Across Borders: A Look at the Work of Latinx Designers

Rodrigo Corral, Rodrigo Corral Design

Pulitzer Prize-winner Junot Diaz described him as the guy who “seems to strike like lightening.” Novelist Chuck Palahniuk said, “as proof of his gift, I’ve seen thousands of young people tattooed with the images he’s created.” Praise has been lauded on the clear, cutting art and design of Rodrigo Corral for years and from various voices. He’s been celebrated by the writers whose books he’s designed covers for, in the prestigious pages of The New Yorker and the Wall Street Journal who have featured profiles on the designer, and by institutes like AIGA, the Art Directors Club, and SPD who have presented Corral with numerous awards.


—Madeline Morley, AIGA Eye On Design

Elaine Ramos, Cosac Naify

Project description

This book is about one of the biggest bus stations in the world, the Terminal Rodoviário Tietê in São Paulo. Structured in a totally unconventional way, the narrative is constructed from a collage of the uncountable voices that circulate inside the station—from the testimonies of travelers and station workers to loudspeakers, songs, newspaper and magazines headlines, warning signs and so on.


—AIGA Design Archives

Susana Rodríguez de Tembleque, Stone Yamashita Partners

Project description

The Fortune Innovation Conference attracted attendees that included CEOs, directors and managers. Our objective was to communicate with them on several different levels and to make the experience valuable to anyone charged with driving change and innovation within their organizations. Using the concepts of culture, roles, processes and models that we developed with GE, we set out to build an experience that would make abstract concepts real for participants. In doing so we designed and built a hands-on “lab” where participants could try out new techniques and engage in a dialog about what works and what does not. We also created several presentation and exercise tools for participants, including a guide to the “World’s Largest Innovation Lab,” a workbook that enabled participants to further explore each exercise, as well as share the experience and innovation process with colleagues who were unable to attend.


—AIGA Design Archives

Luis Fitch

Born in the border city of Baja, California, Fitch spent much of his childhood traveling across the United States-Mexico border between San Diego and Tijuana [...].


Fitch went on to earn his BFA at Art Center College for Design in Pasadena, California. After graduation, he cultivated clients through freelance gigs for small businesses in Southern California and Tijuana, whom he knew had something to gain from communication design [...].


Luis and his wife Carolina Ornelas founded UNO, a strategic cross-cultural design agency with a mission to bridge the formerly disparate United States and Latin American markets. Founded in Minneapolis, the demand for UNO’s services, like the neighborhood’s Latin American community, has since grown exponentially. “I give credit to being open-minded, not because I'm Mexican,” says Fitch.


—Lindsay Reichart, AIGA Design Journeys

Pablo Medina

Pablo Medina's father, a poet, moved to the United States from Havana, Cuba, and his mother from Bogotá, Colombia. He was born in Washington, D.C., and moved to New Jersey with his father soon after his parents divorced [...].


In 1990, while Medina was in college, his mother moved to Cartagena, Colombia. Through his annual visits to see her he discovered the heritage he had known little about. “I was on a search for my own culture, and here was a treasure chest of it,” he says. He re-learned Spanish and started digging into Latin American art and culture [...].


He also found typography—wild, hand-painted signs that...led to his MFA thesis: three typefaces—Vitrina, Cuba and North Bergen—inspired by the signs [...].

—William Bostwick, AIGA Design Journeys

Claudia de Almeida

Brazilian-born graphic designer Claudia de Almeida was raised in Novo Hamburgo by a single mother who worked at a bank in the loan department [...].


As a student at the School of Visual Arts in New York City, she studied with designer Carin Goldberg, one of her idols, and then went on to work at More Magazine with creative director Debra Bishop (who had also studied with Goldberg). “It was like completing a circle for me. A girl who was born in the smallest town in São Paulo and grew up in the south of Brazil,” says de Almeida. “To come up and study in New York with my design heroes? I was given a great opportunity to be exposed to amazing people.”


—Angela Riechers, AIGA Design Journeys

Rafael Esquer

Rafael Esquer was born in Huatabampo, a city on the Sea of Cortez in Mexico [...].


Early on he latched on to the idea of becoming an architect. His fascination with typography drew him to study graphic design at Universidad Autonoma Metropolitana.


In 1989, he moved to Los Angeles, intending to stay there just for a year to improve his English. One year turned into many more. To support himself he worked the graveyard shift at the 7-Eleven on the intersection of La Brea and Sunset Boulevard [...].

He took graphic design classes at Los Angeles Trade-Technical College and got a job as a designer at a Hispanic alternative weekly; within two months he was promoted to art director. In 1993, he got into the Art Center College of Design, in Pasadena.

In 1996, he arrived in New York. His work at @radical.media won him accolades, including a National Design Award from the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, in 2004. Impressed by Esquer's ability to help win pitches, @radical.media's CEO and chairman Jon Kamen gave him carte blanche to step in and elevate the design group's work. Esquer's projects included art directing the packaging for Bjork's single Cocoon and a TV spot for George Harrison's album All Things Must Pass. Collaborating with Oscar-winning costume designer Eiko Ishioka, he created racing suits and uniforms for the 2002 Winter Olympics. In 2004, he founded alfalfa studio.


—APitchaya Sudbanthad, AIGA Design Journeys

Edel Rodgriguez


As a boy, the Cuban-born artist, illustrator, designer and art director made his way to Florida on one of the first boats leaving his native land. Freedom. He later broke with the traditions of his culture by leaving home after high school to attend college in New York. Freedom. He left his well-paid position at Time after 13 years so he could devote his energies to his illustration, fine art and family. Freedom means a lot to Edel Rodriguez; he's seen first hand the consequences where there is no freedom—where the words are always can't and don't.


—Charles Hively, AIGA Design Journeys



Edel Rodriguez was born in Havana, Cuba in 1971. In 1994, Rodriguez graduated with honors in painting from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY. In 1998, he received a Master of Fine Arts degree from Manhattan’s Hunter College graduate program. Throughout his career, Rodriguez has received commissions to create artwork for numerous clients, including The New York Times, TIME Magazine, The New Yorker, and many other publications and book publishers.


—Edel Rodriguez

Antonio Alcalá, 2008 AIGA DC Fellow

Antonio Alcalá graduated from Yale University with a B.A. in history and from the Yale School of Art with an M.F.A. in graphic design. After working as a book designer and freelance graphic designer, Alcalá opened Studio A in 1988. Since then his studio has won awards of excellence in design from local, national and international design institutions including AIGA, Print, Communication Arts and Graphis. His clients include the National Gallery of Art, Library of Congress, National Portrait Gallery, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, National Museum of Women in the Arts, National Geographic Society, Folger Shakespeare Library, The Phillips Collection and the Smithsonian Institution. Alcalá is an adjunct faculty member of the Corcoran College of Art + Design and founder of the design education program DesignWorkshops. He serves on the board of the Northern Virginia Fine Arts Association, is a past president of the Art Directors Club of Metropolitan Washington and judged AIGA’s “50 Books/50 Covers of 2007” competition. The AIGA DC Chapter selected Alcalá, based in Alexandria, Virginia, as its 2008 AIGA Fellow. His work is represented in the AIGA Design Archives and the Library of Congress Permanent Collection of Graphic Design.


—AIGA Fellows

Rebeca Méndez, 2017 AIGA Medalist

Born in Mexico and now living in Los Angeles, Rebeca Méndez thrives on the threshold of disciplines and cultures, working in the boundary spaces between art and design, and between Mexico and the United States. Méndez has received many awards for her excellence in design. In 2012 she received the National Design Award in Communication Design from the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum for her work that is now in their permanent collection. Her designs have spanned solo exhibitions across the world, from San Francisco to Venice to Oaxaca.


—Margaret Andersen