Monterrey, 2008.

Futura is a branding studio founded in 2008 in Monterrey, in northern Mexico. AIGA Eye on Design, in a studio visit by Meg Miller published on 11 January 2018, said Futura was originally founded by Iván García and Vicky González, and described it as a studio specialising in restaurant identities, food and beverage packaging, environmental branding and cultural design, in Mexico and abroad. Communication Arts, in a feature by Anne Telford published online on 27 February 2020, also dated the founding to 2008 and placed its start in Monterrey, where García had been working for another design studio.

According to Eye on Design, the project that first drew attention to Futura was the branding for Bocanegra, a local craft beer that was later bought by Beerhouse. The studio’s head designer, Karla Heredia, told the magazine that Bocanegra had been defined by a strong image and that the image was made at Futura, and that many eyes were on the studio afterwards. Commissions that followed were often of a similar kind: beer, food and coffee, along with cultural and community spaces.

Communication Arts recorded a second turning point. García told the magazine that a client asked whether he knew an interior designer, because the client wanted to open a taco place; García said he could do it, and asked the architect Gilberto Gutiérrez to help. The finished restaurant drew international attention, García said, and it became the basis of the studio’s model: keep the graphic design, architecture and interiors in-house.

The move south came in 2015. Eye on Design reported that after González left, García moved the office from Monterrey to Mexico City, and those who wanted to keep working with him followed. Art director Daniel Martínez told the magazine that the capital put the studio closer to the food and culture industries it was already designing for, and that Monterrey’s design community was strong but small. In 2020 Martínez told Communication Arts that the city’s range of design, architecture, art and music was one of the reasons Futura had migrated there five years earlier.

Partners, rules and two offices.

By early 2020, Communication Arts named three partners at the head of Futura: Iván García Hernández, partner and creative director; Gilberto Gutiérrez Lara, an architect and the partner in charge of operations; and Daniel Martínez Larsen, partner and art director. Martínez had joined as a junior designer in 2013 while finishing his studies at the Universidad de Monterrey; four years later, the magazine said, he moved to Mexico City and was made partner. Andreina Cacciaguerra, in new business and project management, coordinated clients in countries including Qatar, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Japan.

The studio works to four rules, which García set out to Communication Arts. The first is never to work for politicians, religions or gambling institutions. The others are to be firm, determined and persevering about good design; to push the limits, propose more and exceed expectations; and to choose nice people, great projects and experimentation over money.

Futura’s Mexico City address has changed with events. Eye on Design reported in January 2018 that the studio’s offices in Colonia Condesa had been badly damaged in the earthquake of the previous September, although no one in the building was hurt. Residencia, a publicity and branding agency and a former Futura client, opened its event building in Colonia Juárez, also known as Proyecto Público Prim, to offices displaced by the earthquake for a seven-week stopover. Futura decided to stay. Martínez told the magazine the team wanted to remain in such a culturally and visually rich building, with its sunlit glass roof, balconies and plants.

By 2020 the studio was back in Condesa. Communication Arts described the office in 2020 as sitting in a concrete building with rounded corners known locally as “the molar”, with graphic and type designers, illustrators and animators along a central table and the architecture and interior design team at the other end of the space.

The two partners framed the studio’s method in similar terms. Martínez told Eye on Design that Futura’s designers largely came from a Bauhaus and Swiss modern training, as is common in Mexico, and that you need to know the rules to break them. Gutiérrez told Communication Arts that he prefers to give clients processes rather than rules, and that establishing a brand should enhance the client rather than replicate the studio.

Names, websites and offices.

Design studios in Latin America and Australia build their own identities from a small set of surfaces. The first is the name. Some studios carry a founder’s name, which puts a person at the front of the business; others choose a short invented word or a pair of letters, which leaves room for new partners, new offices and changes of ownership. When a founder’s name is later shortened or reframed, the change itself becomes part of the studio’s story.

The second surface is language. Studios that work across borders often publish their websites in two languages, and the choice of which language comes first, and how the two sit side by side, says something about the audience a studio expects. A short coined name tends to read the same in Spanish, Portuguese and English, which is one reason such names travel well.

The third surface is the work. Case studies on a studio’s website, studio books and printed publications act as portfolio and advertising at once. How a studio photographs, writes up and orders its client projects often says more about its identity than its own logo does.

Client work, dated.

Coffee recurs in Futura’s published work. Eye on Design described in January 2018 the branding for Blend Station, a coffee shop in Condesa near the studio’s earlier office. The client gave the studio wide creative freedom, and Futura used pastel patterns, odd and gentle illustrations and a large black blob creature painted on the shop’s side wall, which Martínez called the protagonist of the brand. The magazine noted that the logo appeared only at the entrance; customers instead recognised the brand by two white eyes looking out from the black coffee cups.

For Superthing, a coffee brand in Austin, Texas, Communication Arts reported in 2020 that Futura built a surreal, saturated world of one-eyed creatures and portals, and that the company had come back to the studio to extend its packaging and imagery. The same feature mentioned work for Motín, a coffee shop in Mexico City, covering both its space and its branding.

Other dated projects reach beyond food and drink. In January 2018 Eye on Design showed packaging for The Pizza Affair, an online pizza company in Monaco, with bold photography partly hidden under blocks of colour and a logo in the form of a winking slice of pizza. Communication Arts described work for León León, a French Mexican furniture brand that reinterprets classic designs such as the Acapulco chair, for which Futura imagined the painter Wassily Kandinsky arriving in sunny 1970s Acapulco instead of Moscow. The feature also mentioned a rebrand for Elanveda, a health and beauty line based in California.

Communication Arts said Futura avoids the familiar shorthand of Mexican design, such as saturated colour and pre-Hispanic symbols, preferring pastels drawn from nature, humour and references gathered on the partners’ travels. Martínez told the magazine the studio sees versatility as its strength and tries to propose something different for every project. Gutiérrez summed up the attitude with a paraphrase of Oscar Wilde: life is too important to be taken seriously.

For a design guide, Futura shows how a studio can carry one tone across graphics, packaging and interiors while changing its look for every client. Compare Anagrama, another studio that grew out of Monterrey, and Savvy. For this guide we use pastel pink, sage and black with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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