João Varela

Hi, I'm João!

I'm a Lettering Artist and Type Designer, currently working from Lisbon, Portugal.

My world revolves around letters of all shapes and sizes, in all mediums and colours. Attracted to everything related to typography, from typefaces and logos to murals and calligraphy, I constantly challenge myself to work with different materials, scales and styles.

Calligraphy has a big presence in my work. Writing by hand is the birthplace of all lettering, so in my opinion, it is essential to have a firm base in calligraphy to do any typography related projects.

In 2020, I graduated with honours from the Master Type Design at École Cantonal d'Art de Lausanne. During my degree, I learned how to fuse the technical and detailed process of Type Design with an emotive and creative approach to Lettering pieces, and that is exactly what I strive to do. My creative process always involves both analogues and digital mediums, either for sketching or finalizing projects.