The Expression of Mexican Identity through Typography: Aesthetic, Symbolism, and National Narratives in Type Design

Abstract

This article analyzes how Mexican typography has incorporated nationalist, cultural, and symbolic elements into its visual forms between 1968 and 2023. The study is based on the analysis of twenty typefaces selected from the Mapping of Mexican Typographic Production database. It identifies graphic and conceptual strategies that connect letterforms to national imaginaries, including references to the pre-Hispanic, the popular, and the urban. Among the visual resources used are pyramids, skulls, and elements of urban graphics, which evoke Indigenous traditions, religious festivities, and social movements. In this context, the letter functions as a sign loaded with collective memory, capable of articulating the ritual, the political, the festive, and the everyday. The qualitative methodological approach is based on case analysis, considering both the formal aspects and the production context of each typeface, along with textual analysis using Voyant Tools. This research demonstrates that Mexican typography operates as a medium of graphic and identity expression, in constant negotiation between tradition and contemporaneity, between the local and the global, and between the vernacular and the digital.