When did you realize you wanted to pursue graphic design professionally?

When I was a teenager, I met a designer, I think she worked with Satué, and she told me what the profession was about. Little by little, through some Art History projects in high school (I had a very good teacher), I discovered a strong pull in me toward the artistic and the visual. At that moment, design seemed like the safest option, more so than Fine Arts.

In 2008 you received the Art Directors Club Young Guns award, an early international recognition. What did it mean to you at the time?

I received this award just one month after deciding to work on my own, so for me, psychologically, it was extremely important. I also think it helped me open doors in the United States, where the award is well known. It’s always easier to be heard when an institution like the ADC has recognized your work, especially when you’re just starting out.

Your work moves between typography and illustration, with a very eclectic style. How did you find your own voice?

Slowly. Your own voice, I believe, for those of us who don’t come with it built in, emerges over time: you build a way of seeing and thinking about design. And I suspect that my final degree project helped me enormously in that regard.

When Anagrama approached you to write, how did you react to the idea?

With tremendous excitement, because of the proposal itself, and especially because it was for Anagrama, which I can easily say is my favorite publishing house. But fear was also there, lurking. I felt a lot of responsibility.

You’ve said you’re a different person after writing it. In what ways do you feel the book has transformed you?

I think it pushed me to take a step toward a completely unfamiliar place. Suddenly, I stopped my daily work routine (which I swear hasn’t changed in almost twenty years) and began to write. Writing forces you to slow down time. That was the part I enjoyed the most: stopping, stopping to be able to think.

Daily life doesn’t leave space for that unless you create it. Today I’m more convinced than ever that there are thousands of seemingly banal things in our work that we assume aren’t political (or important), but truly are. And that everyone who approaches this profession as a craft goes through similar experiences.

As an Elisava Alumni, what lessons from your time at the school still accompany you today?

I think my final project was what left the deepest mark. I was lucky to have two professors (Albert Cano and Connie Mendoza) who guided me very well, and the opportunity to do a reflective exercise, similar to the one I experienced while writing the book, with tremendous freedom, right before entering the professional world.

It was a foundation for building myself and thinking calmly before the storm.