Ed Ponce

Jour­nal­ist Car­los Soto start­ed La Necedad dur­ing the ear­ly COVID-19 pan­dem­ic. Col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween a di­verse ros­ter of writ­ers has al­lowed La Necedad to be­come a voice for cel­e­brat­ing lo­cal up-and-com­ing arts and mu­sic scenes and pop cul­ture at large. Ini­tial­ly a Sub­stack newslet­ter, he ap­proached me to build a new pub­lish­ing plat­form that grants him com­plete own­er­ship and in­de­pen­dence over the con­tent pro­duced.

The new web­site ex­pands on the read­er’s and writer’s ex­pe­ri­ence by in­te­grat­ing new fea­tures like a mod­ern con­tent man­age­ment sys­tem with mul­ti­me­dia blocks, more cus­tomiz­able newslet­ter con­fig­u­ra­tion, sup­port for mul­ti­ple au­thors, dif­fer­ent lay­outs for ar­ti­cles and a sig­na­ture vi­su­al over­haul.

Work done at Los Hop­per. Pow­ered by Eleven­ty, San­i­ty and Mailchimp.

Ma­te­r­i­al pro­duced for this new event bridges the gap be­tween dig­i­tal and phys­i­cal as an al­le­go­ry for fan­ta­sy and re­al­i­ty cross­ing over. Ex­per­i­men­ta­tion with scan­ners was an in­te­gral part of my cre­ative process while bring­ing this vi­sion to life. Main poster and In­sta­gram avatar were pro­ject­ed onto a low-de­f­i­n­i­tion LCD screen and pho­tographed to add tex­ture and depth.

The event took place on Sep­tem­ber 20, 2025 at Oa­sis La Calle (San José, Cos­ta Rica).

Col­lage com­posed of trac­ing pa­per, holo­graph­ic card­stock and sil­ver foil. The de­sign is in­spired by the min­i­mal­is­tic but tex­ture-rich com­po­si­tions and se­quences found in Hol­lis Framp­ton’s films. The holo­graph­ic card­stock was too thick for my print­er; ty­pog­ra­phy warped as it stuck dur­ing print­ing.

The event took place on Au­gust 24, 2022 at Cine Ma­tisse (San José, Cos­ta Rica).

Isbl. was an agency for cre­ative ser­vices based in Bo­gotá and Madrid. The web­site was live be­tween 2024 as a teas­er be­fore their launch.

Work done at Los Hop­per.

Cul­tur­ol­o­gist Al­fre­do Aré­va­lo or­ga­nized and cu­rat­ed an art ex­hi­bi­tion dur­ing his mas­ter’s stud­ies at the Fac­ul­ty of Phi­los­o­phy of MSU Lomonosov. The show brought to­geth­er works by more than 40 artists com­ing from Rus­sia, Unit­ed King­dom, Italy, Ger­many, Unit­ed States, Chi­na and Cos­ta Rica. To ex­pand the ex­pe­ri­ence be­yond the gallery space, he in­vit­ed am­bi­ent mu­si­cians to sound­track the ex­hi­bi­tion and broad­cast their sets live from Cos­ta Rica.

The event took place on May 21, 2021 at Gallery Belyae­vo (Moscow, Rus­sia) and livestreamed through Twitch for in­ter­na­tion­al au­di­ences.

The event took place on July 15, 2022 at Casa Ro­jas (San José, Cos­ta Rica).

“VOLÁTIL” was award­ed Best Elec­tron­ic Sin­gle of 2025 by ACAM.

Work done at Los Hop­per. Pow­ered by Eleven­ty, San­i­ty and Spline.

Work done at Car­di­nal. Pic­tures tak­en from Pollen Keep­ers’ shop.

The playlist nav­i­gates noth­ing­ness and pro­longed iso­la­tion. Tracks de­pict ab­stract sound­scapes and drones with­out a clear struc­ture that tran­si­tion un­event­ful­ly from one an­oth­er. Play­back em­u­lates the feel­ing of los­ing track of time.

Con­cep­tu­al­ized dur­ing the first months of COVID-19 lock­down. Meant to be lis­tened in or­der and on re­peat un­til worn out.

In ear­ly 2023, brand­ing and de­sign stu­dio PUPI­LA cu­rat­ed an ex­hi­bi­tion that in­au­gu­rat­ed at Par­que La Lib­er­tad in the con­text of Cos­ta Rica De­sign Week. Los Hop­per, among oth­er cre­ative stu­dios and in­di­vid­u­als, were in­vit­ed to cre­ate a poster that ex­pand­ed on the spir­it of lib­er­ty. The posters were hanged in­side the “El gua­nacaste de lata” dome by Francesco Brac­ci in­side the park.

Work done at Los Hop­per.

Gift­ed to my best friend on her 24th birth­day.

Méx­i­co City-based stu­dio and com­mu­ni­ty Za­mme in­vit­ed Los Hop­per to host a talk and a work­shop. We pre­pared a 5-kilo­me­ter route and gath­ered a small group of cre­atives to walk around San José, Cos­ta Rica. Along the stroll, we en­cour­aged par­tic­i­pants to ex­plore and doc­u­ment their in­sights on the city’s streets. Then, we came back to the stu­dio to col­lab­o­rate on a pub­li­ca­tion re­con­struct­ing the ex­pe­ri­ence us­ing me­dia the group had col­lect­ed (pho­tographs, 3D scans, po­et­ry, found ob­jects).

The event took place on Feb­ru­ary 25, 2024 through­out the streets of San José, Cos­ta Rica. Print­ed archive and in­ter­ac­tive web­site were made avail­able 1 week af­ter.

Work done at and work­shop fa­cil­i­tat­ed by Los Hop­per. Or­ga­nized in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Za­mme.

Gift­ed to a close friend be­fore her re­cov­ery.

Made for use in sin­gles, mer­chan­dise and pro­mo­tion­al con­tent of ris­ing Cos­ta Ri­can pop­star CAN­I­NA and her cur­rent al­bum cy­cle.

Work done at Los Hop­per.

The re­lease par­ty took place on No­vem­ber 13, 2021 at Xarias’s home (San José, Cos­ta Rica). Xarias was known as “J Arias” the time of pro­duc­tion.

Co-founders Nico­la and Ot­tavio ap­proached Los Hop­per with the vi­sion for their ini­tia­tive, The Ar­ti­san Lab. Based in Rwan­da, they col­lab­o­rate with lo­cal ar­ti­sans to con­nect their craft with cus­tomers abroad. We de­vel­oped a vi­su­al iden­ti­ty and vir­tu­al store­front that plays a sup­port­ive role in high­light­ing their sto­ry­telling and con­nec­tion with lo­cal ar­ti­sans.

The web­site was on­line through­out 2024 and 2025. Work done at Los Hop­per. Pow­ered by Eleven­ty and Shopi­fy.

The event took place on June 29, 2025 at Club Rosso (San José, Cos­ta Rica). David Piedra and I do­nat­ed our earn­ings for this project to Trans­vi­da, lo­cal non-prof­it or­ga­ni­za­tion for trans rights and pro­tec­tion.

The web­site was on­line through­out 2022 and 2023 at pbs.group.

Work done at Los Hop­per. Pow­ered by Eleven­ty.

Work done at Los Hop­per. Pow­ered by Eleven­ty and Shopi­fy.

Work done at Los Hop­per. Pow­ered by Eleven­ty and San­i­ty.

Type de­sign­er Fabi­o­la Mejía has es­tab­lished a sig­nif­i­cant pres­ence in the Cos­ta Ri­can de­sign com­mu­ni­ty. Part­ly due to her con­tin­u­ous con­tri­bu­tion to Berlin-based type foundry Di­namo, her work ex­tends across projects of var­i­ous scales and clients of dif­fer­ent sizes. Dur­ing the ear­ly 2020s, she found­ed SU­PER­CON­TI­NENTE, a new home to host her in­de­pen­dent type prac­tice that hon­ors the ex­per­i­men­tal, re­search-based and mul­ti-dis­ci­pli­nary na­ture of her craft.

She ap­proached me to build an en­tire­ly be­spoke web por­tal that func­tions not only as a cat­a­log of her work and ser­vices but also as the main store­front to li­cense her type­faces and pur­chase lim­it­ed-edi­tion col­lab­o­ra­tions with friends and al­lies spe­cial­iz­ing in oth­er cre­ative fields.

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