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I came to do an internship at the studio of Manuel Raeder¹ in 2011. I met him at my school in Mexico first as he gave a workshop there, and we kept in touch. In the beginning, I was working half a week with Manuel as a graphic assistant and the other days with his wife Mariana [Castillo Deball] as her artist assistant. Mariana has always done a lot of books as artworks, and Manuel also specializes in books in the art context. This has always been my interest and one of the reasons for why I wanted to work with them. So after 1 year as an intern dividing my time between the two, I took on a free position in Manuel’s studio and stayed until the beginning of 2015 when I decided to work independently. Meanwhile, considering whether or not to stay in Berlin, I met my girlfriend who is Argentinian but grew up and works in Germany. We eventually got married, so that was one of the main reasons to stay here.

After leaving Manuel’s studio, I had commissioned work from his studio and a few projects of my own. Then in the summer of 2015 I started renting this studio space in Schillerkiez, Neukölln. In the last two years, the amount of work has increased, and I am quite busy this year. I work mainly in the art context, collaborating with contemporary artists, institutions and galleries, and I do, by and large, book design. Last year, however, there was some change because I also did other projects that had to do with identity designs for cultural institutions and galleries like CRAC Alsace² and the Hambürger Bahnhof³ . Ever since I moved to Berlin, I got a lot of contact and projects with Mexico too. I would say that around 30 to 40% of my work now comes from Mexican clients.

(Santiago laughs). No… I wouldn’t consider it as success, but it’s very interesting that I am doing more and more projects with Mexico ever since I came here. One of the recent projects I am working on is the magazine called Sur⁴. It’s a contemporary art journal published annually out of Mexico City. I met the editor because the magazine is distributed through Bom Dia Books⁵ , and he asked me to design the volume 3, and it evolved into me now doing the art direction for the magazine. I also have some Mexican artist friends who are here or who have lived in Berlin, and I did publications with many of them, sometimes independent projects or for exhibitions they had in a Kunstverein(German for art association) in Germany.

In terms of a Mexican style that’s difficult to answer. I should say since I finished university a lot of things in the creative scene in Mexico City have changed. Especially for the contemporary art context, Mexico City has become a center. Lots of art spaces, interesting design studios and publishing houses have opened in the last 10 years, and there are some new and larger scale book fairs like Index Art Book Fair and Paperworks taking place. Nowadays there is a more established design context which was not so present 10 years ago. This is very broad though, as Mexico is a place with a very exuberant visual culture. I think that the best of what one could call Mexican design comes from mirroring this rich culture and idiosyncrasy in imaginative ways.

Yes, I think Mexico City and Berlin now are two poles of the contemporary art scene. There is a long list of artists who are with galleries both in Berlin and Mexico City. You also find a lot of art collectors in Mexico City as well as one of the biggest galleries in the world, Kurimanzutto⁶ . A lot of people in the creative fields and artists have moved to Mexico City in the last 5-6 years, and designers and creators from my generation have started to open their own studios and to initiate new projects. It’s my theory that this transformation reflects the context of Mexico City as everything changes really fast, but you can still find cheap spaces to rent or to open a gallery. I also think this has to do with sustainability and the fact that the way artists can sustain their work is influenced by living costs and rents. In Mexico City, for instance, there is a big potential in handicraft production. Labor is very skilled and cheap and way less regulated, which means a lot of things work under informal structures, perhaps not always reliable ones, but one gets the feeling many times more things are possible. (Santiago laughs.) This is more in regards to the art field though. When it comes to design as a profession or professionalization, however, it is quite tough because designers still don’t get paid well despite the surge from the art and cultural industry. It’s not like here in Berlin where there are a lot of grants or state funding for culture, but maybe this is changing in Mexico.

This is just my assumption. It must be harder to run a studio in Mexico City that only works in the cultural field unless a studio has a really good network or gets commissions all the time, and most of the design studios balance their work with commercial projects as well. I think working predominantly for the culture and art field is possible in Berlin though. Someone like Alejandro Magallanes is an exception as he is very concentrated on the cultural field doing film posters, books, and art exhibitions. I worked in his studio for a year after my university years. It was impossible to keep track of what he was doing because he was so productive and quick when he created something, like designing one book in two days and then ten posters in a day! He was really like a brilliant design-idea machine on steroids. He is still working only for the cultural field and recently opened a bookshop in Mexico City called La incredible librería.

Yeah, I always felt I was lucky. I could start my life in Berlin with the internship opportunity with Manuel and Mariana. We could understand each other well and became good friends. I am also lucky to have an EU passport because my grandfather is Portuguese. Without one I don’t think I would be here anymore. It’s funny because my mother always told me to apply for the passport, but I felt it wasn’t much use. One day, somehow I decided to get the EU passport because it would make it easier to go to Europe if I one day decided to go. And then literally two months after I got the passport before I got the internship with Manuel. It was just perfect! So compared to many friends from Mexico I was lucky that I didn’t have to struggle with the whole visa issue, as its really a factor that can make life in Berlin much more complicated.

Well... It was somewhat dramatic. I mean it is still dramatic. (Santiago laughs). Working as a freelancer is sometimes overwhelming with much work regarding documents and taxes. But luckily everything started settling more since last month as I’ve got bigger projects. I was invited to pitch my design for the Ruhrtriennale⁷. It’s an art festival in the Ruhr region that covers performing arts, theater, dance, installation, and music. I asked Manuel if he wanted to do it together as a partnership, and we got it! I was invited to make a proposal in the first place because I designed a book for an art festival in Berlin called Foreign affairs, and one of the editors of the art festival is now on the board of the Ruhrtriennale. So I am going to work on this comparably large-scale project for the next three years, which gives me a nice feeling of knowing that there will be work for the next months.

Well, yes. I have offered internships in my studio since the beginning of this year. And I’m currently looking to expand with one person working here three days a week. It’s a nice process which is bringing interesting changes in the way I work too.

I put a high value on the content and context of the projects or books, which is the most interesting thing for me as a designer. When I design books, I need to understand the content to be able to create a structure that works for the book as a medium. Especially when I design books for artists because of what the artwork and content mean to them. So I need to find a special position when I work with artists. I often manage to put through the way I want to design, but my design has to derive from the artist’s work. I think it’s important to shape the process as a conversation and not a single-sided design as a solution approach.

I think that the practice of design is basically comprised by the three principles you mention: editing, structuring and composing. In the books I’ve designed I’m often involved in drawing the overall structure as well as giving pragmatic help and I’m convinced this is a great role to take as a designer because it makes the work react to diversity. There is a lot of practical stuff that a non-design educated person might not know, like what happens to the budget if one decides on a certain paper, or why a certain typeface can be more legible. But what makes a book good is rarely just a typeface, and mostly the totality of how its edited, structured and composed. An example is the magazine Sur that I am currently working on and where I am completely changing the format and design from the previous volume. The idea of the magazine is to make contemporary contributions to historical material from different archives in Mexico. The next issue is about the Mexican architect, Carlos Lazo, who over the span of 10 years developed the concept of building modern housing inside natural caves in Mexico City. He was also a self-taught pilot and had his own plane, and one day when he was supervising the construction of another project he crashed and died. He was very young, and rumor has it that someone did something to his plane on purpose to kill him because as scholars have found it through his archive, he also had a semi-secret agenda to become president of Mexico. Carlos Lazo called his concept civilized cave because the architecture resembled cave forms with modernist grid and the houses were made according to the shape of caves. It was really about filling the cave with a house. So inspired by this, Lea Laforest, who did and internship at my studio and I designed a typeface where the idea was to create letters in the shape of caves.

In terms of typeface in general, I normally end up with taking quite pragmatic choices. For me it depends on how the text should be read, if it's a narrative text or an essay, or some kind of short story, etc. Sometimes it’s nice to use fonts that everyone can recognize, they give a nice sense of nearness I think. There is a book, Performing Change by Mathilde ter Heijne, where we used the Courier font. The book consists of five projects the artist did the last five years, in collaboration with other writers and artists. The text is based on the interviews that she had done with them and which we then made transcripts of. I then chose Courier because it gives the sense of something neutral an known. It’s an I don’t want to choose kind of choice. (Santiago laughs). We then printed the texts and sent them to the interviewees so that they could correct them. Some of them lived in far away places, so they sent the text back by post with their handwritten comments on it. We deliberately showed the original handwritten correction notes and comments by the writers and interviewees. This idea was derived from the talk I did with the artist because her project was based on the dialogues she did with the interviewees. I also wanted her way of working to be reflected and activated in the book design by having the voices of the people and their handwriting.

I guess it depends on the content and materials of the work. I feel it works best when I do 50%, and the person who did the work does the other 50% or even more. This way we can have a dialogue on how to arrange the content and it’s not only me who is in control. An example is the book I am Nothing by the Mexican artist Rodrigo Hernández. It is a catalogue of his works from when he did an exhibition at Heidelberger Kunstverein. We decided to focus on particular moments or details of his work and the exhibition, drawing paths around his sculpture rather than just showing how the exhibition looked. We inserted texts by seven writers, who were invited to collaborate on this publication. The texts don’t directly talk about his work but show some parallel narratives of his works. The book became very minimal after several discussions on the concept. At some point, he was unsure about the order of the narratives, so I printed it all out and then sent it to Mexico. He then rearranged the pages and sent it back with the post. That’s how we edited this book. I chose Modern Mono as the typeface. The font was designed by Donald E. Knuth⁸ for the American Mathematical Society. It’s basically a font family made for setting scientific papers. Rodrigo’s works for the exhibition derived from the research on archives of objects related to a space developing project during the Cold War. I thought it went well with his working style and showed his personality.

Maybe not particularly Mexican. I also work with other international artists, but I got to know many good Mexican artists in Berlin. I believe in friendship as a circle. Many of my friends are artists in Berlin. I don’t know where the line exists between us. I do respect what they are doing. Establishing circle, trusting in this, and supporting each other is something I really like. That’s why I am also interested in your project. (Santiago smiles).

Yes I sometimes speak German. After I started working independently, not being able to speak German well was pretty tough. I needed to find a way to communicate with the producers. The desire to be able to request a proper budget calculation or to ask for certain printing techniques pushed me more to learn German. But there was a moment when I really wanted to give up because I spent more than two hours writing a Kostenvoranschlag (German for an estimate of costs). At some point, however, this became easier, and I learned more German so that I could call the printers! To tell the truth, I often work with the same printing companies, and they

already know me as the guy who sends strange emails, and they always have to call or send me a copy to make sure that there is no misunderstanding. These are the things that get established with time. But bureaucratic paperwork like taxes is still hard. Every time there is a letter from an official-looking stamp, I get nervous. The other day, someone asked me about Gewerbebetrieb Auszug (business extract), and I just went straight to my German friends. Maybe things like this are the most difficult part for me.

I think it’s a bit hard to define. But I am sure that there are a lot of things going on in many levels. Tagging or graffiti for example is a really important element in the city in terms of visual culture of a city like Berlin. Even if I’ve never been too interested in graffiti, it really sticks out to me. I often find some tags for example and think wow that’s a cool style!.

It’s hard to say.... I think, yes, for sure. Where you are does influence your work It’s always kind of reflection. For example, I don’t think I would be able to work mainly on cultural projects or books with artists if I were in Mexico because of practical economical reasons. Also, in Mexico the acces to libraries and specialized archives where you can find historical references in terms of design and art is different. Or the things you’d find in an antiquarian shop are also different. I’ve had Mexican friends visiting me in Berlin going to Antiquariats and being really impressed saying, wow they have this catalogues of Joseph Beuys here! But personally I cannot look at another Joseph Beuys book because you find it everywhere and it’s such a common place here. How you are influenced is really a question of where you physically are and what happens right around you. It just became very ordinary for me to look at all these legendary and classic art and design. There is no such thing as a Bauhaus Archiv in Mexico… there are other very interesting things too. But I do appreciate this environment.

well... Drinking Clubmate? (Santiago laughs) I would say that I got used to the speed of the city and I have more free time here. Mexico City is a really busy city and people work a lot. I was shocked when I started working here because in comparison everything was so relaxed and designers took more time focusing on one project. In Mexico, when I was working there, we were working from nine to eight or nine! Even though we left work at around six or seven, it took forever to go home because of the rush hour and heavy traffic. I just instead stayed at the office until eight or nine to avoid the traffic.

I like this current studio a lot. Everyone sharing this space is quite happy about it because it’s pretty big and has lots of light, and you can find everything around here. I renovated the whole place myself together with my good friend Anna Szaflarski , who is an artist and a writer and shares the room with me. This Kiez is nice. You have Tempelhof just around the corner. There are lots of studios newly opening around this area. Whenever an old shop closes, there are new art spaces or studios that open. We often cook together here in the studio. Martin Wecke, who shares the space with us, apart from being a great webdesigner is a very good cook and he often makes food and share his cooking skills with us.