Sonia Diaz and Gabriel Martinez, founders of the Spanish collective "Un Mundo Feliz", brought to ESAD new visions of graphic activism, a connection between designers and the demands of modern society. The two designers from Madrid co-ordinated a workshop, held a conference and presented much of their material in an exhibition in our school's atrium.
The workshop, dedicated to the theme of "graphic picto-activism", was very well attended by students from the Introduction to Design course, and those responsible for "O Mundo Feliz" had the help of lecturers João Lemos and Margarida Azevedo to initiate graphic activism projects created at ESAD. As Professor João Lemos revealed during the conference, these projects will soon be known. The conference filled the auditorium and in it, Sonia Diaz and Gabriel Martinez developed the commandments of graphic activism, using a suggestive title for the event: "Pictosophy". Firstly, in order to separate the waters, Gabriel Martinez pointed out that graphic activism is based on non-commercial design. "It's not better or worse. It's different," he explained.
The other pillars of this form of expression are the orientation towards asking questions rather than getting answers and the fact that it is never objective, but rather seeks sensitivity.
The "Un Mundo Feliz" collective began with a manifesto, "something from the 1920s that was very useful for guiding our work", as Martinez said. "From here we had to think of things that were of interest to a community and that we could work on with something cheap and easy to use, like coloured paper and black writing," he said.
"Our concept has always been to look for non-violent methods of protest and persuasion," said Sonia Diaz, for whom "designing for solidarity is fundamental". The designer recalled the first phase of the "A Happy World" project, which coincided with the attacks in Madrid on 11 March 2004. "At that time we made some solidarity pins and managed to distribute them in the Atocha Station area, after explaining to the police that it wasn't advertising or a political message," she said. Always on the principle that "the word drawn is twice as powerful as the word spoken", the pictomontage of "A Happy World" began to appear on other materials, such as T-shirts and stickers to stick on clothes.
Another aspect of graphic activism is the manipulation of existing typefaces. "We're not type designers, we're type manipulators. We take the logos of existing brands and transform them with a graphic activist message," explains Gabriel Martinez, before revealing that "this work has never caused any legal problems".
"Of course we receive criticism, but it allows us to talk to people. Graphic activism is a form of freedom of expression, but we also like the freedom of discussion," concluded Gabriel Martinez.
The Madrid duo is the "alma mater" of the "Un Mundo feliz" collective, but it also includes a variety of collaborations with Spanish designers and those from other countries and continents. After the conference, Sonia Diaz and Gabriel Martinez guided those interested through the "A.R.S. Anti Rape School" exhibition, which shows various works by the collective. These events also took place under the Erasmus+ teacher mobility programme 2023/24 and were coordinated by teachers Antonino Jorge, João Lemos and Margarida Azevedo.