illustrations | Another Little Book printed in Black and Red


While I was designing an issue of Nativa about "Music and humor", the idea of this Bob Dylan in underpants appeared. It was not a matter of laughing at him but of making an ironic or iconoclastic look towards the idolized attitude that the lovers of the music have often with the artists and their career.	Considering how to picture the brilliant musician, I needed to start from an iconic and known image. I took the famous poster of Milton Glaser, another guru but for the design. This gathered two "holy" characters under a certain humor, a wink to the musicians as well as to the graphic artists. Since then, the character kept on turning up intermittently in different issues of the magazine: when Dylan was quoted, when his presence gave an breath of scepticism about the contents of the item, or without an evident reason. Until the last issue where, at last, he spoke.	Milton Glaser b. 1929 "Dylan" poster 1966 Offset lithography 33 x 22 inches
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This illustration accompanied an opinion item about the iPod and the use that its users do. The irruption of this device opened a door to the freedom and the independence in the access and the listening of music. But curiously, in the iPods we find more of the musical period that the owner looks with nostalgia than more up-to-date or innovative music.	The text showed the iPod as a sword of double edge that can both facilitate the knowledge of the modernity or to perpetuate common places or secure zones of preferences.
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If the opportunity and the subject allow it, I like to make the illustrations work also with a different focus to the item one. So, the images generate their own talk as a parallel opinion written in a graphical language.	The item was about the activities of leisure, the live music, the noise and the controversy that they generate. The graphic comparison of situations is an irony on the contradictory attitude that the Town Council and some neighbors had with the noise in the city.
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Political speeches as Politaoke The American election are in its culminating point. After the victory of Obama in the last presidential TV debate, the accusations of power abuse on the governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin, and the stock exchange and credit crisis, the Americans will go to the urns perplexed, fearful and surprised the next 4 November [2008]. As everything, also from an event like this a certain artistic profitability can be taken out. This is the one that think the pupils of the Bauhaus University Kreativfond in Weimar that they are on tour in the US. After their first performances in his country of origin, Germany, the Politaoke has arrived to several American cities, like Charlotte, in an arty show where speeches, interviews and other interventions of the politicians in the race towards the White House are the artistic matter to deconstruct. Politaoke provides to the audience a platform to intervene, to ridiculice and, also, to listen to what the politicians talk and to see clearly what the politicians say.	Completely independent of any party option, it allows the assistants to decide in every session, arguing among them, interpreting how the talk of each politician is, in a serious or sarcastic way. The speeches of the politicians and the interviews are supplied, word to word, edited in sections (songs) of 1 to 8 minutes. A series of debates, interventions and television appearances are also given to the public as duets. Created by Diana Arce, Politaoke is an evolution of the her work as artist and activist, interested in the use of artistic methods as a platform to put the cultural and political criticism in relation with the comment of the people of the street. Very interesting, for a foreigner like me, not only to see the mentioned work of artistic intervention, but also to know what the young people think about the politics and of the politicians of their country. An immersion into the American political thought with a lot fun.	Joan-Elies Adell. Published in Nativa no. 47, p. 4. Barcelona, January of 2009
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The illustrations in the magazine
In the first issues of Nativa, these illustrations had an almost marginal role. They were used to fill undesired empty spaces. By the time, they start taking its own speech and they had good acceptance among the readers. This led to giving them more protagonism from time to time.

Since issue #22, the magazine changed the full color printing to only one ink printing. The change was more conceptual than economical.

As a logical consequence, the pictures in color of title page were substituted for the illustrations of solid black. This more austere and basic graphic language was more suitable for the new resources and more effective communicatively.

In the pages 80 to 87 of the book it can be appreciate how the illustrations were integrated into the title page and how they accompanied the texts of the main items.

In design, it is often said —and often is true— the sentence "Less is more".

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Often I hear graphic designers saying bad things on certain typographies. I think that there aren't beautiful or ugly typographies, as there aren't beautiful or ugly colors. It depends on the way you use them and how they are combined. In the 50th issue of Nativa, I worked with four of these damned fonts. It was on the headlines of four items, trying to fit with the contents and using them as rigorously as every typography requires.	But beside the headline, a guru passed through criticizing the types and, even, insulting their use, as sometimes I heard to say. This is another example of how to illustrate creating a parallel or complementary story to the item subject. But this time it just reflected my farewell as graphic designer of Nativa.
		Nativa magazine, #50. Barcelona, 2009
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Illustration published in a book of short pornographic stories: «La tarde que compré 'La vida sexual de Catherine M.'». Ed. Tintas Alternativas. Barcelona, 2008. The concrete story portrays the need of a woman to get on prostitution to pay her addiction to heroine.	I recognize that I had to read three times the story for achieving to understand it (lack of practice?) but once digested, the illustration was made in five minutes.
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A rainy afternoon, my friends in the organization team of the Festa del Grafisme [Graphics Party] and I, were killing time making illustrations with stickers. Just a few minutes before we had seen this poster in a Paul Rand's exhibition and it seemed touching to all of us.				Paul Rand 1914-1998 "The Prepared Professional" Poster 1982 Offset lithography 38 x 21.2 inches
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