60 MARCH 2016 ATLAS
expressions of authority. One sign in Miraflores particularly stood
out to me. Reminding denizens to keep their dogs on leashes,
Mirafont’s rounded letters are used to suggest that what the
municipality wants is surely what we want as well: “La ciudad que
todos queremos ordenada” (“The orderly city we all desire”).NO MATTER WHERE I was in the city, it was difficult to
avoid a second typographic motif: the Marca Perú logo. The logo
renders the country’s four letters in a laid-back handwritten script,
and a spiral forms a prominent “P.” PromPerú, the national tourism
promotion agency, commissionedinternational design firm Future-
Brand to design the country’s graphic identity, which was unveiled
in 2011. The spiral, PromPerú explained that year, is a motif
derived from Peru’s diverse cultures, drawing inspiration from the
ancient Nazca lines and the even-more-ancient geoglyph at the
settlement of Caral. And as then-minister of exterior commerce
and tourism Eduardo Ferreyros Küppers explained, the center of
the spiral forms an “@” sign, symbolizing the country’s embrace of
modernity. With the launch of the logo, PromPerú opened it for
use on all kinds of products, whether exported or sold domestically,
although they prohibit certain uses, including printing the logo on
political and religious materials or on any items deemed “contrary
to the image of the country.”
More generally, PromPerú’s campaigns have been criticized
for promoting an ideal of diversity removed from political and
historical context. Along with the design of the logo, the ministry
produced a 15-minute video in which Peruvian celebrities visit the
town of Peru in Nebraska—population 569—to show them what
itreallymeans to be Peruvian. The video is fun, whimsical and
intentionally meme-worthy, but, as critics pointed out, it glosses
over the realities of contemporary Peru. “You have the right to eat
good,” a chef yells out to the Peruvian-Nebraskans, ignoring the
fact that many Peruvians are impoverished.
The Marca Perú logo, with its spiral and scrawls, reflects
what tourists expect of Peru: a country of ancient wonders. From
alpaca wool scarves to the packaging of Doña Pepa cookies, the
logo is everywhere in Lima, but nowhere more present than at
the Mercado Indio craft bazaar, the number one destination for
visitors looking to take home a few souvenirs. The items sold at
the market vary in quality, price and authenticity—if you believe
in that sort of thing—and many of them bear tags with the coun-
try logo. Some objects, such as reproductions of ancient vases, are
overly commodified. These “crafts” continue to be produced not
because the tradition continues within communities but becauseoriginal release of the font—scant attention was paid to kern-
ing, the spacing between characters.
Despite its detractors, the font has skyrocketed in popularity
and attained a global reach. The year Harabara released his signature
design, representatives from the Philippines department of tourism
contacted Harabara to use the typeface in their national tourism cam-
paign (“It’s more fun in the Philippines”). The typeface of choice for
one of Lima’s most affluent neighborhoods also appears on advertise-
ments for an e-commerce site selling athletic gear in the Middle East,
physical therapists in Norway anddental clinics in Brazil. Mirafont,
it seems, signifies a kind of feel-good globalism.
Perhaps it’s no surprise that Harabara Mais has gained such
popularity, since it is indeed something of a knockoff of Helvetica,
arguably the world’s most common typeface. The Harabara Mais
that dots Miraflores’s streets eliminates Helvetica’s harsh edges
while leaving its core form. If Helvetica originated in a modern-
ist belief in the transformative power of rational design, soon
becoming the mid-20th-century corporate world’s go-to typeface,
Harabara Mais offers a self-deprecating style. It suggests a cloying,
all-for-one disposition that can mask corporate power and disguisePeru’s off icial
logo, Marca
Perú,designedby
FutureBrand.
Examples of
the Harabara
Mais font found
throughout Lima.
Photos Desi
Gonzalez.