design Today - 1

Using but 8 musical notes one can compose an infinite array of sound and rhythm; such is the fascinating work of Mexico City based design studio Hula Hula, where musical metaphor abounds. Founded 16 years ago by Javier “Cha!” Ramirez and Quique Ollervides, and currently led by Cha! and Aldo Lugo, Hula Hula came to be amidst the 1990’s final grand push towards the digital age.
Hula Hula’s influences are broad and plentiful. These span the illustrations and letterings of Robert Crumb, Gary Panter and Lynda Barry, to a multitude of both national and international designers such as Vicente Rojo and Javier Mariscal. They consume, twist and play with the visual languages of previous generations, reinventing them into an exclusive language of their own. With time, their work has evolved into a fearless mixture of commonplace imagery, popular cultural references, narrative, controlled accidents and humor.
Having one of its founding members an already recognized rock musician at the time of the studio’s creation, they began working essentially with musical bands from the emerging national rock scene. These particular initial circumstances afforded them the relative freedom to create a personal forum for experimentation in their design work. In doing so they were able to distance themselves from the established norms and expectations prevalent in Mexico’s design sphere of the time.
The Mexican design landscape of the early to mid-nineties contained work which was seemingly sober and serious in concept and execution. At the time, most graphic work seemed to be overtly and purposefully solemn. “Design can be entirely serious,” says Cha!, “but there is no need for it to be boring.” Humor and whimsy are intrinsic values in Hula Hula, and as such remain important elements defining their overall output. Their humor reflects an abundance of insight and thoughtful observation nestled in their work, with out it necessarily becoming boring or pretentious.
They still work to this day mainly, but not exclusively, for clients in the music business. “We like to think of ourselves as a medium through which other artists can broadly convey and express their message and concepts,” they state, “for them (and us) to be able to give to their followers a full-bodied artistic product”. The relationship Hula Hula has developed between music and design is unique; It is proof that if done right, sometimes an album’s cover design can transcend its sole function as such and become an avatar for a band.
Whereas they may not resort to the borrowing of graphic elements from popular Mexican culture, their work does resonate with a certain aura of Mexican idiosyncrasies. “We are from Mexico City, we can not avoid having our work reflect where we come from,” express Aldo and Cha!, “Mexico is color, it is humor, it is wildly different foods from north to south, it is mixing mezcal and beer, it is there through its ever changing music.” Designers

may seem as being willing victims to their environment and Hula Hula grants an interesting acumen to this phenomenon.
Their expressive eloquence comes from a firm conviction that the hand is and will always be the most effective medium through which ideas can be conveyed and expressed at first. The computer is thus relegated to nothing more than a tool, sharing equal relevance to a brush, a pen or a pencil. Their creative process begins on paper with a pencil and the underlying notion of creation through ideas that remain interesting, amusing and fun. Nevertheless, any and all of their techniques and stylizations remain faithful to each and every one of their concepts.
Hula Hula focus a great deal of energy into the development of original typography and lettering, always paying close attention to the unique expressive forms waiting to be found in each letter, word and sentence. “Well, if you really think about it, one could really argue that everything is editorial design,” says Cha!. Theirs is a unique way of bringing together word with image and image with word. Letters and images are thoroughly worked into a single comprehensible visual package. All elements are granted equal importance, allowing for them to exist in a graphic homeostasis in the form of a final design conferred to the public.
Along with other designers and artists, they also founded the Mexico City based gallery shop Gurú. It has become a secondary platform for them to further manifest and reflect on their own outlooks, inclinations and concerns regarding design. Gurú addresses their preoccupation that while “ideas are incredible, if they are not shared with the public, they have no true value”. The gallery shop showcases the contrasting and diverging design tendencies currently under way in Mexico and the world, as well as presenting the work of individual Mexican and international designers and artists. In combination with Hula Hula, Gurú plays a pivotal role as a catalyst, further expanding the still developing design conscience of Mexico as a whole.
Just as all exceptional music bands do, Hula Hula and its members function creatively as a single group. Along with Cha! and Aldo, the studio is also consolidated by Alfredo Conrique and Claudia García. Their cohesion through assembly results in a single irrevocable idea from a collaboration rooted by a cardinal idea in the service of good design. As Aldo ascertains, aching to a studio manifesto, “we like to see our clients and their clients smile; we like what we do and we do what we like; for us this is design, it is not something serious, it is not something formal, it is only our way of seeing things and of doing things.” Hula Hula lives by the pencil, circumscribed by concept, demonstrating how much fun they can have while doing so.
www.hulahula.com.mx