Daniel Irizarry’s Between Worlds maps Puerto Rican identity in type

Growing up, Daniel Irizarry’s mother would often say, “You know how they say in Puerto Rico…” before dropping a proverb loaded with humour and survival logic. One of his favourites: “La última, la paga el diablo” – roughly, the last bill the devil pays, meaning don’t worry about money because you can’t take it with you. These phrases, passed down across kitchens and neighbourhoods, now anchor a typographic project that took Irizarry deep into his own family history. Between Worlds began as an exploration of a feeling familiar to the Puerto Rican diaspora: belonging to two places whilst never being fully claimed by either. Living in the United States whilst carrying Puerto Rico in language, culture and memory creates a particular tension – one that Irizarry, Creative Director at Athletics in Brooklyn, decided to examine through letterforms. The result is three bilingual display typefaces that function less as fonts and more as cultural documentation, each designed for Spanish and English use and rooted in distinct aspects of Irizarry’s personal identity as a Puerto Rican American. The three typefaces share condensed sans serif structures, allowing them to work together in the same composition whilst maintaining individual voices. Piragua is a bold, condensed face with inverted contrast – heavier where you might expect lighter strokes – giving it a punchy, hand-painted vintage feel. Callejón carries more expressive accents that lend it graffiti-style flair. Borinqueneers features squarer, more geometric proportions with a sturdier, more structural silhouette. All three are uppercase-only with core punctuation and diacritics supporting both English and Spanish, designed specifically for posters, signage, titles and short statements.