Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
PRESENT
MADERO PRINTING PRESS READING OBJECTS FACTORY: OBJECTS
Even though we had paper cutters, I kept using a razor...
...a Gillette razor blade.
I noticed the younger ones wondered why I used that razor blade.
I was used to cutting stuff with it...
-Didn't you get cut with it? -Of course I did.
I prefer my own scissors...
...my compasses, my glue, I used Iris brand glue...
...which I don't think you know. Oh, you do? Really?
-You do? -Of course.
Well, then you still got to know something good.
That was the very end of it. That's right.
Nobody uses compasses anymore, do they?
Now you just press a button and you get a circle.
Computers can make small and big circles now.
I think compasses are wonderful instruments.
I have my compasses right here...
...and I have a line gauge to work on...
...some paper by myself.
There's always something playful, design always has something...
...where humor might not always be applied, but...
...we should always keep it in mind.
MADERO PRINTING PRESS READING OBJECTS FACTORY
RESEARCH, SCRIPT AND CREATION BY ERÉNDIRA MELÉNDEZ TORRES
I think a lot was left.
Oh, you mean something material? That was actually individual work.
And there was a lot of that.
When I was around 13 or 14 years old...
...I had no idea what graphic design was...
...but I loved cinema. This was back in Barcelona, before...
...I came to Mexico. I loved cinema...
...and I would cut out the ads I found in the newspapers...
...and I would make some framings, and then my own adverts.
I would combine the pictures of the actors I liked...
...and I would arrange the images and the letters...
...and funnily enough, I still have, from that time...
...some, like five, six or eight of the...
...of the drawings I made, the ones I made with the clippings.
It was graphic design, only I didn't know back then.
Fortunately, when I came to Mexico...
...a friend of Miguel Prieto's and of mine...
...told me that Miguel Prieto needed an assistant...
...and back then I wasn't 18 yet, I was 17 years old...
...and I started working for him.
Back then, the term "graphic design"...
...was unknown in Mexico.
Miguel Prieto, an extraordinary designer...
...was identified as a typographer, as a model maker...
...but graphic design wasn't a concept yet.
I would watch him work...
...and I was working at the INBA publication office...
...and I made art books, catalogues, posters...
...tickets for the Fine Arts Palace...
...and I was learning from what I was watching.
Then, he took me with him as his assistant...
...to work on the supplement "Mexico in culture" for Novedades...
..and I had to learn a lot, as everything had to be done quickly...
...because it was a weekly supplement.
We had to invent something every week, there was no archive then...
...and we had practically nothing.
Fernando Benítez was the director back then...
...and he was my second mentor.
We were constantly in touch, he'd tell me...
...what materials to get, be it books, drawings I'd make or I'd ask for.
Miguel Prieto was my graphic design teacher...
...and Fernando Benítez was a sort of...
...father for me; sometimes he was like a son.
He was a rather wild, crazy, brilliant person...
...with lots of ideas, and he would sometimes ask for my opinion...
...in the publishing field, of course.
The founders were political refugees Tomás Espresate and Eduardo Naval...
...and we were the children of political refugees.
Mi friends, José Azorín and the Espresate brothers, had opened...
...Madero printing press, and I showed them my first pieces...
...from Bellas Artes to print them there...
...but I was rather an outsider.
I worked that way several years, I did what they asked me.
It was INBA first, and then it was UNAM cultural publications...
...and I'd take the pieces to Madero printing press.
Then, I don't remember what year it was...
...but Pepe Azorín asked me to stay and work for them...
...because it was a point where everything I was assigned...
...had to be done in Madero, or I wouldn't do it.
Up until 1954, which was when Vicente came along...
...we didn't have a designer, nothing of the sort.
We would work with the means we had at hand...
...or if we were given a piece, it came with some...
...instructions as to the style they wanted...
...because there was no design process back then.
I've only done graphic design, but I've always wanted...
...the design to be efficient, I mean...
...if it was a magazine, a cultural supplement or the cover...
...of a book, those materials had to be read by the public...
...so the design wouldn't be only an attractive feature, but...
...what I wanted was the design to help the material achieve its goal.
-It had to interest the reader. -Yes, it had to be attractive.
We had to create an attractive, alluring object to...
...make the reader approach it and want to enter it.
That's what I wanted, what I wanted to achieve.
I've always wanted to sell books, but not other products.
I only design for cultural purposes.
I've never wanted to be above that, I like to support culture...
...to suggest, if I may use that word...
...that people read that book, or if it was a movie poster...
...or a catalogue for an exhibition, I'd expect people to go see them.
That's what I care about in graphic design.
That's how I feel about it and how I've tried to apply it.
Cultural broadcasting was the main purpose.
I don't like to call myself "art director" or anything...
...because we always had a close relationship with the people who came here...
...and what they found here was the opportunity to develop...
...their great talent.
Besides, designers hardly ever have the chance to work...
...with the people who would make the final product.
The manufacturers, if you will.
Therefore, the designers would come downstairs, where the...
...negatives were, to check that the pages were correctly ordered...
...and then they would see the press to check or change their color choices...
...and they would also check the binding process.
It was a very comprehensive work process.
It was also very complex, so it was essential to keep an eye on it.
Graphic design was not remarkable in Mexico back then...
...but it was starting to appear.
Some of the many people who came to Madero...
...had studied in some art schools...
...but others hadn't.
They came because Madero was a prominent graphic design niche in Mexico...
...and that attracted them.
I was able to see their abilities...
...and their creative potential, as it's something that can't be taught.
What I tried to do in Madero was teach them how to work...
...that is, to help them develop their own ideas.
I wanted to see if they had any good ideas, and they did...
...because I saw the materials they made.
It was a time when...
...graphic design was starting to grow in Mexico...
...and indeed, a sort of school started to emerge.
There, the designers learned to apply their knowledge...
...either at the printing press or outside...
...as it's not the same to spend four years in college...
...in a class where they studied and practiced...
...and watching the process constantly and observing any reactions to their ideas.
It was an important era, because there's when many...
...different schools appeared...
...and everyone has been doing their best since.
I still think that studying graphic design for four years is too much...
...without ever setting foot on a printing workshop.
That's one of the things I believe helped...
...the designers that were educated there.
They learned to work full-time, with...
...little money, on a low budget.
We had to imagine and create everything without today's technology.
Now, with a computer, we can choose and change colors and...
...change size fonts.
-We had to work directly. -And use your imagination.
And it had to be done overnight.
Nowadays, designers can't conceive...
...how old-time designers used these movable type faces.
-Do you still use them? -No.
Movable face types disappeared, as well as the linotype machine.
It was a combination of what we imagined and what we could do...
...and what we could develop...
...with the technicians, who would always be willing to help.
One of the advantages of Madero was that we could imagine things...
...and make them, like dies, cut outs...
...books, painting catalogues that we could open and close...
...and specifically, we had this book...
...by Duchamp, which was made by Era, but printed at Madero workshop.
It was printed there by the first time. Duchamp has a very important artwork...
...called "The large glass", made on a piece of glass.
I printed the image on a piece of plastic, and...
...it was one of those things we'd discuss with the workers.
They wondered if it could be printed, and eventually they printed it.
When I came to Mexico...
...and started working with Miguel Prieto, I would see...
...posters advertising boxing and wrestling in the streets...
...and I noticed they had only two colors: red and blue.
They were mixed and gave a sort of purple color.
They were popular printings posted on walls, back when it was allowed.
Then, when I was working at Madero workshop...
...I told a formidable worker, Roberto Muñoz...
...to work on a horizontal poster using some magenta...
...and some blue to get a purple color in the middle.
I told him I had seen those colors before...
...and he said that the paint rollers were inked in red and blue...
...and they got mixed in the middle.
But he said he couldn't control the ink...
...so that the color didn't move and the posters were all the same.
I said I didn't care. They were 300 posters for...
...a cultural event for UNAM, in Casa del Lago, I think.
I told him it didn't matter, nobody would check the posters at all.
This wonderful press worker ended up using those...
...combinations of colors in five milimeters...
...with perfect control for the cover of a book.
I think that was an important contribution from Madero workshop...
...and another one was the use of high-contrast photography...
...before it became mainstream.
Everything was done without any measuring devices...
...and back then we used metal engravings on a wooden base.
One would send a photograph to the engraver, knowing beforehand...
...that the outcome would be correct thanks to the high-contrast photo.
The image wouldn't end up just in white or black...
...but it would have just the right grayscales to have some granulation.
And we had to get it right the first time...
...because we couldn't afford to repeat any of the engravings.
We would get in trouble and had to find the way out.
They never refused, but they took their time to deal with...
...the technical details, and they always had the support...
...of the head of the workshop, Pepe Azorín.
Every time I came up with something, he'd say, "Again?"...
...but he'd always agree and work with me and...
...made technical suggestions, as he was very knowledgeable.
I spent about 10 or 15 years cutting out...
...vignettes, letters, pictures, images, portraits...
...and then those Dover books came along.
Have you ever seen them?
They had lots of images: animals, houses, cars.
I had done all that my way, by...
...cutting out clippings and pasting them on some pages.
They were useful for designers for many years.
It wasn't my intention to be the first to do it, and...
...I was glad to see that other designers wanted to enrich...
...the aesthetic language, the language of design.
It was a life of enjoyment and pleasure...
...but it was also hard, strict work.
The designers would start at 7:30 a.m. and would finish at 3:00 pm...
...they'd get paid by the hour, but if they missed work they wouldn't get paid.
It wasn't a playground, everyone had their own tasks...
...it was a down-to-earth job...
...and it had to be done well, otherwise everything would crumble.
José Emilio and I decided to...
...honor Fernando by...
...publishing the "Gatomaquia", all the cat cartoons from the supplement...
...in one of the end-of-year gifts from Madero workshop.
That's where I appeared as the author of the "Gatomaquia"...
...and José Emilio did a presentation.
As we were dedicating it to Fernando Benítez...
...we had to include our names. How could he know we did that for him if not?
I was friends with Fernando Gamboa since my INBA days...
...and back then he was the director of the Museo Arte Moderno.
He asked me to present a graphic design exhibition there...
...with my own pieces of work.
I decided it'd be better to include everyone's work...
...and not only mine.
That's when the name Grupo Madero was born to present the exhibition.
In 1993, I stopped working for Madero workshop.
They were still doing work for Era publishing house, but...
...I had already stopped working there due to health problems.
I left my job there, and in that same year...
...Era moved their offices to where they are now, around Tlalpan...
...but from that year, I had nothing to do with that work.
The founders were political refugees Tomás Espresate and Eduardo Naval...
...and we were the children of political refugees.
They were Republican political refugees, Spanish political refugees...
...and evidently, that has left a mark on...
...our work, and of course, on our lives.
There was a great deal of imagination and creativity...
...from the publishing directors, the magazines, the publishing houses...
...to the designers themselves.
There was this huge wealth of movement.
Each movement had its own music.
I wouldn't impose my point of view, every person...
...had their say and their opinion.
I think that's what enriched the work.
There was no such thing as "one way" to do things...
...but there was a constant flow of ideas and results.
I didn't have a theoretical background.
It was pure imagination, if I can say that.