2020–2025: When Everything Crumbles (and You Build It Back)

The Bear is one of my favorite shows on air today, and its latest (fourth) season served me a nostalgic gut punch, cut with tenderness. The series has always thrived on beautifully portraying what restaurants represent beyond good food & drinks. In Carmy's words: "People go to restaurants to be taken care of, to celebrate, to relax, to not have to think about anything else for a minute… to feel less lonely." But this time, they pushed it further, focusing on personal growth, reflecting on how messy and complicated it is to be human, and that most times, the biggest obstacles are inside our heads. As someone who has worked 65-hour weeks in the service industry, it hit home in more ways than I'll be able to make sense here.

It's easy to say everything started crumbling in 2020, when the pandemic forced us all to confront routines and beliefs. Even for a true Gemini rising, used to burning things down to the ground and rebuilding, I guess, the big difference is choosing change rather than having it forced. And there I was, in New York, fresh into my type design career. To be honest, although it wasn't easy, I climbed the industry fairly quickly. I got jobs I'd never dreamed of, collaborated with the coolest people, won some awards, all within two years… and then nothing. Freelance dried up, events vanished, and even a sense of community… gone. So, between trying to figure out next steps and drinking myself to oblivion, an intercontinental move felt like the safest bet.

Sunset at Tempelhofer Feld (Berlin). The calm before the storm.

Little did I know, the real hit would happen in 2021 when I lost a couple of very important relationships. First, I left Undercase, the foundry I co-founded, after my partner decided to quit the design world. It was the right move, but it stung.

Then, not long after, my marriage of eleven years fell apart. That spring, I spent most days lying in grass, trying to piece it all together while drowning in pain and grief. Insomnia hit hard, the anxiety attacks started, and I could barely function, or recognize myself. I felt adrift. Deeply.

Until I had the brilliant idea of taking a "sabbatical" and going to bartend in a busy gastro-pub. Of course, I had no clue of how formative and healing that period would turn out to be. See, the beauty of such fast-paced, intense physical labor is that once the clock marks 6pm, and the doors open to the public, there's no time for negative thoughts. It's just about mixing hundreds of perfect ice-cold cocktails, welcoming people in, and managing not to hurt yourself in the process (knives and peelers can be dangerous in slippery hands—I know from experience). If someone had told me that hand-washing dozens of glasses could be meditative, I would've called it a straight-up lie, but no, it's true. Working behind the bar calmed my brain, let me feel connected, reenergized. It gifted me some of my favorite people in Berlin and encouraged me to explore the city and its culture through completely different lenses.

There's really no difference between a $150 job or a half million. It doesn't matter how big the client is, but what you do with the work and connections you make. That might be the most valuable lesson the bar taught me: leverage what you've got. Leverage your relationships, reputation, and current opportunities to move toward the next step. Bartending showed me how to read energy, how to turn narratives into product, how to streamline systems, and build community. And most importantly, that owning your story is a superpower. All of this sparked Women in Type and a massive shift in my mindset. It was time to stop amplifying other people's voice, vision, and practice, to grow my own. To create the things I wish existed.

So, I quit the bar in early 2023, and put the pedal to the metal. First releasing a new Brazilian-inspired typeface, Melindrosa, then the collabs Octavia, Jobim, and Hanae. I spoke about WiT at HyperTalks and the TypeElectives lecture series, started planning next steps for the initiative, while its first trio got featured at the exhibition Same Bold Stories? at Klingspor Museum. The absolute cherry on top? I was invited to teach at my alma mater Type@Cooper. Life was good again. Lots of excitement, which led to an incredibly long list of crazy ideas and 7 font families to finish.

The next realization, citing The Bear again, now in Tina's words: "I gotta get my head in the game. I gotta focus. I gotta get faster." Which in my book meant designing an ultra-focused production plan, packing the bags (again), and moving back to my hometown Rio.

Always chasing perspective under the sun. Recreio Beach (Rio).

It's been exactly one year since the beginning of my tropical season, and certainly I'm soaking up the sunshine and enjoying familiar landscapes, but this was, actually, a strategic isolation. To cut the noise. Clearing such backlog is no joke, it'll require excruciating discipline and clarity. That's why you haven't heard from me for a while. The second half of 2024 was about laying groundwork, tying some loose ends, and expanding WiT's collection with Corax, Gigio, and Profane, culminating in the perfect party at DiaTipo SP. Now, 2025 has been a wild journey that deserves its own deep dive, including six months of pure RoboFont mode, no interruptions. What started as a production sprint became something much deeper: a complete diagnosis of how I work, what I'm capable of, and where my energy truly belongs.

The truth is, a lot of things broke my heart but fixed my vision. I've learned that you can only win when your mind is stronger than your emotions. No fuel for thoughts that don't serve you. Those old wounds aren't excuses, they are part of my architecture. Momentum isn't magic, it's consistency, and action will teach us what thinking never could.

So come closer—Contraforma is about to get raw. More personal, more opinionated and unapologetic. Let's exchange!

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Marginalia

🔤 Font:

Lost by Federico Parra Barrios (205TF) — An industrial yet warm sans inspired by Berlin's embossed metal plaques, built to handle famously long German words. The tighter it gets, the more expression it reveals.

💬 Quote:

“You have to go faster than the system.”
— Vivienne Westwood

🔖 Bookmarked:

Elizabeth Goodspeed on what happens when we treat the past like a stock library — A critical take on appropriation and originality.

🧑‍🎨 From the Field:

Lygia Clark: Retrospective at Neue Nationalgalerie — Tactile, radical, and intimate. Clark understood reinvention as a form of rebellion. On view until Oct 12, 2025.

📡 Elsewhere:

Trouble’s Coming by Royal Blood — Played on loop in summer 2021. A gritty anthem turned into fuel.

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