Alvarado
Primary Foundry · Hector Torres
An open-source variable typeface drawn from the hand-lettered and printed signage of Alvarado Street through the Westlake and Pico-Union neighbourhoods of Los Angeles.
About
Designed by Hector Torres and released under the Open Font Licence, Alvarado takes its letterforms from vernacular signage found along one of the densest urban corridors in the United States. The family runs across four weights from Light to Bold, each with an italic, and is distributed as a variable TTF alongside desktop OTF and web WOFF formats. With 218 glyphs including extended Latin characters, lining figures and punctuation, it covers a broad range of everyday typographic tasks.
Classification
Derived from hand-painted and printed signage observed on a specific Los Angeles street, giving it a vernacular character distinct from conventional grotesque or humanist classifications.