Today I thought about Jep Jaumira, my graphic design teacher at the Art School in Vic. Maybe because I went to Torelló. Maybe because I spent half the morning at the town’s municipal archive. Or maybe because I improvised the presentation for the new campaign of the Torelló Mountain Film Festival, and I felt that particular kind of joy you get when you realise you’re breaking the rules but, surprisingly, no one kicks you out.
I arrive a few minutes late. Joan Salarich is waiting for me with a half-finished sparkling water and that cheerful patience of someone who’s known me for years. “So?” he asks. And I, still with my heart racing from the rush and the thrill of standing in the square where I spent my whole childhood, order an iced cortado. “I’ll never understand that drink,” he says. And I, knowing he’s nervous to hear what I’ve come up with for this year’s poster, say: “Alright, let me explain the idea using this sugar packet.”
Three, two, one, action: I tear off a corner of the packet, pour the sugar into the glass, and keep one of the two glued sheets that made up the envelope. I lay it flat on the table with the focus of someone studying a topographic map, and he stares at it with that knowing kind of seriousness that shows he gets I’m being serious. “See this rectangle? Imagine it’s a map and that C******* —sorry, I still can’t reveal the place— lands roughly around here.” I slowly begin to tear the paper with my fingers, tracing the shape of the land that supposedly fits that location, until I’m left with a long scrap of paper with uneven edges. “So, tell me: what does this fragment of land remind you of now, with its imperfect contours?”
I tear off a corner of the packet, pour the sugar into the glass, and keep one of the two glued sheets that made up the envelope. I lay it flat on the table with the focus of someone studying a topographic map, and he stares at it with that knowing kind of seriousness that shows he gets I’m being serious.
And right then —bam— I think about what Jep would say if he saw me, and I tell Joan. Because Jep, besides being my teacher, was the festival’s designer for many years. Until one day he said: “Enough. It’s time someone else took over.”
I remember a class where he asked us to design the visual identity of a city archive. He explained the rules to keep in mind when designing corporate stationery, and I —as it turns out— kind of ignored them. My proposal, instead of being strictly institutional, used every piece of stationery as a way to showcase photographs from the archive. I saw something beautiful in the idea that an envelope, for instance, could serve not just to carry a letter, but also to pull an image out of storage and send it into the streets, into people’s homes.
When I finished presenting the project to the whole class, Jep said: “What we’ve just seen is a clear example of someone who’s passionate about what they do. And that’s important when you present a project.” But he also added that the proposal didn’t meet the goals of the briefing, and that it was too risky. He gave me a barely passing grade. And I wasn’t sad or upset. I just thought: maybe I should’ve explained it differently.
Warm regards from H6 bus,
Ingrid
