Ry Faraola
Ry Faraola is a graphic designer and typographer based in London whose practice interrogates the relationship between design, power, and class consciousness. Currently completing an MA in Visual Communication at the Royal College of Art, with additional training in type design from Letterform Archive's Type West program, Faraola combines formal design expertise with critical theory and satirical intervention. Working across typography, printmaking, publishing, and participatory objects, Faraola uses humor and irony as critical tools to expose the contradictions embedded in contemporary design culture.
Recent projects include Factory Toy, a handmade modular object crafted from luxury materials that parodies elite design by imagining a plaything that trains wealthy children for power. Through such work, Faraola creates deliberate friction between high-end craft and critical content, questioning how design reinforces systems of inequality. With degrees in Fine Arts and History of Art & Visual Culture from UC Santa Cruz, plus additional study in Philosophy of Design at Stanford, Faraola brings both theoretical depth and practical experience to projects that span commercial design, community organizing, museum commissions, and independent publishing..
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01 Mai TypefaceRSF -- 001
01 Mai Typeface
RSF -- 001
Typography
Illustration
Mai is a vernacular sans serif typeface inspired by the posters of the Atelier Populaire, the anonymous poster workshop that created a distinctive visual identity during the French uprisings of May 1968. Rebellious in spirit, Mai captures the raw energy of grassroots political movements—a typeface that listens to the Rolling Stones on vinyl and holds an optimistic belief in collective action. The project emerged from years of studying how printmaking and visual culture intersect with political organizing, from collaborative poster campaigns to academic research on visual tactics across different eras.
Drawing directly from original Atelier Populaire posters in the Letterform Archive collection, Mai translates the hand-drawn urgency of revolutionary graphics into a contemporary typeface family. Available in Medium, Ultrabold, and Light weights, Mai bridges historical political typography with modern design needs. As both homage and continuation, the typeface carries forward the legacy of collaborative printmaking that helped define one of history's most visually coherent mass movements, offering designers today a tool that embeds political history into contemporary visual communication.