Ricardo is a personal project of type design. When we are asked "How are you?", it is generally asked in a rhetorical way, with no expectations of an honest and truthful answer. We answer what the other person wants to hear. This is a daily reminder that mental health is still a taboo topic, in a society where being "fine" or pretending to be is of the utmost importance.
Ricardo is a typography inspired by the Rorscharch test, a psychological evaluating tool created in 1921, consisting in a series of symmetrical, non-figurative, ink-marks to be subjectively interpreted by a patient in order to assess their personality. Despite the alphabet's letters not being all symmetrical, I tried to maintain this mirror principle throughout the making of the characters and therefore remain graphically similar to the original test.
Made by hand with paint and folded paper, the result is a typography with characters of different sizes and unequal shapes. Giving words a mysterious and almost anxious feeling, Ricardo challenges what we project of our feelings and apparent wellbeing on others, in comparison to our actual current state of mind.