The supplement of the newspaper El País has chosen for its Christmas editorial the typographic creation ‘Dote’ by Xelo Garrigós, graphic design professor and head of the Mecana Sans workshop. The different ornamental patterns that compose ‘Dote’ can be seen in the layout of the pages dedicated to this time of year.
Garrigós explains that ‘Dote’ has two variants: ‘Dote Font’ and ‘Dote Ornaments’. Her work, which lasted “almost 10 years of work, was originated when trying to think of a Christmas card inspired on the cross-stitch patterns that mothers made to embroider their daughters’ trousseau”. “I think these women needed a tribute because they are the great letter, monogram and marking clothing makers”, she added.
What began as an experiment with modular letters “just for fun” ended up being a series of uppercase, lowercase, borders, edges, patterns and other ornaments inspired by classic books and printed using lead type metals. Xelo Garrigós considers that the ‘Dote’ typeface has to be used in specific formats and occasions, but that the ornaments allow thousands of combinations to graphic designers.
Diego Areso, El País art director, has allegedly agreed with that statement as ‘Dote’ was chosen to be present on the layout of the nearly 70 pages of the last edition of El País Semanal dedicated to Christmas. Garrigós is more than satisfied with the result: “I always had in mind a book format, but magazines give more graphic possibilities and work very well with text, photography and lettering”. In addition, she believes that typography makes sense “if it is useful”, and seeing it applied in a real project encourages her to keep working.
