Interview with illustrator Federico Jordan at IllustrationMundo.com →
Please describe a typical day?
Meters away from my window are the bell towers of San Francisco, the main bell wake me up at 6:30 am and then I plan my day…
Entrevista a Federico Jordán
Bitácora: ¿Cómo llegaste a San Luis?
F. Jordán: Me enamoré de una potosina, perdí la razón y gané impulso. Tengo un año viviendo esa patología.
Bitácora: ¿Qué te gusta más de esta ciudad?
F. Jordán: Gabriela y su hija, mi amigo Rafael, el aroma a chocolate y las campanas de San Francisco. El tiempo me ha regalado intereses simples que comparo con Muki, una niña de 11 años con fascinación por los celulares. Reciente la he dibujado desfilando de cabeza junto a otros teléfonos en un trabajo para la revista New Yorker.
Bitácora: Cuando no se trata de algún trabajo por encargo donde la técnica y el estilo a veces son características imperativas, ¿Cuál es tu estilo mas natural, tu favorito, el que te sale por instinto e inspiración?
F. Jordán: Fuera de mis encargos encuentro en el dibujo mi sustancia, educo la mirada y someto el lápiz. Observo e imagino constantemente.
Bitácora: Los ilustradores mexicanos tienen un panorama muy difícil, por un lado su trabajo es remplazado por imágenes pre-diseñadas de bajo costo y por el otro, las universidades no ofrecen una oferta educativa, que puedan respaldar la profesión ¿Qué recomendarías a todos los jóvenes que comparten contigo la pasión por la ilustración?
F. Jordán: Pasión, voluntad y disciplina. Estar dispuestos al asombro. Es triste la abulia.
Bitácora: ¿Tu como le hiciste?
F. Jordán: No he dejado de admirarme ante el mundo, tengo 40 años y nunca he abandonado esa particularidad de la infancia.
Bitácora: ¿Cuál fue esa decisión que cambio el rumbo de tu vida y te puso donde estas?
F. Jordán: Mi interés en el futuro.
Bitácora: La inspiración viene y va, pero la responsabilidad de entregar un trabajo tiene limite de entrega, ¿Cómo te inspiras? ¿Diseñas algún lugar lleno de imágenes, música y colores?
F. Jordán: Exploto mi claridad en las primeras horas de la mañana, vivo con pocas cosas y produzco en el monasticismo. El trabajo diario y mi rebosante arsenal de códigos me permiten resolver puntualmente.
Bitácora: ¿Cómo ha sido la experiencia de trabajar con empresas como Microsoft, Forbes, The New York Times, Sports Illustrated? ¿Cuál es la dinámica de trabajo?
F. Jordán: La dinámica de mi trabajo es remota y no tengo clientes locales. En México me manejo solo y tengo un excelente grupo de representantes en Nueva York cuidando mi presencia y contrataciones. En cualquier caso siempre trato de clarificar una narrativa y considero mi oficio interdiciplinario junto a la dirección de arte.
Bitácora: Los símbolos son representaciones muy inteligentes: simples en su composición, extensos en sus significado y muy complejos en su producción, ¿Cuál es el planteamiento o las preguntas que te haces para crear un símbolo? ¿Cuál es la línea que sigues para poder unir una imagen con un significado?
F. Jordán: Mi principal precepto es ubicar la imagen de ilustración como paratextual, nunca solitaria. El arte retórico permite resolverme y refutar toda posible interpretación de mis signos, figuras y tropos para crear sistemas de códigos puntuales. Mis recursos más socorridos son la prosopopeya, el hiperbatón y la distorción. Me gusta simplificar , eliminar lo superfluo en la comunicación.
Bitácora: El que no sueña, no avanza, ¿Qué sueños te faltan por cumplir?
F. Jordán: Me gustaría los fines de semana vender bolis con Gabriela en la plaza.
Todo creador sabe que la curiosidad nunca ha matado al gato. Federico Jordán también lo sabe. Su espíritu de hurón, frenético y curioso, sólo encuentra sosiego en su inseparable libreta de apuntes; quizá no alivio, quizá alimento, quizá veneno. Curiosus es el fruto de este fecundo, poderoso y exaltado imaginario. El revolucionario trazo de Jordán y sus acertivas paletas de colores nos enseñan que la curiosidad jamás será baldía.
— Óscar Estrada de la Rosa para la exposición Curiosus.
EPITAFIO DE FEDERICO JORDÁN ¶ Hablen, muros, del hombre solitario que en el grave desorden de su casa sin poder controlar sus pensamientos encerrado en sí mismo dibujaba. Digan que amó la mancha del grafito, que de noche y sin luz blandió pinceles e hizo bestiarios de megapixeles para pintar deforme la belleza, porque hallaba en lo enfermo de ese acto para sus cuitas el suspiro exacto.
— Francisco J. Serrano, 5 de Febrero del 2086. (2006)
Illustrator F. Jordan is interviewed by Taiwan DPI Magazine
Federico Jordán has been recently interviewed by Taiwan DPI Magazine. By Effie Lin. (July 2009).
Federico Jordán (born 1969) is an editorial and advertising illustrator. His work has been published in Forbes, Harvard Business Review and The New York Times among others.
Born in Torreón, Coahuila, México he received formal training as an architect at Universidad Autónoma del Noreste in Saltillo, Coahuila and took courses at Antigua Academia de San Carlos in México City. Jordán received a master’s degree in art education from the Autonomous University of Nuevo León. He lives in San Luis Potosí, México.
What are you currently working on?
Presently I’ve different tasks going on, among them there is one that pleases me, a dingbat that I’ve called Fantisius and that I have lovingly dedicated to Gabriela Fanti Quijano. Fantisius will be published by Font Bureau and it is a product that contains more than 100 characters. That is the proyect in which I am interested for the moment to talk about.
What is your philosophy in your art world?
My world is the field of illustration and in due time I have made line schemes around my production. I conceive the image of illustration as a paratextual element that clarifies a narrative, the illustration finds its nature in this sense and not in the solitary image but in agreement to its text. The illustration is bimedia and it is important to understand this precept.
Has any art period or art style ever influenced your works? What artist do you admire most?
I fill my work with intertextualty and paraphrasis that enrich my arsenal of resources in codes. At the moment, it calls my attention to rediscover the work of José Guadulupe Posada and Francisco José de Goya, centering my attention in the rhetoric and composing resources to accomplish empathy with the public.
What’s the most challenging or difficult thing while creating and producing progress of your works usually? What’s the biggest challenge to you in art filed? How do you deal with that usually
Several, one of them is the persuasion with the goal of finding clear codes to be puntually decodified, in this way, the rhetoric art is a constant in my production. Another challenge that I face constantly is that my line of work is interdisciplinary and that many art directors, editors, producers, etc. intervene, and it is here where I use my skills in communication with other areas related to production.
Which one of the illustration is your favorite? Or which one made you spend the most of time and effort? What message you would like to convey through this work?
The Fantisius Project is a dingbat of more than 100 characters, in which I use the resource of prosopopeia as a unit in each one of the pictograms. Not all the objects that I had chosen could be represented in the personification and sinthesis that requires this dingbat font. Each drawing was solved in my notebook and suggested as a whole with Gabriela Fanti. Some images ended up with the help of the erudite eyes of the art director Óscar Estrada and the typographer David Berlow. This font was carried out in Adobe Illustrator and FontLab Studio, and will be published and marketed by Font Bureau.
It seems you like to draw a kind of symbols? Why?
It’s interesting that you noted this characteristic of my work that shows my interest for the symbol to confront the poetic image behind the sign. I don’t have the tendency to load with noise the message in my illustrations and I always seek to reduce the codes and forms systems in my images. I prefer the forcefulness and synthesis in my work. I like for my images to express a clear message and the appropiate synthesis of signs that accomplishes the effect that I am searching.
For you, what is the contemporary art?
Contemporaneous art is a polyhedral and my vision is from the field of illustration in direction to the base of the narrative and its reproduction. Walter Benjamin has emancipated the aura in this direction and in singular objects of art and has furnished its own autonomy to the objects mechanically reproduced to the audience of the masses, as it is the case of the illustration. I conclude that the image of the illustration is pioneer in this sense, because it doesn’t start in this route in times of the modern mechanical reproduction, not even in times of the invention of the Gutenberg Press; it starts with the illumination of the manuscript book, in the monastic or Persian book production. The illustration is the only object of ancestral art searching the goal of reproduction to the masses.
What are your future goals in the art world?
For the moment I don’t have a longing to enter to other art fields apart from making puntual illustrations for the editorial and publishing fields.
Armando Castilla Sánchez. (1942-2000).
Publicado en Periódico Vanguardia. 31 de enero del 2010. Anecdotario celebrando el X aniversario del fallecimiento de don Armando.
Encontrarme con don Armando fue significativo en mi vida, radiaban el asombro y las ideas. Yo que era un jóven ilustrador apocado, en el privilegio de ir a trabajar a voluntad junto a su escritorio, en silencio le robé la vitalidad que ahora cargo en mi vida. Muchas anécdotas tengo del hombre encantador y maven: mi patrón, maestro y amigo. El hombre que tenía esperanza en mí, llenó de certidumbre mi vida.
Una vez, orgulloso le regalé un importante libro donde aparecían ilustraciones mías y respondió mi ofrenda con un abrazo tan propio que aún invoco.
Un año después que murió, en un momento pesaroso de mi vida, le visité a su tumba por la mañana y coloqué una rosa en su tiesto. Ahí, en el silencio del panteón apareció de la nada un colibrí que se acercó a la rosa, se alimento de ella y se fué. En la sincronicidad del evento mi tristeza desapareció y retornó su paternal abrazo.
Bésame ahora, ven y arruina mi vida. Una parvada de zopilotes vuela sobre nuestras cabezas.
— Francisco Serrano
Michael Bartalos y Óscar Estrada visitan mi casa de San Luis Potosí. Estupendo encuentro en la Facultad del Hábitat y Centro de las Artes. Gracias a Gabriela Fanti, Angélica Vilet, Manolo Guerrero y Carlos Ramírez.
From left to right: Óscar, Michael and me.
F. Jordan illustrates the New Yorker. →
Illustration assignment for the New Yorker magazine about acclaimed musician and artist Arto Lindsay. Arto will design and organize a multidisciplinary parade, “SOMEWHERE I READ,” featuring over 50 dancers and performers. Serving as Performa 09’s opening event, Lindsay’s parade will proceed down a major street in Manhattan on the same day as the New York Marathon (November 1). A central element of the piece will be the use of cell phones as musical instruments in a sort of pared-down marching band. All the participants will carry cell phones playing music specially composed by Lindsay. An inventive adaptation of the standard parade format, Arto Lindsay’s Performa Commission will create an oddly intimate public spectacle across New York City’s main streets. newyorker.com
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Illustrator Tomer Hanuka answers to Federico Jordán about the relationship between art direction and illustration work process.
Phone Interviews to Illustrators.
by Federico Jordán.
In February 2004 I called friends and colleagues with the purpose of asking them about their relationship with art direction in their illustration work process and their perception in the future of our industry.
Their answers were used the same year, in my workshop related to the craft of illustration at the Feria Internacional del Libro del Palacio de Minería in México City.
The material you are listening is not allowed for download. Please use the link for reference.
©2004 Tomer Hanuka and Federico Jordán
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Illustrator John Hersey answers to Federico Jordán about the relationship between art direction and illustration work process.
Phone Interviews to Illustrators.
by Federico Jordán.
In February 2004 I called friends and colleagues with the purpose of asking them about their relationship with art direction in their illustration work process and their perception in the future of our industry.
Their answers were used the same year, in my workshop related to the craft of illustration at the Feria Internacional del Libro del Palacio de Minería in México City.
The material you are listening is not allowed for download. Please use the link for reference.
©2004 John Hersey and Federico Jordán
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Illustrator Jorge Alderete answers to Federico Jordán about the relationship between art direction and illustration work process (spanish).
Phone Interviews to Illustrators.
by Federico Jordán.
In February 2004 I called friends and colleagues with the purpose of asking them about their relationship with art direction in their illustration work process and their perception in the future of our industry.
Their answers were used the same year, in my workshop related to the craft of illustration at the Feria Internacional del Libro del Palacio de Minería in México City.
The material you are listening is not allowed for download. Please use the link for reference.
©2004 Jorge Alderete and Federico Jordán
[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
Illustrator Gary Baseman answers to Federico Jordán about the relationship between art direction and illustration work process.
Phone Interviews to Illustrators.
by Federico Jordán.
In February 2004 I called friends and colleagues with the purpose of asking them about their relationship with art direction in their illustration work process and their perception in the future of our industry.
Their answers were used the same year, in my workshop related to the craft of illustration at the Feria Internacional del Libro del Palacio de Minería in México City.
The material you are listening is not allowed for download. Please use the link for reference.
©2004 Gary Baseman and Federico Jordán
