous writing system, how do you go from preserving that, but at the same time, do you find yourself beyond the digitizing Adding some modern flair or some kind of evolution to it, whatever it is that you're researching? How do you exist between— I guess my question is like, how do you exist between the past?

How does the past, the present, and the future all combine into the work that you do?

Cris Hernández [47:51]

Yeah, I guess I have a— the first thing that came to me was a thought on like aesthetics at least. Or like forms. I have thought— I've mulled on this for some time, which I think I overthought it. I thought I just kind of overdid it thinking about it. It's just that initially I had this thought, which I feel like there's something there. I'll explain it.

Basically, when I was first drawing, let's say I had been drawing like some North American Indigenous Latin, or I was drawing Cherokee or Osage. I was drawing— maybe more so, I thought, when I was drawing the Latin, though. Let's say I'm drawing Latin for like a— I'm gonna just throw out like Comanche, for example. Which Comanche has like a u lowercase and uppercase U with a bar. And I'm drawing it, but I'm— and I'm like, what if I were to draw like a serif?

I was thinking initially, I had this thought where I'm like, well, does this make sense? I'm drawing serifs for this font, but if I look at it like the serif comes from this Western canon of typeface design, now it does the Comanche language, despite it being Romanized, aesthetically, should I trace back a style all the way to the Trajan Columns? Does that make any sense? Or should I try to come up with another way of visualizing, which probably isn't up to me?

Not probably, I don't think it's up to me because that's not what I am. I have nothing. I, it's probably like— also, if someone who is Comanche wants to draw with the serifs, then that kind of solves it for me. They're like, yeah, they just used these forms, for their language, and that was the choice.

So I think I overthought— for a time I was overthinking it where I was like, oh, maybe there's like another way to like escape this like ductus that comes from the Western canon. But I think these days I'm like, I think it's— there is some middle ground. I mean, I don't think it really matters. I remember asking some— I asked some friends who are indigenous, and they're like, well, it's just if it works, it works. And yeah, I overcomplicated it.

So I do think of stuff like that, but more so maybe like there are forms from back then that are, maybe they have changed in the way that people draw it in their own handwriting, and that, that's no longer drawn like the letter used on an old typewriter or from like a linguistic book from like, yeah, from the '40s or something. There are things like that make that— I would say.

Christian Solorzano [50:57]

Because there's so many aspects of type that the aesthetics are driven by the technique in which those fonts were created for. So for example, type that was like meant to be carved has like a very distinct, serif-like quality to them, or things like ink traps for, small print, public, like newspaper or whatever. Given that, the majority of type that a lot of us consume is digital.

That was my question, was kind of like, do you find yourself having to change things because we're now working across these new literal surfaces, whether it's a screen or different kinds of paper, if that ever presents itself as a challenge? I used to work at the library here in Chicago, at the DePaul University Library, and my job was to digitize books. So we would get these like, 100-plus-year-old books and we'd have to digitize every single page.

Like we'd take a photo of it, digitize it, and it'd get archived and all that kind of stuff. And it was very clear that some of the printing techniques back then caused the type to look a particular way when it would hit the page. I'm not a type designer, but as someone that is digitizing that, my question is, how do you know what to preserve? Is it the overall characteristic of the character? Is it— how do you draw that distinction?

Cris Hernández [52:40]

I see. Okay, I understand. So I would— I have a good example. It's, again, this is mostly— not mostly, this is the work— this is my observation of Kevin King's work. From his work encoding the lambda with stroke, which is also called the Running Man, which I showed at my— I shared at my presentation last week.

But the— so from my understanding, there were versions of this character that were used in a— I mean, it's the it's a Greek character initially. It looks like a Greek character, the lambda with a stroke. It's drawn a few different ways depending on the community. And so my understanding of that is that Kevin was engaged with these communities and it was kind of a, you show them the character, is this your preference? And then he got, the preferences of several communities.

And from there it's, to respect them. They didn't just— they didn't just make one that would try to fit them all together, to try to please them all. And so instead it was— so I would say the process is mostly engaging with the community and just like making sure that what you're drawing, reflects, what they would like to use.

Christian Solorzano [54:09]

I hate the word user, but it's like user testing.

Cris Hernández [54:12]

Sure. Yeah, I would say— I mean, but they really are the users.

Christian Solorzano [54:15]

Yeah. Excellent. Yeah. I didn't know that, but that makes perfect sense.

Yeah. Because sometimes the most challenging part I find in the design process is when you're making a choice, if you're not that audience of that thing that you're making, it's hard to assess whether it's the most appropriate choice or not unless you've done that millions of times. Because sometimes, I work in product design, and often I find myself creating some kind of experience for someone. And it's like, I don't know if this is going to work because I'm not going to be the user for this.

So unless we do the appropriate research and get it in front of people, there's really no way to choose what's— What's best. Yeah. So today you're— so you move, you're from Chicago, you lived in California, and now you're in New York. Talk to us if you see a common thread across all those different regions in the country, the West Coast, Midwest, East Coast.

Cris Hernández [55:30]

I don't know if I really do. I think More, I would guess, I think maybe 70% of my social life is around other designers. So I think I can mostly only speak of that I don't really feel like a clear thread between them all. I think when I'm in LA, I'm like, yeah, I'm definitely an LA When I'm in Chicago, I'm in Chicago. And when I'm in New York, I'm in New York. And I can, I can feel the, some difference there.

Christian Solorzano [56:06]

And you're— and you've been in New York for a few years now?

Cris Hernández [56:09]

Yeah, since the fall of 2018.

Christian Solorzano [56:12]

And do you ever get homesick missing Chicago?

Cris Hernández [56:14]

Yeah, absolutely. Though I do visit often enough that I don't feel too homesick.

Christian Solorzano [56:23]

Yeah. Okay. When you're in Chicago, what are your— some of the favorite— maybe what are some of the things that you miss the most about Chicago? And if you can compare the design communities, I feel like Chicago has a pretty distinct vibe here.

Cris Hernández [56:40]

Yeah. Missing things I like or things that I miss in Chicago. Or that I like to do when I'm back, I guess that's yeah, I guess I know like New York is much larger. Than Chicago, but there's something about— I just, I have much more fun going on walks, like architecture walks in Chicago than I do in New York. Maybe I just haven't come up with my own routes yet. That could just be like, since high school I had been doing that.

I just walk around various parts of the city looking for the buildings that I like, and I've mapped out in my head what to what routes I can take to have the most pleasant walk. And, I— maybe I'm a tourist at this point, but I do enjoy walking in downtown, going over the bridges and seeing everything. I don't know if I get that in Manhattan per se. Yeah, I don't. I think it's probably all like based on nostalgia, like—

From being younger and walking around and stuff. Something about it's just maybe like a construct in my head maybe about New York that it does feel like a little faster, and that when I'm in Chicago, I don't know, things feel a little more relaxed to me. It could be that like I'm associating New York at this point with like work and like my social life, and when I get to Chicago, I feel like I can like slow down a bit and just like relax.

Christian Solorzano [58:08]

And today in the, in the world of typography, what are some— maybe what's a, what's a trend or something that you're, that you're seeing a lot happen that you really like. And maybe something that you really don't like.

Cris Hernández [58:23]

Yes. Before that, I need to answer your other part of the question. I just remembered I didn't answer about the differences in what I see in the Chicago design and New York. I wanted to say that they both feel pretty corporate, but kind of in their own way. I don't, I could just have like, my perspective could be warped because also like I have not been like active practitioner in those spaces forever. I never really have been.

I'm just basing this off of, networking or going to place— going to events or spaces and interacting with people from these places, or just what I see online, any kind of awards or any kind of new work people post that I just feel like I see.

Yeah, Chicago has like the large agencies and the, you know— I remember once someone told me like the first year I was in Chicago, like before I left to New York, I was in Chicago a year after college, for a year after college. And someone told me like, yeah, I mean, if you want to work in Chicago, you're going to work for— you get like 6 options for like the big companies that are there.

It was like, I'm blanking on the— it's like that, like it was like McDonald's and that aviation company, etc. Or there's like the agencies that are there. And then in New York, I feel like it's a bit of that plus just like a variety of like— not small, but like just a variety of studios that also do work on like the same level.

So I guess that's kind of what I see. I guess I would say there's more of this, I see more of the like glamorous design icon here in New York than I do in Chicago. Sorry, your other question was on typography?

Christian Solorzano [60:09]

Yeah, my— it was like if there's any trends or anything that you're noticing right now happening in the world of type design that maybe you would know more of because you're in that world.

Cris Hernández [60:20]

A thing that I have noticed for the last— it's probably been a lot longer, but I think just last year I happened to see like several of these projects all come around the same time. There's a, there's a big— to me, it appears like there's a big push for this, for foundries to go, quote, global. So I'm starting to see like, oh yeah, we found that used to just draw Latin, maybe Latin and Cyrillic or Latin and Greek.

Now we're drawing like, now we have Thai and now we have Hangul, now we have Arabic, and now we have, things like that. Which I think are cool. I guess I have an issue with— I don't know, I don't have a huge issue. On a scale of 1 to 10, it's like a 4, maybe a 3, but it's still something that I'm like kind of mulling over that I don't know.

Technically, yes, it is global, but we're kind of doing like a larger scale version of what I was saying about like hegemony and like character sets for Latin. It's that now we're claiming that you can be, quote, global as long as you support, the majority writing systems. It's odd too to see that, everyone is supporting all these languages, but there's yet to be, a large foundry, at least to my knowledge, that is also including, a writing system for Africa that isn't Arabic.

So it is weird to see this. And so I don't know, I wish there was more consideration of like minority scripts.

Christian Solorzano [62:00]

So we are approaching the end of our conversation here, but I would love to know if there's anything that you're working on right now that you want to share with us or anything that you want to tease.

Cris Hernández [62:13]

So last year, I guess I soft launched my foundry, Kegedatype. So that's in the, that's in the motions at the moment. I'm hoping to have at least one typeface released this year. And with that the website and everything. Currently I just have my little Instagram page, but I'm hoping to start sharing things a lot sooner. I have that steadily going on the Tipotec North American Indigenous Typography Project. So, if anyone listening hasn't checked that out, Totally encourage you to. Yeah.

But those are mostly it these days. It's just, that's how I'm splitting my time.

Christian Solorzano [62:55]

And a lot of our listeners are people that are emerging into their careers as a designer, students or people that just finished college, school. What would you— what would be your Advice for someone entering the industry of graphic design in 2025? What's something that you wish you would've known when you were starting out?

Cris Hernández [63:25]

I have an answer and then an answer to the answer, kind of, because I did— I was at this— I was in that point at some point in— sorry, I was there at some point in college and then I tried to remedy it. So I can maybe offer that solution, but I don't know, it's not for everyone, maybe. But I would say people need to kind of get an idea of where everything you're learning is coming from.

For me, that came in, actually tried to plot it down, which I'll get to. You get to school and of course you trust the professionals to teach you and to tell you how to do things and what's the right way or how to think about things. But here's the example. When I was in college, my second year, I was in Typography 1 taught by Karen Aono.

And she asked us, I think on the first day, I think we're getting into just like modernist typography, like the history of modernist typography. And she asked us if we could name any modernists, and I just blurted out like 4 or 5 names. And she looks at me, and it's not like a frown, but she's just— I'll try to vocalize it. She basically goes, yeah, but that's all Swiss modernism.

And then it totally hit me that like, I was like, wait, what do you— Yeah, I get it, but that's like literally, that's what I learned last year. This is it. This is the stuff, no? And yeah, it just kind of like blew me away. Not really.

I mean, I had an idea, but I was just I guess I hadn't really stood— I hadn't really just sat there, sat down and thought about like, oh, it's— yeah, there's like a— this is a bigger— there's a bigger picture that I'm not aware of.

And so I sat down and I'm— For most of my adult life, I guess, I have been— I'm kind of like a half cyborg. Not half cyborg. A cyborg is a half— I'm basically like— Quarter of a cyborg. Yeah. I'm like half human, half spreadsheet? And I started this spreadsheet when I was For that week, I sat down and I was like, okay, what is she talking about? And I wrote down— I made 2 sheets, 2 tabs.

One was all the contemporary designers that I thought in the moment were an influence to me, and then everyone that I had been taught about in the past who was also an influence to me. So I wrote down all the Armin Hoffmanns, et cetera, the Tadao Ando. I wrote them all down and then I With their names, I wrote— I drew a little emoji flag, or I didn't draw, I added a little emoji flag next to them.

And I had like maybe 50 by the end of an hour for at least the non-contemporary tab. And I got to see them all, and it was all like United States and then Germany and the Swiss stuff and Japanese stuff. And I realized like, yeah, this is, this is my view right now. This is like where I am.

Pulling from. And this is not, this is not like a reflection of like the, of the, of the world, that I live in. In a way, you could argue, yeah, it is because of the typographic education, graphic design education pushes this on us. But what I'm trying to say is like, that's not how I wanted to— that's not how I wanted it to be for me.

And so I just made it, and I made it a thing that like whenever I could I would just try to find a graphic designer or a type designer, typographer, anything that was from another country. And then I would just jot it down on the spreadsheet. And over time, I would have a more balanced catalog in my head and on paper of what I was being influenced by. So I'm basically just saying, find however way you can do it. That was the way for me.

But you need to kind of like understand what, and then you have to really understand what you don't know and then try to like engage with it.

Christian Solorzano [67:47]

Which is hard and it takes work. I've been trying to— I tend to really obsess when I discover a designer that I like, I just become obsessed with them and I kind of try, I wanna find everything about them. Yeah. It takes— it's work? And sometimes you can't find certain things and you're kind of— it's kind of like a mystery.

Yeah. So that would be your advice for younger people getting into design. What about for leaders or people that are put in positions of power, the decision makers? That are leading the work, that are directing the work?

Cris Hernández [68:36]

I think, yeah, almost similar advice. I think people in those positions need to be more aware of the effect that their decisions have, on other people, and on their users or their audience, whoever the work is for. What was it? It happened a while ago. I think there was a— I think it was Resolve, but there had been a point in time when— maybe not the best example, but things like this happen often.

I had seen like, I don't remember what those were called, but it's like watches that you'd wear that like would track like how much you were walking or running.

Christian Solorzano [69:20]

Like pedometers or something like that?

Cris Hernández [69:24]

Yeah, there was a brand that was like pretty big like several years ago.

Christian Solorzano [69:27]

Fitbit.

Cris Hernández [69:28]

Yeah, it was like a Fitbit. I remember seeing someone online post that like they had considered buying it for like a relative of theirs, but then they couldn't anymore because it didn't support Vietnamese.

So like there are things like that where, like that was probably just something that like, I don't know, maybe during the— I don't know if it's where it falls into the manufacturing or it falls upon the designer to make the decision, but somewhere along there they didn't consider this group of people that use this language, and for that, they just— they totally— the language— the community is just not able— those people aren't able to use this thing, that maybe they would have wanted to use.

But that happens all the time.

So I would say, I don't know, people just need to, be more aware of, the users, we live in a multipolar world and, there we need to think more about like minority languages, and like I guess I'm mostly speaking from the language part just because that's just what I think about daily, but I think people need like a— I think these people still need to read more on like history and ethics, like we still have designers who are art directors in like pretty— not even pretty, like evil spaces.

I mean, I probably don't— the people who are listening to me talk here are probably not the people who are at these evil spaces. They're listening to something else. But so I— and I can't really convince them, they're already there, I guess. But I would just say like people really need to like look at a bigger picture and like reexamine.

And I don't know if there's like an ego death that has to happen or something, but people just need to like think more about like who's being left out when they're making certain design decisions.

Christian Solorzano [71:23]

There's such a blind allegiance that design— that I see in design where, again, kind of what we were talking about earlier, where we just kind of put certain ways of working as like, this is, this is how it needs to be done. Yeah. And there's really no— we're really not encouraged to disrupt that status quo. So I'm all for the disruption that you're suggesting.

Well, thank you so much for this conversation. I enjoyed speaking with you and I enjoyed Hearing your presentation in Chicago last week. And again, for everyone that's listening, that style of events was your idea. And I really want to thank you for helping put that together. And I hope that we can do more of those soon.

Cris Hernández [72:24]

Yeah, me too. Yeah, I'll be there for the next one. For sure. Yeah, I have to. Yeah, for sure. Yeah.

Christian Solorzano [72:31]

Thank you.

Cris Hernández [72:32]

I mean, thank you for helping me. I mean, it wouldn't have been done without you. That was great. Yeah, I hope we can do that more. I really felt like there wasn't much of a— I mean, yeah, when I was in Chicago, and I guess I can't speak for much because I was most of the time in California the 4 years I was studying graphic design.

I lost out on a lot of time to interact with people, but at least the year that I was there, it did feel like— and still to this day, there is not a large Type design community in Chicago. So I feel like it is nice to have this stimulus package happen.

Christian Solorzano [73:10]

So if anyone wants to get ahold of you, we will put your Instagram and your websites in the description for this episode, and your email is on your websites. Cool, man. Well, thanks again and hope to see you soon.

Cris Hernández [73:24]

Thank you. Yeah.

Christian Solorzano [73:25]

If you stuck around till the end, thank you so much. I deeply appreciate it. To learn more about this show or the Chicago Graphic Design Club, visit www.chicagographicdesign.club. We have great programming happening both in person and online, so follow us on Instagram for the latest updates. Thank you, and we'll talk to you soon. Goodbye.

Cris Hernández [73:51]

Thank you.