From Mexico, design studio Esrawe – in collaboration with Ignacio Cadena – delights us with their project Cielito Querido.
CIELITO ® draws its inspiration from our history: the games, the joyful colors, the language of symbolism, and the illustrated graphics of the late 19th to early 20th century. The Latin-American sign maker’s trade in conjunction with the product labels of the old grocery and company stores generate a graphic language proprietary of a culture that is rich in history but always open to reinvention and to reclaiming the market in a poetic, nostalgic, joyful, dynamic and vastly diverse manner.
Its name comes from popular Mexican music, inspired by the song “Cielito Lindo”, which was written in 1882 by Mexican composer Quirino Mendoza y Cortéz. The song contains the phrase “México Lindo y Querido”, which translates to “Cherished and Beautiful Mexico”; this juxtaposition references the playful spirit of the Latin-American language.
CIELITO ® rescues the aesthetic value of popular Latin-American culture, and reinvents it in a Neo-Retro style that fuses graphics from colonial times, both Spanish and French, (present in its fine use of typography), with modern Latin American 50’s media like that from the large department stores (whose marketing was also imported from the Old Continent and the United States), and the contrasting colloquial language of the popular markets and tiny convenient stores, or “tienditas”. All of these elements are subtly integrated, producing a contemporary product, very Latin, and at the same time, universal in appeal.
The concept opens up the possibility of communicating with a broader audience, as it turns it into a timeless product, which is nurtured by its past but also continually seeks to present itself in new, fresh and attractive ways.
Concept: Ignacio Cadena y Héctor Esrawe.
Brand: Cadena + Asoc. // Ignacio Cadena
Collaborators: Nora Cavazos Luna, Rocío Serna González.
Interiorism:
Esrawe Studio // Héctor Esrawe
Coordinator: Joaquín Cevallos.
Project Leader: Eduardo Álvarez.
Collaborators: Sara Casillas, Ian Castillo, Jennifer Sacal, Roberto Escalante, Didier López, Irving Martínez, Arturo Gasca and Cynthia Cárdenas.
Photo: Jaime Navarro.
Year: 2010.
