Doing graphic design requires mastery of typography, understanding images, spaces on the page, printing techniques and economic resources
available.

I remember perfectly well how laborious it was to work with Letraset to do the typographic composition through transfers of letters cut out of a thin sheet of plastic and adhered to a vegetable paper. They were complete alphabets with repeated letters, which were bought in the La Técnica bookstore and, sometimes, they did not have the one you wanted and you had to make do with the one available. From those dates on, making posters was a constant. Many of them have been reviewed by Pedro Manzano in his research “Poster and Design in Murcia”, published in 2024.

With Pedro Manzano I made the posters for the Youth Orchestra Festival. We complemented each other well, because Pedro likes spot colors a lot, and I, as a photographer, knew that things need white, that is, that there had to be light. Now Pedro is a master with a way of designing that is very much his own that he has been enriching and perfecting over the years.
Being a photographer and designer was a new path in Murcia. Before the 80s of the twentieth century, the most frequent thing was to use drawing. Also standing out as photographer designers were Antonio Ballester (a genius) and Ángel Fernández Saura, both with memorable posters.

In 1992, there was a qualitative leap in my concepts about design, when we started with Mestizo. I stopped making commissioned designs and focused on designs with images, but with attractive and functional interiors to be able to transmit in a legible way the complexity of all the contents of the multidisciplinary activities that we programmed.

How has your approach to graphic design evolved over the course of your career? And what factors do you think have influenced these changes?

There is one decisive factor that I am still fighting for and that is the field of graphic editing. Graphic designers tend to create images based on color and typography, but when you have to handle author photographs or simple photographs, to make a book, for example, you miss a greater understanding of what the images mean to be able to put them on the page in a harmonious way. It’s the same as the distribution of an exhibition in a room, there you have to understand the work, you can’t rely on ornaments that distract from the fundamental, which is the work. On the other hand, there is the readability of the contents. I cannot conceive of a diptych where a marbled background or a marbled background is placed, because the text is not read. Nor should you put a letter in light blue on a dark blue background. They are things of drawer and I see them with some frequency. I think we must insist on deepening the graphic editing and the readability of the content.

A fundamental thing in design is to read and study the content. Design begins by reading the texts, studying the images, understanding who the communication is aimed at and only after having understood all these factors, comes making the design and graphic editing decisions.

To make a good graphic product you need to read and understand the content. Editing a book, a brochure, a poster… Without understanding the content or without knowing what its function is, it is doomed to failure. Although now you find very flowery and bulky designs, but they do not transmit the content in a legible way, they do not fulfill their function, they are bad designs. But certain sectors like them that are shocked, but they do not read or deepen them and therefore, the phenomenon repeats itself. It is a problem of attention, something common in these times.

I will make a comparison as a writer of articles in the press: a few months ago I wrote a report on the fiftieth anniversary of the Fuensanta Underwater Activities Club and the introduction of an image of Fuensanta in an underwater cave, for the newspaper La Opinión. Although I was one of the first members of the club, I experienced it first-hand and I have clear memories, to write the article I documented myself with the newspapers of the time and with interviews with colleagues older than me. None of these data were explicitly reproduced in the article but, without that information, what was stated would have been flimsy and probably wrong. Apply it to the design.

The Mestizo stage influenced me a lot, because we had very limited resources and we had to make a lot of brochures, programs, posters, catalogs, books,… I was the one who took on that task, because I had that baggage. As soon as there were computers, I started learning how to use design programs. Now it looks like a boutade, but at that time a computer was something new and complex.

The first computer I touched was in 1992, managing a program with a database that Arena Teatro had. But that didn’t work, all the addresses had been entered, but I wanted to select people from Murcia alone, from the city and it was not possible, because the data entered had not been systematized. I stayed there for several nights until I understood how the databases worked. That’s how I began to understand the logic of digital. Mestizo’s brochures had 48 pages that corresponded to 44 activities, plus credits and formalities. That necessarily had to have design, it had to be attractive, but above all it had to be readable. A very functional design was required, the important thing was that the brochure conveyed.

In 1994 I began to publish books in Mestizo, mainly of photographs, but also essays on image. I realized that graphic editing is the same as being an exhibition curator. When you edit books by living or deceased photographers, respect and understanding of the work have to be fundamental, because there is no room for the designer to be noticed. The designer doesn’t have to show up; The only thing it must achieve is that the images can be read and, above all, viewed properly. I think that, before I go, I would have to explain or give a course on graphic editing, on how to read the image, because that is part of the job.

In the last four or five years I have been looking at some books of images by photographers, mainly catalogues of institutional exhibitions and also in private companies such as La Fábrica de Madrid, which generate a certain conflict for me. I think the design of the catalogue has evolved into a kind of spectacle. It is as if the designer’s interest was to present it to sponsors, trying to get their approval at first glance, simply kicking, without valuing the important issues of the author and his work, which should be the basis of editorial design.

I want you to talk about Mestizo; for you and many more creators in Murcia it was something fundamental. Tell us a little about Mestizo.

Mestizo was a non-profit cultural association formed by members of civil society organized for the promotion of art and culture. Founded in November 1992 by a group of five people who decided to intervene in artistic and cultural life with their own initiatives and without accepting anything in their programmes outside their objectives.

In Spain after the Barcelona Olympics and the Universal Exposition in Seville, the so-called “splendours of ’92”, various initiatives arose throughout Spain around art and culture, most of them promoted by civil society. There was an important event in Cuenca in 1993, La Situación (The Situation), which served to put us in contact with all the similar initiatives that arose as a result of the aforementioned festivities. Mestizo was one of the founding members of RED ARTE ―Network of Independent Collectives for the Management and Dissemination of Art―, together with Trasforma de Vitoria. This stage of impulse from civil society lasted a few years, until the beginning of the twenty-first century. This effervescence led to shared experiences and learning that formed a series of important projects that have lasted over time and that differ from others that emerged from 2010 that have a different component from the original ones.

Mestizo carried out its own activities and had regional repercussions (it greatly strengthened the Murcia-Cartagena axis), national and international, due to its diversity of actions. From that effervescence of Mestizo came La Mar de Músicas with its Mar de Arte and its Mar de Cine, thanks to the determination of Paco Martín, founding member of Mestizo and alma mater of La Mar, who sadly passed away in 2018.

The Regional Film Library of Murcia, which had already had some attempts at creation and some activities, emerged definitively later, with the purchase of the Salzillo cinema by the CARM, thanks to the tenacity and wisdom of Joaquín Cánovas, also a founding member of Mestizo, who was its director in that first stage. A Regional Film Archive that has been established as an important pillar of culture in the region to this day.

In 2001 Fotoencuentros was created, financed by the Cajamurcia Foundation and supported by Ángel Campos, director of the Las Claras Cultural Center, which are directed and produced by this interviewee, also a founding member of Mestizo.

The Huichol say that everything is for “something”. That something in the case of Mestizo is due to the practice of photography. To be a photographer is to work in many fields and to learn about the experiences of others. I worked since 1984 as a photographer with Arena Teatro at the invitation of Vicenta Hellín, a group directed at that time by Esteve Graset (who died prematurely in 1996), a group that also included Pepe Esteban and Sebastián Ruiz. As well as the actors Enrique Martínez, Pepa Robles, Elena… the musician Pepe Manzanares. With them I got to know contemporary theater.

I also worked with Joaquín Cánovas, director of the Spanish Film Week of Murcia who trusted me to direct the newspaper Semana de Cine that was made daily during the nine days of the festival, so I got to know Joaquín and Spanish cinema.

In 1992 the film El infierno prometido by Juan Manuel Chumilla was made, in which I worked with the artist and friend Ángel Haro, as set designers. That year we filmed Paco, mi padre by Benito Rabal in which Ángel Haro and I were the artistic directors. We did the same work for the Tribute to Paco Rabal at the World Trade Center in Seville, which was later done at the Romea Theater in Murcia. In addition, Ángel and I had a scholarship in New York in 1985 and returned in 1987, and we collaborated on artistic projects.

In Arena they told me that “something had to be done”, I believed that “something had to be done”. Since I was the one who knew and had worked with everyone, I called a meeting at the Arena premises that was on San Cristóbal Street, 3, a little beyond the four corners. That’s when we got together and said: “Hey, we’re going to make a multidisciplinary festival of the arts. Each one is going to contribute their experience in their sector and to program their area and we are going to be a collective”.
Someone said: “Hey, what about the music?”, then the name of Paquito Martín came up. I knew Paquito Martín from Los Urrutias, I had also gone to see the Arlequín in Cartagena, one of the first bars with live music that he founded with María Balanza. We called him, and he joined the collective.

That’s how Mestizo starts, those were the founding members. After the first festival in 1993, Arena states that theatrical production needs a series of resources that we do not have in Mestizo and they decide to follow their own path. Ángel Haro in 1994 after the second Mestizo festival, says that he is an artist and that he has already had enough management that he returns to his studio. From April 1994 Joaquín, Paquito and I were left, and we moved on

The headquarters were established in the Yerba gallery -in Calle Vinadel (now Vinader), 6 in Murcia-, in the exhibition hall located in the basement of the bookshop, thanks to the generosity and love for art of José López Albaladejo (Larry) and Gabriel Batán (Tati). We were there until 2003 when the place changed ownership. Currently it continues with the original exterior designed by the architect Juan Antonio Molina, perfectly recognizable and closed.

Joaquín proposed the film activities in VOS that were an absolute success and an important source of financing that provided us with independence.

On Mondays there were three passes in which eight hundred tickets were often sold, all of which were put on sale. Joaquín had good knowledge and a better eye for that. There were concert cycles of the music that Paco liked, who was a discoverer and a pioneer of world music. The concert cycles were also a source of income that allowed us to finance other activities. I dedicated myself to photography, with special emphasis on opening an editorial line of photography, I was also interested in poetry and other disciplines. We brought rare poets and very interesting artists, but little known. We also support artists who were just starting out. In 1994 he began publishing books under the Mestizo imprint, which is still active today with 56 titles published and a bookstore on the web.

http://www.mestizo.org

The book edition was successful and we made a national distribution circuit and even our books were distributed in other countries. Book sales were also a source of funding. The bookshop of the Reina Sofía Museum had a space in its entrance hall dedicated only to Mestizo’s books. We also organize trips: Whales and cacti in Baja California, Mexico, several years; Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao, recently opened, in fact we were the first group to visit it; South Morocco, a tour through the Draa valley to the Mahamid on the border with Algeria; Lisbon for the inauguration of the Belem art center. Seven meetings of Friends of Mestizo: Murcia; Seville; Montevideo, Uruguay; Mexico City, Mexico; Los Cabos, Baja California Sur, Mexico; Barranquilla, Colombia; and Segovia. Exhibitions, workshops, conferences, round tables and all the activities that are carried out around art and culture. http://www.mestizo.org/acerca_de/resumen.html