Every letter is one unbroken stretch of a real river channel in the basin of the Amazon. The channels were traced from thirty-seven years of satellite water maps. A GPU search compared every stretch with single-stroke letter forms, and the best stretches were chosen by eye. Each stretch is only rotated and scaled. The short joins between letters are drawn. Each letter sits on a card showing the satellite view of the place it came from, lined up with the river, with its coordinates and the river's name.
Water: JRC Global Surface Water v1.4, EC JRC / Google, CC BY 4.0. Pekel et al. (2016), Nature 540, 418–422. Imagery: EOxCloudless 2016 by EOX IT Services GmbH, contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data 2016, CC BY 4.0. River and state names: © OpenStreetMap contributors, ODbL (nearest named waterway). Basin outline: HydroRIVERS / HydroSHEDS (WWF), Lehner & Grill (2013). Inspired by Igaratype (FutureBrand, João Generoso). No Igaratype letters or code are used. Full credits · Download the font