NEXT 2014 | April 10 to May 18

I had the pleasure to be surrounded with people as exited as I am when it comes to creating good work. I saw my friends and now colleagues evolve and hone their skills. To see their work ethic and their creativity combined it was just uplifting. I loved the environment and community the Corcoran has, from the faculty to the alumni; they all made it that much easier to pull-off all those all-nighters and still have the energy to get your work critic day after day. For me, and for many others I am sure, it was a challenge I was glad I took.

Music albums timeline

NEXT  is around the corner and I am wrapping up the last details for the exhibit. I finished printing my posters, thanks Epson Stylus Pro 9880. I got to finish my videos. One video is a short minute and a half info-graphic that talks about design and music; very brief, simple, and with no sound. The other video is the opposite because is song after song for 16 minutes. As the two most approachable things in my space I tried to make them simple and and brief, so in this way people can stop listen some good music and learn a little bit about the role of design in music.

Music Posters

Is spring break already. Now time has passed faster that I would like to and I have to show some progress. I am happy to say things seem to be falling into place, in this break I ought to finish the exhibition. In the school we were told that in our return we should start putting our stuff up in the gallery. This below is an sketch of  the first concept for my posters for the exhibit:

Interview: Carlos Perez from Elastic People

Carlos Perez, Photographed by Omar Cruz

As part of the last project in my senior year, my thesis-paper and publication, in my school we were asked to interview a person in the field of design who’s work or expertise had relevance to the topic of our thesis. For my project I chose to interview Carlos Perez, creative director and founder of Elastic People. I thought of Carlos Perez as  the right person to interview because my thesis talks about the important role of design in pop music, and Carlos Perez is one the most prestigious names in the Latin music scene in the United States.

Perez has turned his love for music and design into a successful design firm. Today  his creative agency works with a variety of renowned Latin artists. The work coming from Elastic People is multidisciplinary; this consist of film, creative direction, and branding.  Among the several achievement of the agency’s remarkable trajectory there are: the album cover designs for 3 of the top 5 Latin Albums of the last Decade including Daddy Yankee’s Barrio Fino; the #1 Album of the Decade, and creative collaborations with 12 of the decade’s Best Latin Artists; according to Billboard Magazine’s “Best of Decade” Charts. Lastly to name just some of the clients he has done work  for, we have Interscope Records, Machete Music, Sony Music Latin, Universal Music Latin Entertainment, El Cartel Records, Emi Music, Pepsi International, and Nike.

Process leading to “NEXT 2014”

NEXT is an annual exhibit in which the work of graduating students of the Corcoran College is on display, so the works in this exhibit are part of a semester long thesis project from students of all majors. My project is about graphic design in popular music.

Since NEXT is a large project for senior students at my school, this has been divided in two parts. The first one consist in writing the thesis paper. My essay talks about the role of design when depicting our pop culture, especially through its music. In it I discuss that if we look back at the history of pop music, we can distinguish a particular aesthetic for almost any given time. Design is one of those things that is expected to be part of the vernacular that distinguish a period of time, and thanks to the work of designers today we have a visual clue of how these different periods of time looked aesthetically. I chose to talk about this topic because music is something almost anybody can relate to. Who does not remember the cover of his/her favorite music album? Graphic design in a figurative way has given and continues to construct the visual, the image; the aesthetic side of our popular culture. In my thesis paper I talked a lot more about this topic, and I use several album covers as examples of this link between design and culture. Fortunately I chose a topic I have enjoyed learning more about; which made the extensive writing not so daunting. The other part of this project, after finishing the thesis paper, consist of turning our writing into a publication; digital and print. For now we are only in the beginning states of the publication, so these below are some pictures of my paper and thumbnails of some possible design layouts.

San Miguel de Allende, Mexico

Last month I had the pleasure to visit Guanajuato in Mexico; I stayed in a peculiar small town called San Miguel de Allende, I was there thanks to a course I took in college. The place was beautiful and the locals were charming. The place itself, the people, the weather, and the food was all very nice. The rich history and beauty of the place was stimulating. The cobble stone streets, the colorful colonial houses, and the Baroque ornaments everywhere were signs of the rich past, of a once affluent colonial town. Many houses had balconies with vine flowers hanging, doors knobs of forge iron.The folk art and galleries throughout the town was the other aspect of San Miguel that got me. Craftsmanship and art was everywhere. One of our many stops in our visit was La Aurora, a place that housed several other galleries. In La Aurora all the galleries had quality work that just amazed me. We also visited la Escuela de Bellas Artes (The school of fine arts), a major school of art in Mexico, this institution has a school in San Miguel, which was in a big colonial building that resembled an old monastery. I was glad to hear my school had some sort of partnership with them, and that in the future the school will be working with them more closely.