erick david

Crafting meaningful connections between passionate creatives and real people.

I’m a graphic designer from Costa Rica (00:00:00 CST) and I’m obsessed with typography, branding and album covers. I use my creative skills and thinking to bring people together. You’ll find me discovering & sharing new music, organizing my bookmarks and talking for hours with my friends. I believe that listening is the key to learn about yourself and the world around you.

Here you’ll find some of the work I’ve done as a designer, as well as brief notes I write about my thoughts & feelings and mixtapes I curate for your listening pleasure. But don’t ask me about my Twitter.

I’m currently looking for a full-time position but I’m also taking freelance and collaboration projects. Let’s talk!

Current obsession

ReCodePop! (Disc II) ReCodePop! (Disc II) cover artwork
by DJ Re:code (2022)

Work

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inter—valo

Taking a break from everything but art, music and friends. 2019

Creative Direction, Branding

University life can be tough. It’s around these times that some of us go through mental health issues for the first time. Stress, anxiety and depression can quickly take over your semester. The UCR knows this is a huge problem among its students, so they had an idea.

For a whole week, people could take a break from academic pressure and bring their friends to watch plays, dance in live shows and enjoy contemporary art. Across the campus, artists and students blended as they met in the inflatables and shopped through the design fair.

I took the lead on the design and creativity side, while my friend Cristian Ugalde did the social media and camera work. We shot interviews with the artists, gave away some stickers, grabbed free tote bags (of course) and even designed an AR filter for the 4k followers we accumulated on the event’s Instagram.

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Saint Hypocrisy

Bringing the sounds of the underground to life. since 2017

Record Artwork, Lettering, Photography

San José (Costa Rica) is home to the biggest club scene in the region, in which Gabriel Varela grew up. Influenced by Arca, Purity Ring and Basquiat, he’s been experimenting with dark and glitchy sounds for a while. In 2017, he started playing sets and producing under the name Saint Hypocrisy.

We started collaborating closely around that time. And since, I’ve helped him shape the way his artistry looks and feels.

For our first project, Frailest Angel, I designed a packaging to visualize the dangerous and energetic vibe of the tracks, each with a corresponding pattern. In his 2020 quarantine bop, Pretty Boy, I had fun arranging a mix of rough and delicate elements as the cover artwork. Then came Traviesa 2008, where I borrowed a bit of everything really, honoring our latino heritage.

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PLATITUDES

Connecting with myself and those around me with journaling and type. since 2020

Art, Typography

Platitudes are catchphrases rendered meaningless due to excessive use. Though they rarely tell us something new, some actual life lessons we gather through our experiences may resemble something we’ve already heard. And I’ve been taking notes.

Writing helps me learn a lot about myself. I write about what I learn in concise statements so I internalize the knowledge and don’t forget it. Then, I use these notes to craft compositions with my laser printer and ephemera I collect on the daily. Here, I experiment by playing with analog media, mixing textures and effects and testing new typefaces.

Turns out, the open-ended nature of these pieces allow people to relate in all sorts of ways. And I went with it.

foreversince

Looping into the ambivalence of beauty. 2018—2019

Record Artwork, Music Curation

Somehow, everything in our universe seems both choreographed and spontaneous. No matter how much we try to take control, life will keep going its own way. All sorts of energies permiate each of our experiences. That’s the way it’s always been. Such mysteries are what make nature what it is, beautiful in an unpredictable way.

I compiled a 21-track, 80-minute collection to help me navigate these ideas. Then, I borrowed from Japanese aesthetics (yūgen, most notably) to add to the experience while taking advantage of the different finishes in the CD jewel case. You can listen to foreversince on Spotify. Start anywhere and don’t forget to shuffle the tracks.

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CARAVANA

Celebrating history at the cultural heart of the city. 2019

Poster Design

Amón Solar is one of San José’s most beloved venues, hosting cultural events of all sorts since the early 2010s. Picking it as the place to celebrate dance-punk band Alphabetics’ highly anticipated reunion and their legacy in the local indie scene was a no-brainer. Then, PLURAL magazine came along last minute with a curated exhibition featuring fresh talent from local artists.

Event producer CARAVANA invited me to craft some promo material for the event. I gave it a playful treatment to match the bands’ spontaneous and energetic vibe. The composition had to be flexible, as it would be distributed across different outlets, both in social media and print.

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erick david

Work

Notes

Mixtapes