Interview with SGMC Brands creative director and awarded logo designer

During the early 2000s, when Juan A. was a young designer, most brand identity works layout were performed either by printers who followed established conventions or by commercial designers focused on classic graphic styles. The then dominant main stream was often nothing more than superficial, meaningless masks that allowed the old to appear new. Juan, however, influenced by Modernism, embraced a creative, systematic, yet extraordinarily expressive approach to brand design in both his advertising and digital works. Though Juan’s approach for brand perfection is substantially different from that for a package design or a ad design, each solution is dominated by a sensibility that is born from in talent, simplicity, and of course, a spark of genius.

The term graphic design was underrated in the 2000s. How could one know about Saul Bass, Joseph Müller-Brockman or Wolfgang Weingart in the middle of that fast-cheap design trend?

One knew about them just by chance. I can't help to be curious and read everything that pass through my hands. So one of those quiet days while working on a book shop during my college times I found some 50s and 60s graphic design books. And starting from there I began digging into that kind of art expressions. I guess I was just in the right place at the right time. I started thinking more consciously about meaning and purpose of graphic design. Design had to be the way they described it ordered and organized. System is a natural need for order, we need order to avoid chaos. Whether one likes it or not, one lives by a system. You have breakfast everyday, you go to your office, you have dinner, you read a book and you go to bed. That looks like a system to me.

Do you have any other references outside the design universe?

Of course I do. Design is just a tiny spot in the creative scenario, we can not make it all about design. European and American painting was also very important for me. When I was doing a cover for Bradock Publishing House, I was really trying to emulate the painters. I was trying to do the kind of work Miro, Hopper, and Picasso were doing to merge my design with their soul. But there are no guidelines, no magic potions, just work. Even in graphic design my models were always references from the art world: Miro, Kandinsky, Le Corbusier, and Rem Koolhas. The model was not the classic design agency. There was always the sensation that one does just the average things simply to achieve a certain look. Nonsense. Everything an artist or a designer does must make sense, must be true, because the real problems are practical ones. In this things branding and design are really different from painting. But the creative challenges are right the same. One still must deal with issues of proposal, message, intention, color, proportion, scale, and... spirit, true and pure spirit.

Even painters have to deal with likes and dislikes. How do you deal with it?

Disagreement in matter of creative affairs is part of the game and you have to be always very sensitive about the client taste. Nevertheless, I must confess I'm one of the few branding designers that can call themselves a "lucky guy". As SGMC Brands already has a reputation built over its work quality, our new clients know exactly what they are buying when they enter that door. So when a client hire us to design their new logo they already new I will be the man in charge and I know how to guide the ship to the right port. He knows we will do whatever it takes to create a brand that really makes a difference. Some colleges complain about how the clients try to take control of their work and believe me, I truly understand the frustration. In our case we don't have to deal with this issues because we only accede to work with clients that really trust our professionalism and respect the kind of design we carry out here in SGMC Brands. When a client hires us we make sure the basement is solid by working with a very accurate briefing and deep market research that establishes the strategy we will follow. From there on the client knows that it is time for the magic to happen and we are the ones that have to play that part in the orchestra. Otherwise he wouldn't had hired this kind of agency if he preferred to design the logo himself.

And what about humor? You seem to be always with a smile on your face.

Humor is another goal I have always pointed toward in my advertising works. Interesting people are humorous, one way or another. Dickens, Ford, Shakespeare, Churchill, Shaw… each had a different sense of humor but all of them were stimulating and really interesting. One would like to have a coffee with them from time to time and forget about the things you see everyday in the news. And of course humor is important in every especially in business. Live, laugh, love and if there is any time left after it, go visit a modern art exposition on your local museum, and your life will make full sense.