Sepagan font was designed by the need to raise awareness in the Mexican creative industry before the call launched by the Ministry of Public Education (SEP) to illustrate the free textbooks for the 2021-2022 school year. In return for graphic contributions, the Ministry proposes to pay collaborators only with a certificate, a printed copy and the author's credit. All this reaffirms the constant precariousness and the low social value suffered by the illustrators' guild, which generally extends to all visual creators.
This new free-to-use font is inspired by the legendary -and now disused- SEP logo, created in 1977 by designers Luis Almeida Herrera, Jorge Gleason Peart and Salvador Valdez, in the study Diseño Profesional, S.A. It has an outline that metaphorizes the crude and "sloppy" as an analogy of the tremendous discontent that the convocation aroused. Likewise, this rough finish allows keeping distance from the original work and demonstrating the irony of this proposal.
With this typeface we remember that behind every creative industry representative there is money, time and effort invested in achieving the necessary quality in their specialty, which is why a government institution as important as the SEP - which also is in charge of the National Institute of Copyright - should be one of the main promoters of adequate remuneration for this demanding work.
Designed by Mexican typographer Raúl Plancarte, SEPAGAN digital alphabet was born as a form of protest for this cause.
