"Mexican design lacks identity"

The artist Carlos González Manjarrez received the prize Nagoya Design Do! 2002

by: Miguel Angel Ceballos / El Universal Newspaper

Tuesday 31 December 2002

Although to the rise, mexican design lacks identity. assures professor Carlos Gonzá lez Manjarrez, first Mexican in participating and winning the Prize Nagoya Design Do! 2002, one of the most recognized nternational encounter of this discipline."No identity in Mexican design is distinguished." because European and American influence has generated that we dont have a Mexican design identity.

I do not only say,thats how designers see us from other parts of the world ", told to his return of Japan.For the designer this year was crucial: they distinguished him with the Quórum Prize in of poster category. Also its works were selected for "Rights Nature" collection in the Seventh International Poster Biennale in Mexico; and closed 2002 with the Silver Prize of the Nagoya Design Do in visual design, equipped with 200 thousand yens and whose subject was "the power of the fragility".

For this international contest Carlos Gonzá lez was the only Latin American participant, with the titled series: Let us live... , integrated by two posters that symbolize the deterioration of nature . The designer of 33 years old says he is worried because in Mexican design schools, they do not encourage the creation of Mexican identity.

From Vicente Rojo and Miguel Prieto , has not arisen other figures in world-wide Mexican design recognizition . "What we must do, is to recognize as a cultural mixture and not to fall in the classic use use of the prehispanic symbols ,because at the moment many urban situations surrounds us that we can represent. This is reflected so much in the architecture and painting, but in design we dont reflect it.

The most important thing is that designers take a risk so that people accept it ". The professor of universities like Intercontinental ,Nuevo Mundo and Advanced center of communication Eulalio Ferrer, considers that for designing a "nationa identy", we should study thorough our past and fuse it with the elements that surround us and we will be able to create design of the future.

"With it we may use the forms and colors and we can adapt them without falling in the literal representation, And use them only as a reference.
Unfortunately, awards in Mexican design contests have a foreign influence and obviously Mexican design proposals are not appreciated and juries are also influenciated.

In spite of this problem, Gonzá lez Manjarrez trust in Mexican design evolution, and its time to continue. We wiil be able to be at world-wide level of design when dare to implement referential elements and cultural background that identifies us, but that is going to take us long time.

"If we do it, we will be able to be compared with countries like Japan, Poland, Denmark, Croatia and China, nations that in their design are very rooted their ideology and traditions. Their level of experimentation and solutions generates that they are avant garde, because they do not lose their past, they just take it to the future ".