Tiquismiquis Club designs official Laus Awards yearbook

Málaga-based design studio Tiquismiquis Club has designed the yearbook for the Laus Awards for the Association of Graphic Design and Visual Communication of Spain (ADG-FAD).

ADG-FAD is a non-profit in Barcelona that brings together Spanish professionals in graphic design and art direction. Its mission is to promote and recognise excellence in design and visual communication, chiefly through its awards programme.

Every year, the winners are compiled into the ADG Laus Book, but it is much more than a compilation of projects. It gives a glimpse into the main trends and the current state of the graphic design and visual communication sector.

The concept for this year's publication – the 54th edition of the ADG Laus Book – focuses on territoriality, exploring how geographic context and personal stories influence design. Tiquismiquis Club was keen to highlight the connection between people and places, emphasising the importance of the environment in creating and perceiving projects.

Essentially, the ADG Laus Books have created a historical archive of Spanish creativity. Looking back through them, you can see evolutions in the techniques, trends, and resources that shape creative production in the country.

Tiquismiquis Club founders Roberto Espartero and Juan Martin explain how the initial brief was to capture this essence in a publication that compiles the award-winning projects from the latest edition of the ADG Laus Awards and the 2024 Honorary Awards. Each year, the chosen studio can freely develop a concept of their choosing, so Tiquismiquis Club opted to focus on territory.

They started with two simple questions–—"What is your name?" and "Where are you from?"—as they felt that knowing someone's name and origin is the ideal starting point for creating more personal connections. Espartero adds, "By asking about a person's origin, not only do you show interest in their story, but it also helps to find common ground.

"This made us think that experiences and geographical contexts enrich every field, including design – and design does not happen in a vacuum; it is influenced by the stories of the people and the places they live in."

By asking these basic questions, the studio was able to weave a conceptual thread that emerged throughout the book's entire visual and editorial narrative.

Highlighting diversity, identity, and the connections between people was imperative, as the Tiquismiquis Club believes in showcasing the different realities and proposals within the design sector.

"Historically, there have been places that have been key to the development of the sector in our country, but it is also necessary to turn our gaze to other places and other locations within the territory," says Martin. In order to bring a human perspective to the book, the studio worked with different conceptual and graphic resources, such as textures, meridians, and maps, among others, in a bid to show how design is intrinsically linked to a place, the stories, and the teams behind the project.

In this edition, the Tiquismiquis Club also included a directory that brings together the studios and schools with award-winning projects. In addition to being informative, the list reinforces the central idea of building bridges between people and places, allowing people to locate each participant and get a global view of the projects.

Since the book focuses on different geographical points, the studio reached out to colleagues from studios located in various parts of the world and asked them for photographs of their places of origin. This imagery was then integrated throughout the book into what Tiquismiquis Club calls different textures, reinforcing the concept of territory.

Another graphic element that they worked with was meridians - aka lines of longitude. Though these lines are invisible in real life, on a map, they run north to south on the Earth's surface, dividing the planet into sections. Espartero says: "We liked the idea of the meridian as an imaginary line that locates but does not divide, so we used these discontinuous lines as a symbol of location, without delineating borders, as a visual metaphor, reinforcing the idea of a fluid territory without rigid divisions.

"We aimed to celebrate diversity without creating hierarchies or exclusions, and these lines helped us define the content and give the book identity and unity."

Martin adds that the representation of maps and graphs that do not emphasise political boundaries is "a clear statement of the inclusive vision of design".

In line with the theme of geographic diversity and connectivity, the studio also opted to work with someone in a different location to them, with whom they had no prior relationship. This led to the discovery of Ibai Salazar's work, a photographer from Vitoria whose style perfectly matched what they wanted to convey.

Tiquismiquis Club notes that one of the biggest challenges in tackling this project was the density of the book. With the content being based on interviews and award-winning projects, the studio needed to find a way to make it more dynamic, create reading rhythms, and offer different ways to consume it.

"To achieve this, we designed a layout in which, in addition to the received content, we incorporated more visual sections or pages," Espartero explains. "We played with photographs, scanned works, summaries, maps, graphics, or combined different types of paper to break up the reading rhythm."

Essentially, the studio didn't just want to make the book interesting from an aesthetic perspective - they also considered how it would be read and interacted with. As a result, they divided the publication into two perfect-bound pieces: one in vertical format, which focused on the interviews, and another in horizontal format, dedicated to the award-winning projects.

"This approach highlights the importance of having a global view of design, appreciating the different perspectives and how projects emerge in varied contexts," says Martin.

In every project they do, Tiquismiquis Club tries to explore and experiment, making this a dream commission for them as they were able to create something from scratch. "At first, we felt we could do everything," says Espartero. However, as we faced the content, we realised that we had to be coherent and understand the limitations of the material itself, as the volume was considerable and required a more measured approach."