Sisters Create Hand Embroidered Typography That Fuses Chaos with Clarity

When I first began look­ing at embroi­dery (so many years ago!), the work of Maricor/Maricar came on my radar. Maricor/Maricar is the stu­dio name for sis­ters Mari­cor and Maricar Man­a­lo, and togeth­er they pro­duce work for pub­lish­ing, adver­tis­ing, stop-motion ani­ma­tion, and much more. They’ve become known for their hand embroi­dery fonts that often use abstract pat­terns to reveal the let­ter­forms in neg­a­tive space. Some­times, they avoid the words alto­geth­er and cre­ate a col­li­sion of col­or, pat­tern, and tex­ture on fabric.

Regard­less of the project, the hand embroi­dery employs ele­ments of chaos and clar­i­ty. This is best exem­pli­fied in their piece Don’t Wor­ry It’s All Fucked. The dou­ble-sided embroi­dery has two sep­a­rate and con­flict­ing mes­sages. The front reads “Don’t wor­ry be hap­py” while the back says “It’s all fucked.” This is a tongue-in-cheek response to the “over­ly pos­i­tive and off-putting­ly earnest” mes­sages of uplift­ing quotes. “Every­thing is all fucked,” the sis­ters say, “so you may as well try not too wor­ry and be hap­py while you can.”

Maricor/Maricar sells a selec­tion of their work (most­ly as prints) via their Etsy shop. They do have some pat­terns, though, includ­ing this sweet one. (h/t The Jeal­ous Cura­tor)