ART IN AMERICA 59
AT L A S L I M A
The Map and the Typography
by Desi Gonzalez
THE METROPOLITANO, LIMA’S rapid transit bus line,
snakes along the city’s north-south axis. In recent years Lima has
profited from economic growth, and nowhere is this more apparent
than toward the southern end of the Metropolitano’s route, where it
passes through the major commercial and financial artery connecting
the districts of San Isidro and Miraflores. Last year, I rode through
the area every day on my way to work, and from the crowded bus
I could glimpse the logos of banks, corporations and superstores
plastered on the sides of skyscrapers oraffixedto metal advertising
posts. Amid this forest of brands, which seemed to grow thicker
every week, one thing was conspicuously absent: serifs. Nearly all
the logos employed rounded, sans serif typefaces, most of them
rendered in friendly lower-case letters. The sans serif revolution is
rebranding corporate Lima for the 21st century.
This typographical homogeneity is most evident in Mira-
flores, a well-to-do district that caters to tourists and yuppies.
Municipal signs in the area use a distinctive sans serif that fea-
tures sturdy strokes but softened corners and shaved edges so that
official directives appear at once authoritative and playful. After
several encounters with the district’s branding, I started to notice
variations of this font everywhere: adorning the bottle of hand
soap in my office, printed on the plastic bags doled out by my
local grocery store, emblazoned on an emergency medical vehicle,
publicizing a local bus company in a magazine advertisement,
selling spit-roasted pig at a food festival.Mirafont, I called the
typeface. It had spread through the neighborhood and seemed
poised to infect every part of the city.
Mirafont’s real name, I learned later, is Harabara Mais.
It was designed by André Harabara, a freelance Brazil-
ian designer who released his namesake typeface in 2009.
Since then it has been widely used and roundly criticized. A
Spanish-language blog disparagingly proclaimed it the Comic
Sans of the second decade of the 21st century.^1 One Twitter
user dubbed it a “bad knockoff of Helvetica.” And it’s true
that Harabara Mais feels clunky and unbalanced: the arcs of
certain letters’ stems have been truncated and—at least in thePedro “Monky”
To l o m e o , a n a r t i s t
based in Lima,
hanging chicha
posters along
thesideofthe
road in the San
Juan Lurigancho
neighborhood.
Courtesy
Smithsonian Center
for Folklife and
Cultural Heritage,
Washing ton, D.C.
Photo Joshua Eli
Cogan.DESI GONZALEZ
is a writer based
in Pittsburgh and
Lima.