Interviews with Ximena Ureta

I've enjoyed drawing with a pencil and charcoal since I was a child. Things like analyzing, creating highly detailed drawings, and drawing the human body (particularly portraits in black and white), were one of my favorite things to do growing up. I quickly learned that pencils come in a wide range of sizes, from 9H to 9B, that removing the tip releases a wonderful aroma of wood, and that the roughness and varying thicknesses of paper fascinated me. Then I learnt about watercolor, chalk and oil pastels, oils, acrylics and then, as an adult, metal engravings. I've always enjoyed trying to make sense of figurative shadows. I would find faces in locks on gates and doors. I'd look for shapes in the clouds and draw gorgeous long gowns in inverted wine glasses. I've always like exploring stains with my eyes closed and then letting go of my consciousness when I begin painting. I have been a perfectionist and a hard worker since I was a child and my commitment to whatever I do is part of my rigor and discipline.

There are many things that I like about design and art. A design in the formal world must have fonts that are harmonious one with another as they help to create the personality of a project. Letters in themselves are wonderful illustrations. It is my absolute priority to use them correctly and delicately. It is also interesting to address a design from the artistic point of view, to explore different techniques in order to find the appropriate language. My favourite tool is always a brush with black ink on great quality paper. I love paper and its textures. Everything becomes more beautiful on good paper. All I have ever designed finally ends up on paper. A good seal and folium always touch me deeply. Digital tools are help ful to represent ideas and this way I can explain to others what I'm designing. The mock-ups in Photoshop are very useful and can express really well almost all the technical resources and colours that I want to use.

It feels like an energy that rotates internally. It commences soft and light. I think that it feeds from my breathing because they both march to the same beat. Eventually, one learns how to surrender peacefully. An inner strength that seeks light.

What I value most in me is my perseverance - even more than I value talent. I don’t know if I am talented but I know that I am disciplined. I like to see my ideas grow thanks to searching until I find them.

I have numerous projects in mind that will present significant hurdles. This year, I have a number of client projects to complete and designs featuring global themes that can be enjoyed by people from various cultures all across the world. These include peaceful, sensual, and intimate designs that can speak for themselves which encourages the viewer to take a break and simply observe.

I adore combining typography with art, photography, and engraving (drypoint), and I prefer working with watercolor and inks. Each project is unique, and I try to enjoy each step of the creative process.

I am delighted with my work. So far, I've enjoyed the creative flexibility I've been able to attain. It has been a very satisfying process for me to know that my clients trust me.

Perhaps I could say that technological tools are very important but nothing compares to what I can do with my hands.

I don't consider myself successful. Perhaps I would just like to say that I strongly believe in randomness and when I design I often do so with my eyes closed and find things in places where my consciousness would never let me go. The same happens with gestural typography or colour spots. It's funny what happens when I do it. The laws of harmony do not always act in a predictable way. Perhaps these laws already exist and the only thing we must do is to decipher them. But they don’t always have a rational or logical order but one that is unconscious and unknown. Perhaps a designer is an encoder or a decoder of something superior and prior. It is interesting to find more than the predictable. Nothing worse than common places.

I make lists to ensure that I don't forget anything important during the day. I establish daily goals for myself and when it comes to meeting them, I'm a perfectionist. During the morning, I organize crucial aspects due to the fact that I feel more energized and have more clarity. This allows me to respond to design problems more efficiently.

On the other hand, I aim to schedule all of the meetings on the same day so that I can create without interruptions. Music is a factor which enhances the fluidity and interest of my creative activity.I can have moments of greater sensibility and can enjoy what I do every day.

Trends have never mattered to me. Nor do I know where my creativity comes from. My nature remains a mystery to me.

A good design is an expression in itself, it speaks with dignity and elegance. Its resources are original. It should surprise and may even make you smile.

My experience and my intuition tell me when the right moment comes. The creative process allows me to see how my projects have matured to the point that they can speak for themselves.

Several pieces of work have had a significant impact on me. "Paper Flight" has a particularly important place in my heart. It expresses a lot with a small amount of text and it's a wordless visual poem with a sensitive and vital soul. A fragment of liberty. A pause. A tribute to simplicity, to the fragile, to the minimum. The small interior space of a visual haiku.

"Butterfly Acrobat"has also been a fantastic project to work on. It was fascinating to write a short narrative in which the photos might tell a tale. A woman who can fly is lifted aloft by the silk threads of tens of thousands of butterflies in a circus act. I find it fascinating that such an idea could have a place in wine packaging.

These days I'm observing and reading the work of Shigeru Ban, a Japanese architect of modest, ecological and sustainable philosophy. Pioneer in the use of plastic, paper and cardboard used in his works. An utmost master in lightweight construction. Famous for his innovative work with paper, particularly recycled cardboard tubes. His work with emergency housing as a design solution to house natural or man-made disaster victims is very interesting and creative. The simplicity that characterizes this great architect makes his projects magical. Shigeru Ban, paper, cardboard, and composition.

I love and I carry with pride my culture. I live in Santiago, Chile, South America. I think I have a harmonious life, I have managed to achieve a lot in design, as well as in my life as mother and as woman. I like my sensitive nature, my female essence. I love silence as well as working peacefully. I believe that my work has a lot of me embedded in it and of my way of looking at life. I want to go back to basics, to what is essential. To what can be done by hand in detail. To the micro, to the instant. To stop. I wish technology would not destroy paper. I wish that paper would not destroy trees. I appreciate working with certified companies that want to be sustainable and respectful with the environment. I can see that my designs and I are made of the same raw material.

I like working with small teams of designers, I like to delve deep into my projects without losing control of my creations. I work in silence and with very good music.

I donate my work especially to artists, poets, musicians and photographers who want to undertake a creative project. I have exhibited my work at universities that teach design in Chile and I have worked with students from various universities in my country.

“Design Award & Competition” is a human platform and high level technology. It is quite surprising, the impeccable reception and specific classification into different categories as well as its broad multi-disciplinary and top-of-its-class judging panel. Also the possibility for the awardees to get close to a global audience made up by adept and specialized press. Thank you so much for all the work. I want to thank this incredible competition for giving us, international designers, the opportunity to present our work to be dignified by you. It has been a wonderful experience, thank you.

It was to artistically represent the daring winemaking commitment of different Chilean winemakers, who have looked for and found rare strains, to create different, expressive, and sophisticated wines.
This project is a tailor-made proposal that interprets the passionate and vehement spirit of this project.
Each wine, that is to say, each winemaker has a different duo of arts. It's a series in which no bottle is the same because all arts are different. Also, the numerical fonts are all different in each wine.
The challenge was to be able to create five different labels, but in such a way that they would form a unifying graphic line among them. Two arts were merged in each wine, performing ten arts in total, with five different font games in each issue, using types with serif, without serif and italics.
The five different winemaking companies were also part of the change complexity in this project.
All labels are highly expressive and have an individual personality. The requirement was to create a line with a restless, changing, and impetuous graphic, for wines with rare strains, from valleys located in distant parts of Chile and all harvested in 2020.

My advice for this packaging has satisfactorily met all its design and production stages.
Oenologically, it has obtained several recognitions and I feel that visually it has achieved a differentiation that has met the expectations of all its creators.
This packaging is currently sold in Chile and is planned for sale in the most important MontGras markets, focused on Asia (China, Korea, and Japan). But also Brazil, the UK, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Vietnam, Denmark, Holland, Germany, Mexico and Paraguay.

It took about seven months to design the labels considering previous printing tests and three months to develop the container box.

This work was requested by MontGras. The oenological project was very interesting because of the freedom to interpret each product. It is not common to bring together five winemakers who search for rare vine strains in different valleys. It is the kind of project that when it comes, it poses a challenge so it become very absorbing, but at the same time a very rewarding job.

This work belongs to MontGras, it was requested by them and they have the reproduction rights of the five strains.

My relationship with painting has always been present in my work as a designer. There are several design projects that have been complemented by art. Oenology is an art that involves different senses.

In this particular project I have looked at many artists who, without having a similar style, have inspired me in my work, as is the case of Emma Larsson, who always surprises me with her watercolors.

Consumers from all over the world who want to expand and sophisticate their relationship with wine.

I don’t know of another project in Chile with five strange strains, five winemakers and five valleys to innovate oenologically, aimed at a more demanding public.

MontGras Handcrafted was the name that MontGras created for this packaging, as well as the fact that each strain was accompanied by the word "rare". It was this name that gave this project the possibility of exploring paintings.

I have worked with Adobe Photoshop and Adobe illustration.

To be able to incorporate my paintings into the packaging design - that is what makes it doubly interesting for me. Considering my physical space as a place of artistic exploration gives me a lot of pleasure and makes the selection of my work tools wider.
To try different papers, brushes and techniques is always a pleasure. This work is the result of this multidisciplinary experience that I have been enriching for so many years. My physical and personal workspace is not a conventional office like when I was a young designer, today it is an experimental workshop.

Yes, I consulted technical specialists in the choice of the final printing finishes and they assisted me in the choice of resources to visually enhance the five labels and each of their changes in the arts.

This work was printed by Artica Impresores with a magnificent digital execution. With an HP Indigo 6900 machine and its termination applications in a Digimon. Mechanical relief. Silkscreen varnish with relief. The results met my expectations las well as those of MontGras. Artica is one of the printers that leads packaging printing in Chile.

There was a lot of visual research, both in artistic experimentation and in graphic exploration. Countless arts were created, as well as a considerable number of paintings that needed a proper fusion to generate tension and movement in each wine label. Each pair of arts had to make sure that the design with variable information of the label (winemakers, strains, and valleys) was kept in the same place. All typographic sets of numbers had to be different in a differentiated and integrative way.

I had never designed five labels for the same packaging, I really liked all the work of creative experimentation. I am glad to know that my painting is equally well-considered just like my design work.

In recent years I’ve tended to choose my two or three best works and submit them to A' Design Award & Competition. My clients take great pride in their packaging when they are recognized by you.

I have made labels with changes in format and color depending on the strain, for burgundy and borgoña bottles for the same design. This is the usual thing, here everything was more complex, the packaging needed different arts, which led to this work on a different scale in all aspects. The difficulty of managing the differences to achieve a unified packaging was very interesting.

Maybe just indicate how different my jobs are and that with each of them I feel fully satisfied. I like to enjoy the spontaneity of painting but also the precision and mathematics of my designs.
I would like to thank you for recognizing my work, for making it visible, it is very interesting all the creative capital shown every year from so many places in the world is really interesting. It's admirable.

Thanks a lot.

The tale of Butterfly Acrobat Amazing Edition is the fantasy of a woman who can fly during her circus act. Mara is the mysterious butterfly acrobat, thousands of butterflies flock in a colorful torrent in the air under the stage lights, their flower-shaped wings open and close to the rhythm of music and using their delicate silk threads as they fly among the audience. Ladies and gentlemen, we would like to present the most delicate and amazing act in the whole world.
Through this poetic fantasy I wanted to build a space where women can do extraordinary things like heroines do with their reality.

Create three wine packaging solutions with acts starring women who love their nature and who are protagonists of surprising fantasies. This is one of them.

About a year, from the creation of the script, the design of the main character as a winged woman, the definition of the typographic families, the choice of different types of butterflies that star in this circus act, the creation of a mockup for the presentation of the project, the development of originals for reproduction and all the technical tests of printing and finishing, up to the reproduction of the final copies.

In wine packaging we can now talk about an increasingly wide diversity of topics, which also invites us to communicate a message that will last longer. Even though it is true that we can talk about nature and the world of wine, there are many vineyards in the world that also talk about other things. I am very interested in growing the thematic proposals in wine packaging. I like the idea of labels becoming little themed posters that we can enjoy.
I found it very interesting to create a female story, where women make their dreams come true and perform extraordinary feats.
This project was created with absolute creative freedom, in order to demonstrate the benefits of CCL Label's digital technology and the neatness of its finishes.

Commercial rights are available to companies that are interested in this project.

I found it motivating to create a packaging with a very different personality, where the circus provides fonts invested with a personality, as well as the colors red and gold. It has been interesting to write a fantasy using words as well as choosing each visual element that participates in this label. Create a large wrap-around tapered label, with great technical complexities. Looking for new creative spaces where I can tell fictional stories of women who have dreams.

I really like the work of Philippe Lechermeier and Rebeca Dautremer available in their book "Forgotten Princesses". As well as "The Butterly Workshop" by Gioconda Belli.
I believe they've been very motivating for me.

The target customer for this wine packaging are wineries which want to make a special edition with designs with a great personality, as well as paper label companies wanting to show the attributes of their papers under multiple printing and finishing challenges.

There are labels with circus scenes but my great motivation was to tell fictional stories with women as protagonists. This is something that I'm not seeing as yet.

Butterfly Acrobat tells the story of Mara, a woman who can fly in her circus act together with her butterflies. It is also a tribute to women who overcome their adversity and reach their dreams. I thought it represents very well everything that is supposed to be communicated.

I have worked with Adobe Photoshop and Adobe illustration.

I find it fascinating to write short stories that I can illustrate, and then transfer them to wine labels.

Yes, in the choice of the final printing finishes, I consulted CCL Label technical specialists, who advised me on the choice of resources to make the main character, the dress, the flowers, the typographies on the background rhombuses and the butterflies stand out.

This work was born as a high-complexity graphic sample for CCL Label Chile, where it was important to face technical challenges that would show great technical execution. This company also has branches in other countries around the world.

The artist has investigated the history of the circus and, specifically, of Cirque du Soleil, one of the world's best-known entertainment companies which filed for bankruptcy because of the impact of the pandemic. Its most emblematic acts were reviewed, as an inspiration to find the right graphic language. Butterflies, their shapes, the symmetry of their wings have also been studied, further influencing the design of this label. The balance of the circus and the symmetry of the butterflies. Impossible not to cite Gioconda Belli's book "The Butterfly Workshop" Editor: Barbara Fiore.

In conventional projects it is common to get a brief from my clients with a conceptual and strategic requirement of the project. This is the starting point to understand and define my creative territory. In this piece of work, there was no creative request but rather a request for a design that would be designed graphically and conceptually by me and where the execution would have high-complexity technical resources. This condition makes this project personal.

This work contains a lot of me, I built it with great precision, with all my feminine might and with all the passion that designs mean for me. I always select my best works during the year to be presented at A' Design Award & Competition. I believe that it is a very well executed piece of work and I thought it would be well received.

I am lucky to have commissions where I have full freedom to create. This has been happening for a while, so I have had to reflect on the concepts and graphic languages that I would like to use.
When these projects arrive, it is necessary to construct certainties where freedom is enormous. I think that the management of freedom has been a challenge and a learning process during the creation of this packaging.

I would just like to thank this contest for valuing my work and making it visible. I have been presenting my projects to this contest for several years and it has always been very rewarding. Thanks a lot.

Since I was little I have always been very fond of drawing with a pencil and charcoal. I like analytical and very detailed drawings. I especially liked drawing the human figure, in particular portraits in black and white. I soon discovered that pencils come in a wide range of varieties, from 9 H to 9B, I discovered the incredible smell of wood when you remove the tip and I became fascinated with the roughness and different thicknesses of paper. Then I learnt about watercolor, chalk and oil pastels, oils, acrylics and then, as an adult, metal engravings. I have always liked to make sense out of figurative shadows. I would find faces in locks on gates and doors. I would search for shapes in clouds, illustrate beautiful long dresses in inverted wine glasses. I've always liked to explore stains with my eyes closed, shed my consciousness when I start painting. Since childhood I have been a perfectionist and I am also very hard-working. My complete dedication to all I do is part of my discipline and rigor. I am not quite sure where the relationship with art and design surged from. I only know that it lives deep within me.

I have always known that design and art were my thing. I think I was right.

There are several projects in my mind involving major challenges. It has been very interesting for me to create Butterfly Acrobat, a project with a lot of creative freedom, were a woman can fly guided by her butterflies.
I like designs with universal ideas, that can be enjoyed by people all over the world from different cultures. Designs of peace and intimacy that invite the viewer to stop and just look. I'm happy with what I do. I like the creative freedom I've managed to achieve so far. I know that my clients trust me and it has been a very rewarding process.

Perhaps I could say that technological tools are very important but that nothing compares to what you can do with your hands.

The ability to empathize with the needs of others. When you make a project your own to such an extent that it becomes a vital necessity. When you cannot sleep until you find the solution so that it finally leaves you in peace. When you are capable of abandoning your needs for those of others.

A good design is an expression in itself, it speaks with dignity and elegance. Its resources are original. It should surprise and make you smile.

Because it can bring people and objects closer.

I'd like to design for institutions around the world that promote a sustainable and inclusive society.

It is a question that I ask myself very often and its answer is building slowly. I don't know yet but it will come.

Talk less, do more.

These days I have been looking at the work of Hashimoto Naotsugu, he works with black and white engraving with dry point and a technique that I want to try called Chine Colle, which consists of printing on thin paper. His work is very interesting and has inspired me a lot lately.

There are many talented people. I would like to nominate an illustrator from South Korea whose name is Suzy Lee. Specifically a book published by Editor Bárbara Fiore entitled “The Wave”. I am mentioning it because of its simplicity and also because of its pictorial and silent narration.
I would like to highlight the subtlety of Kim Ki-duk, a Korean filmmaker who has made several films such as Bin-jip (original title), which means "Empty Homes" as well as "Bom yeoreum gaeul gyeoul geurigo bom", known as "Spring, summer, autumn, winter ... and spring again", I think that somehow his talent has communicated with my sensibility.

There are several pieces of work that have been important for me. I think "Paper Flight” is very special. It says a lot with very little. It is a visual poem without words, it has a sensitive and essential spirit. A fragment of liberty. A pause. A tribute to simplicity, to the fragile, to the minimum.

Butterfly Acrobat is another great design due to its fantastical tale and brilliant technical execution.

They should look at the life and work of many talented people.

I would have liked to be a singer. I love music and its something that has always moved me. I would also have enjoyed being a chef, ceramist, jewelry maker, photographer, perfume maker, sculpture maker and filmmaker, but don’t worry – I'm happy with what I do.

It is an energy that rotates internally. It commences soft and light. I think that it feeds from my breathing because they both march to the same beat. Eventually, one learns how to surrender peacefully. An inner strength that seeks light.

I've achieved what I have thank to all of those who I love and who love me.

I am a better designer thanks to my strength that permits me to overcome adversity. Discipline and perseverance, the mother of all things.

Perhaps my own fears.

When your projects have matured to the point that they can speak for themselves.

I plan to release two more packages like Butterfly Acrobat with different stories, so that there are 3 products with circus graphics.

To make things more agreeable, to beautify, sensitize, pacify, communicate and pause.

To continue things as they have been done so far.

Design can beautify the relationship with objects. It can also make everyday life more agreeable.

I am working on silent designs. Visual spaces without words.

“Paper Flight” is the piece of work where I can see myself more clearly.

The use of sustainable materials which are friendly and compatible with nature.

I am sure it is turning more technological and I believe that the richness of the materiality of things is going to be lost.

It is relative, it depends on the size of the project, the structures of the companies, the equipment linked with the project, the number of markets round the world the products must go to and their importance.

Researching, looking for theoretical or visual information of projects that might have something in common or are intended for the same kind of public. Especially so that I can make a difference.

Persevere.

Trends have never mattered to me. Nor do I know where my creativity comes from.

It is essential to represent almost everything I want to create, an incredible visualization tool. One can try several technical alternatives in just a few seconds. It optimizes all my designs.

Quite frequently Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator. All my computers are Apple.

One is the "what", the other is the 'how' and the last one is the 'where'.

I would people to notice that there is an Eastern influence in the conception and development of my designs.

Someone talented and silent.

When I was 14 years old I had the opportunity to meet someone who made incredible sketches on paper napkins. We got the opportunity to get to know each other very well over the course of a few of years. For a long time, after dinner, came THE moment: paper drawings. It was my stepfather, a wonderful man. He was also a designer.

Books that showcased the works of Jean-Michel Basquiat, Alexander Calder, Pablo Picasso, Joan Miró and Friedensreich Hundertwasser and many others.

I suppose that just like anybody else around the world, working.

I’d love to walk down the beach with Theo Jansen behind some of his millipede animals. Hopefully, a gust of wind would come making us run behind his creations. I think it would be great!

I don’t consider myself famous nor do I have problems with that.

My favorite colors are black and red and if you could add a gold folium it would be just perfect. My favorite place is my home. My favorite food is Ramen, my favorite object is a LUMIO lamp / book.

Once while I was in a watercolor class I wet the paper keeping my eyes closed then dried a part of the paper still without opening my eyes and then posed the brush on various colors always with my eyes closed. I slid the brush along the paper and only then opened my eyes. What happened was surprising and beautiful.

Music makes me feel harmonious and sensitive. It works wonders.

When I was small, it was very obvious that I would become an artist or a designer. I would spend most of my time drawing and visualizing things like faces were there were none.

I never would have thought that what awaited us was a pandemic, so I would rather not predict.

No, it’s ok. I don’t really know what else to say. Thank you.

My studio permanently works on the development of packaging for Chilean wineries. I have been Concha y Toro’s consultant for the last 17 years, working on many of their brands such as Marques de Casa Concha, Trio, Diablo, Casillero del Diablo, creating products such as Leyenda, Reserva Privada and Reserva Especial. It is really interesting to promote, from the design point of view, these globalized brands and many of them world-renowned.
During the Pandemic I renewed the corporate image of MontGras as well as various packaging such as MontGras Day One, MontGras Organic, MontGras Handcrafted, DeVine and ANTU.
During this same period I designer Butterfly Acrobat. With Santa Ema in 2021, I created Rivalta and in 2022, Patagonia de Cono Sur and Cuvee 2020 by De Martino.

Design, as such, is a creative activity and a result of an investigative process, whose aim is to make objects to be both useful and aesthetic as well as solve a specific problem. And, although usefulness of the object is fundamental, my work must also be beautiful so that the relationship with the user will be both durable and harmonious.

I like working with designs that are beautiful and designs that pose some kind of technical or creative challenge. I love creating designs that identify the companies that need them and I like presenting original ideas that can be resolved by the production team.

There are several pieces of work that have been important for me. I think "Paper Flight” is very special. It says a lot with very little. It is a visual poem without words, it has a sensitive and essential spirit. A fragment of liberty. A pause. A tribute to simplicity, to the fragile, to the minimum. The small interior space of a visual haiku.

"Butterfly Acrobat" has also been a fantastic project to work on. It was fascinating to write a short narrative in which the images tell a tale. A woman who can fly is lifted aloft by the silk threads of thousands of butterflies in a circus act. I find it fascinating that such an idea could have a place in wine packaging.

I first worked on a cover of a mass-distribution magazine in Chile. I designed an illustration that got excellent reception. It was my first experience as a designer when one of my designs was distributed to such a great number of people. For the first time I experienced the feeling of being the visible face of a company and, furthermore, with an editorial content. It was wonderful!

Some good paper, a brush and black ink.

When the requirements are interesting and I have enough time to develop them.

I carry out a conceptual synthesis, I choose an expression technique, I review materiality and architecture, functionality, I propose typography if required, and I almost always check proposals for color at the end. Each stage is special and everything can contribute to an original design.

It is an energy that rotates internally. It starts soft and light. I think that it feeds from my breathing because they both march to the same beat. Eventually, one learns how to surrender peacefully. An inner strength that seeks light.

I feel a deep satisfaction.

First of all, for a design to be successful, the designer must start with an assertive diagnosis of a specific need. Such design must have a clear conceptual definition and a specific target audience. Only then will a design acquire an interesting and aesthetic personality.

I see if I am able to feel what the design is trying to communicate.

Many of my clients today are considering materials that are friendly to the environment. Several wine label papers are FSC certified, which means that the paper's raw materials come from responsible and environmentally friendly forest management. That is to say, the fibre that is used in the manufacture of the paper comes from forests that are managed in an environment-friendly and sustainable manner. To be able to use FSC-certified paper one must comply with a custody chain meaning that all the agents involved in the preparation of the paper must be certified, in other words, the forests, the mills, the distributor and even the printers. I believe that designers play a very important role and we must be proactive in sustainability.

It is an interesting question these days as forecasts show that millions of current jobs will be automatized in the future and it is creative jobs that shall survive in a world populated by robots. Up until now, creativity seems to be a survivor. In music, artificial intelligence can successfully take and repeat certain elements of some themes and then reuse them but it is not capable of creating new ones.

My last exhibition was a few years back, in the area of wine and champagne packaging for different Chilean wineries. It would be great to be able to appreciate all the award-winning works at the A´Design Award & Competitions exhibition. It is undoubtedly the most interesting exhibition at a global level that I have participated in. In the future, I would love to show my works again and lead this personal project.

I study books and look at publications that contain well-finished aesthetic graphic solutions. This is what inspires me.

Perhaps I am characterized by looking for new techniques and unique places, what I expect from my designs is that they do not resemble each other. Each label must have its own personality, which is why it is very important to always be on the lookout and explore.

I am Chilean, my country is located in the extreme south-west of South America. I live in Santiago, the capital, which is in Chile’s central zone and it is blessed with a Mediterranean climate, with well-defined seasons and rainfalls concentrating only in winter. My country is renowned around the world for its wine production. Its climate permits us to grow healthy vineyards and produce high quality wines. I feel privileged to be able to contribute as a designer to the creation of wine packaging that is well-known globally, drawing on our immaterial heritage, our culture, our art and legends as well as our “crazy” geography that identifies us as the world’s longest and narrowest country in the world. Chile’s archaeology, ethnicity and folklore are also part of my country’s image represented and recognized in the wonderful quality of our wines.

I have worked with companies as an independent designer throughout all my professional life. What I basically need is a brief with the specific conceptual requirements before I start any project for a client. Subsequently, we set up meetings and program email dispatches each week, depending on the level of progress. In the case of packaging, when we finally believe that we have achieved the result we are seeking, we carry out tests to look at terminations, as well as the performance and adherence of the paper. I supervise each and every piece of work I do, including the final printing.

They should know their work and some important aspects of their personality.

First I think of a general concept, then I try several approaches and I progressively narrow it down looking for unique and original ideas.

My dinner table inspired by a fish, a book lamp, a metal tree that displays the bottles of wine with the label I have designed, my paintbrushes and photographic camera.

I prepare lists so as not to forget all the things that I must solve during the day. I set myself daily targets. I'm very rigorous when it comes to meeting objectives. I organize important aspects during the morning. In the mornings, I feel more energetic and I have more clarity to efficiently answer design questions. On the other hand, I try to bring together all the meetings in one day, to have enough time to design without interruptions.

I believe in randomness when I design, that is why I often work with my eyes closed and find things in places where my consciousness would never let me go. The same happens with gestural typography or color spots. It's funny what happens when I do it. The laws of harmony do not always act in a predictable way. This tidy harmony not always acts in a predictable manner. Perhaps these laws already exist and the only thing we must do is to decipher them. But they don’t always have a rational or logical order but one that is unconscious and unknown. Perhaps a designer is an encoder or a decoder of something superior and prior.

I love the way a designer mixes creative art with a functional purpose. I sometimes feel that a good design is under appreciated, I cannot find negative aspects of being a designer.

Discipline and perseverance. The mother of all talents.

The capacity to synthesize, communicate, and persevere.

I use many great design books and standard software. My main toolbox, however, is my art box of paint brushes.

I am very organized and do all my creative work in the morning.

Depends on the object. A wine label for an export wine may take between 6 months and one year. Other packaging solutions may take much less time.

How I got to be a designer of wine labels.

The packaging and labeling lines of Casillero del Diablo, the most famous Chilean wine.

My main clients are Chilean wineries such as Concha y toro, Cono Sur, MontGras, Viña Santa Ema, and De Martino.

I love my work, particularly when it allows me to be creative. Because of this, I don´t really have a type of design work that I enjoy the most.

I want to keep doing what I like and do it as well as I can.

I always do the art direction by myself, but I have a team of designers and producers.

I would like to continue designing and creating small poetic stories that have winged beings. Just like the birds in "Paper Flight" and the butterflies in "Butterfly Acrobat."

Through my website.

I would like to thank this incredible competition for giving us, designers from all around the world, the opportunity to showcase our work and to dignify it. I have been pleasantly surprised by the great technological platform that has been put at the disposal of all the design disciplines. Thank you for this wonderful experience.