Maybe you’re a designer or activist wanting to find the right font for your next protest sign, campaign, or artwork.
Guess what…They do exist!
Vocal Type Co.
Vocal Type Co. has some of my favorite typefaces with a bit of history from activism movements to share in every letterform. Tré Seals, the founder of Vocal Type Co. started designing typefaces inspired by activist movements to bring diversity and empathy into design.
It all started after they realized how much culture design lacks in a monotony space and discovering that only 3–3.5% of all practicing designers in America are Black, and ±85% White.
“When a singular perspective dominates an industry, regardless of any advancements in technology, there can (and has been) only one way thinking, teaching, and creating. This lack of diversity in terms of race, ethnicity, and gender, has led to a lack of diversity in thought, systems (like education), ideas, and, most importantly, creations”–Tré Seals
The Neue Black
Carrie Chapman Catt was an American women’s suffrage leader who campaigned for the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which gave U.S. women the right to vote in 1920. Catt served as president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association and was the founder of the League of Women Voters and the International Alliance of Women. She led an army of voteless women in 1919 to pressure Congress to pass the constitutional amendment giving them the right to vote and convinced state legislatures to ratify it in 1920 and was one of the best-known women in the United States in the first half of the twentieth century.*
Ruben
RUBEN is a font inspired by journalist Rubén Salazar and remnants of the 1970 National Chicano Moratorium. The end of August in Los Angeles has historically been a time of sad recollections for Latinos, especially activists who remember a triumphant civil rights march that turned murderous.
On Aug. 29, 1970, some 25,000 activists gathered in East Los Angeles to take part in what was billed as the National Chicano Moratorium march, and protest against the Vietnam War.*
Eva
EVA is a font family inspired by banners carried during a 1957 women’s demonstration in Buenos Aires in front of the National Congress By Law For Universal Suffrage.
The modern suffragist movement in Argentina arose partly in conjunction with the activities of the Socialist Party and anarchists of the early twentieth century. Women involved in larger movements for social justice began to campaign for equal rights and opportunities on par with men.
