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…
“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)
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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.
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.
Mexican Flat a la Federico Jordán by Chris Burns
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
