Frida by Frida

Creating a new signature brand

One of my new creations painted in gouaché on water-colour paper size 50 x 70cm

Package and Design Magazine in China Publication

Package & Design Magazine Front Cover

Green Child, No Smoking and Path To Pictograms earned a honourable mention

A short Chinese printed bio and description – wish I knew what it said!

As written in Package and Design:

AIGA Center for Cross-Cultural Design Competition – Based in the U.S. the AIGA Center for Cross-Cultural design is an AIGA (American Institute of Graphic Arts) community established to foster greater communication between designers across cultures, as well as a better understanding of the interwoven experience of design and culture in our lives.

Many visual communicators will naturally concur with the notion that the audience’s culture is critical to effective communication, but few are truly conscious how much our “melting pot” or “mosaic” environments create visual chimera, or what we call Cross Cultural Design.  To encourage our community to express their experience and aspirations, we conceived “Celebrating the Role of Culture in Design”.  Over a 12-week period, designers were asked to submit print, video, photography or interactive pieces that would answer the question:  How do you express the intersection between culture and design in today’s world?

We received submission from all over the world including El Salvador, Italy, Iran, Lebanon, Columbia and the Netherlands.  The submissions from the United States reflected the expected diversity of voices, calling on a variety of cultural heritages and social issues.  The work was judged by an international panel selected for their contribution to visual communications and branding work worldwide.

Maya scriptures come to life in Frida Larios’s designs

Come To Honduras, a bilingual international magazine that reviews and promotes tourism in Honduras, featured my profile, work and inspiration in these double-page spreads. You can read the full article (in Spanish) here.

Spanish /English interview

Stone by stone

You might agree with me that a thousands of years ancient UNESCO World Heritage archaeological site and town like Copán Ruinas in Honduras demands culturally relevant information design–so this is what I am aspiring to with this little project.  Stone by stone I hope to widen perspectives of what can be done in the wayfinding field in developing countries where graphic quality and production budget is a permanent constraint.

The single info/graphic resource for this natural sign is the New Maya Hieroglyph: Path To pictogram. These stones lead to the ‘Los Sapos’ archaeological site, a trail that had no signs and is now benefiting from an intelligible very simple system of: self-standing rocks from the local river + community craft + inclusive grafica + easy installation that can be read by any language-speaking audience, children end even illiterate– a highly common issue in this modern-Maya peoples region.

Natural dye

Born to be wild

Tulio Copán resident and master stone-carver

Beautiful light early in the morning

Carving through the pictogram

Finding home from the pile with the help of four-men

Aguas Termales / Hot Springs in need of signage

We visited the Luna Jaguar hot springs for our anniversary. This is an awe-inspiring natural wonder that is an one hour drive from the famous ruins of Copán.  A place like this needs signage that meshes with the landscape.  Signs need to be noticed but at the same time need to be hidden.  How can this be achieved?  Maybe through local materials / craftmanship with a vernacular yet contemporary and readable design.

Sign hidden behind bushes.

Entrance ticket thrown on ground.

An additional problem is lack of readability and sign deterioration via moisture.

Macaw Mountain’s New Sign

The New Maya Language has a new addition to the family: a new Macaw Mountain Bird Park and Natural Reserve (Montaña Guacamaya Reserva Natural y Parque de Aves) wood crafted sign.

This is a tropical bird reserve in western Honduras that cares for rescued and endangered birds of the American tropics.  Inspired by a Maya sculpture, the pictogram promotes ecological conservation by reflecting human immersion into the richness of his ecosystem.

Look out for large arachnid friends finding home at the sign

The proud designer

Rehabilitated Macaws

Propaganda-type carpet graphics

The Universidad Centraomericana (UCA) in Antiguo Cuscatlán in San Salvador commemorated the 20th anniversary of the killings of Jesuit professors through fabulous carpet designs.

Today, Monday November the 16th, is the anniversary of the killings of nine Spanish Jesuit professors by the death squads (sponsored by the governing Republican party) on campus during the civil war.

The civil war happened between 1979 – 1992. These assassinations took place in 1989 in the context of a capital city of San Salvador single and final guerilla offensive that led to the signing of the peace agreements by both sides-FMLN guerillas and the Government of El Salvador army on the 16th of January of 1992. Since then El Salvador has been a democratic and peaceful country aiming at reconstructing its international image.

In these pictures we see the university community working on propaganda carpets set-up along a road that goes through the gardens and buildings.

My main focus of this post is to show the beautiful typo/graphic executions with a simple technique of heavy grained salt mixed with colourant.

Carpet under construction

Hand-made grafica

Nuestro Ahora / Our Today

Campesino

XX Anniversary

Segundo is the name of one of the Jesuit martyrs

A quote by I. Ellacuría, another of the martyrs

Detail

Me and my baby Yax

Back to the office

After Beijing and before heading off to San Salvador

Artworks swap

A Bo Zhang, quien es una “print-maker” o grabadora en papel, le gustó mi trabajo y a mi el de ella, así que hicimos un intercambio de pinturas o literalmente un “trueque”. Les quería mostrar cuales intercambiamos.
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Bo Zhang, artist-print-maker, liked my work and I liked hers so we did an art exchange. Wanted to show you what we exchanged.

Treasure 3-1

Treasure 1-2

Green Child

Macaw Mountain

CAFA Museum website publication

Aquí está el link e imagen de pantalla del website del Museo CAFA que ha publicado algunas imágenes de las exhibiciones. Ahi pueden también ver el resto de exhibiciones que hubo, como por ejemplo Greengaged, fundado y organizado por las británicas Sophie Thomas y Annie Chick.
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Here is the link and screen shot of CAFA Museum’s website that has published some images of the exhibitions. You can browse through the other exhibitions that took place, like Greengaged, founded and organised by British designers Sophie Thomas and Annie Chick.

Exhibition view

CAFA Art Museum Website