Traditional Script Revival
Zapotecaps — a typeface that adapts the ancient Zapotec script of Oaxaca, Mexico into a fully functional digital font, connecting a pre-Columbian visual tradition to contemporary typographic practice. Its 20-symbol calendar, whose day-name glyphs survive in stone carvings at Monte Albán, has never been adapted for digital use. This project set out to change that.
Working from Javier Urcid's semiotic research on the Zapotec day-name system, each of the 20 symbols was studied as both a cultural artifact and a potential letterform. After reconstructing and mapping them to the English alphabet, they were refined to fit the grid-like, repeatable character logic of a modern keyboard.
The result is Zapotecaps: an all-caps symbolic font in the tradition of Wingdings, where each key maps to a glyph drawn from the Zapotec day-name list. A complete type specimen was laid out in InDesign, and the finished typeface was exported as a downloadable TrueType file — making the script usable across both digital and physical applications.
The serigraphic application takes that last point literally: the font printed onto fabric through screen printing, the Zapotec glyphs translated from stone to screen to ink.