The idea is to start with icons, symbols or the images that you see every day in the street or as default images on your computer: symbols we know the meaning of or images that form part of our visual culture. You can combine them so they take on a new meaning that is more complete or different, more direct, ironic or absurd. You can redraw them, improve them or destroy them so they adapt to your intention, capture them with some kind of device and process them in one way or another.

Most of the illustrations published here were created for Nativa, a publication that is somewhere between a magazine and a fanzine on independent music created in the city of Barcelona. So there was a real application for all these illustrations. They were used to complement feature articles and opinion pieces, for the cover and to fill empty spaces. They were all conceived and executed very quickly. The subject of the text they accompanied is provided under each illustration.

The simplicity of the shapes and the use of color are not necessarily a limitation, but just another factor to be added to the conceptual capacity of this kind of images.

There are currently some great illustrators working with these parameters, such as Peret, Isidro Ferrer, Juan Cardosa, Patrick Thomas and the group Un Mundo Feliz, as well as others who came before them who are even better that I’ve yet to discover. That’s why this is just another little book in black and red.

Xavier Alamany
Graphic designer