Designer and typographer Kritika Dhariwal draws her fellow commuters on New York City’s A train as letterforms, building a typographic portrait series that uses shape, proportion, weight and gesture to capture the personalities and stories of everyday subway life.
Kritika Dhariwal had a vision on the A train: what if everyone around her could be drawn as an alphabet? She started sketching in her notebook during the commute, watching a friend group sprawl across seats, a family navigating the doors, a man unwinding after work, a dancer using the carriage to perform for tips. January to February 2026, two months of daily observation, and Type of ‘A’ Train is what accumulated.
The project treats letterforms not as a vehicle for language but as a medium for portraiture. Shape, proportion, weight, rhythm and gesture are all in play, manipulated to reflect the identities and mannerisms of the people who inspired each piece. A friend group becomes a composition of forms that lean into each other. A rush-hour crowd becomes something dense and interlocking. A dog on the train becomes exactly the kind of letter a dog would be.
“I use typography as a tool for observation,” Dhariwal says, “a way of slowing down long enough to really see the person in front of you and find the letter that fits them.”
The result is a series of typographic interpretations that are immediately legible as character studies: you do not need to know what letter you are looking at to understand who it is.
Type of ‘A’ Train is part of an ongoing body of work called Type Of, in which Dhariwal uses typography to document and reinterpret the people, places and cultures around her. The A train is the latest chapter. The series as a whole is an argument that typography can move beyond language entirely and function as something closer to drawing from life.
Kritika Dhariwal is a graphic and product designer whose practice centres on expressive type, creating letterforms with presence and personality.
Website: kritikadhariwal.com Instagram: @kritikadhariwal_com
Type of ‘A’ Train, January to February 2026. Digital illustration series. Part of the ongoing Type Of body of work. All illustrations: Kritika Dhariwal.
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