Letters from Buenos Aires with Muk Monsalve

Take a journey through the locations and architectural details in Buenos Aires that inspired a typographic textile.

Since 2018, Muk Monsalve has been hosting and curating type walks around Buenos Aires with her art and business partner, Lucía Soto. This project, called Letra Capital, allows them to highlight and share the love they feel while walking their city.

When their type walks halted during the pandemic, they developed a souvenir for Letra Capital: a typographic scarf recreating the journey. They had so much fun developing it that the product ended up becoming a collection called Musa del Asfalto. The scarves and cover ups are not only beautiful, they also tell stories through their design, type, and phrases. The typefaces they use in the collection, Arrabal and Ciudadela, were custom designed–not revivals–and take direct inspiration from landmarks and landscapes of Buenos Aires.

Letterform Lectures are a public aspect of the Type West postgraduate program. The series is co-presented by the San Francisco Public Library, where events are free and open to all.