Photography and Film Guiding my Design Path

Here’s when I realized that watching movies and photography trained my eyes to transmit emotions and stories through color, texture, clothing, props, and framing.

From a very young age, I gladly took on the role of the official family photographer and started taking our trip pictures with my mom’s camera. I enjoyed doing so, but couldn’t understand why. Later, when I was 10 years old, my mom gave me my first Kodak camera. I remember taking it everywhere with me, to school, to the market, and even to walk the dog. I can’t recall myself without a camera in my hand.

Growing up, I was always aware of great photographers such as Jesus Abad Colorado, Sebastian Salgado, Vivian Maier, and Helmut Newton. I was fascinated by their storytelling, angles, aesthetics, expressions, typography, compositions, color, layouts, and all of the wonderful things you can find in photography.

Later in life, as a teenager, a subtle interest in film sparked within me. Not in a very deep way, but I really enjoyed watching Tim Burton, Hitchcock, Almodovar, Ingmar Bergman, Lars Von Trier, and Yorgos Lanthimos; but mostly Wes Anderson. I wasn’t as interested in the stories as I was in the framing, the layouts, the color palettes, the typography, I found the overall art direction spectacular.

I always felt the need to tell stories through art direction, through cohesive threads that overall were aesthetically stunning, while creating compositions that could feel poetic in any space they were given. That’s why I started my design undergrad in Medellín, Colombia; looking to satisfy this desperate need for poetic objects, stories, compositions, typographies, and color palettes.

The more I deepened myself into design, the more I realized all the possibilities we, as designers, have to create and communicate, either the sad or the happy, the tragedy or the triumph, that was it! That’s what made me fall in love with this career, the ability we have to tell stories through images. It’s mesmerizing.

Here’s when I realized that watching movies and photography trained my eyes to transmit emotions and stories through color, texture, clothing, props, and framing. You can build a name, not just for a character in particular but for yourself as a director, or in this case as a designer. It’s all about making people feel they are part of the scene. The same happens with a brand, consumers need to feel like they’re in a movie with precise shots when consuming a product or services, that’s what people fall in love with.

As designers, we have the responsibility to create environments where people feel they are the main character of their very own movies. Hence, allowing them to tell their story through the brands or products they buy because those brands are the props for their real-life scenarios and the ever-changing characters they build on a daily basis. It’s our job to be dramatic, to be inspired by those films and photos that provide us the sensibility to create stories, and to capture them and stay in people’s minds forever.