43 GABRIELA VARELA & DAVID KIMURA
diseño: méxico showcases the work of contemporary Mexican industrial designers of products from furniture to interiors. “The challenge for the project was to put together a series of diverse materials in a cohesive way,” explains Gabriela Varela, who designed the book with David Kimura. “We helped edit the material and give structure to the book by finding connections—visual, formal and conceptual —between the different projects showcased.”

The volume is intended to help promote national production and an image of Mexico as a country with—in addition to a rich artisanal background—a new cultural design center. It attempts to communicate how industrial design operates in Mexico (where it is a relatively young field) and how it has developed along two main currents: one that focuses on appearance in the search for innovative form and pattern, the other on the functionality of a product and the needs of its users. The drive to not only create and produce beautiful products but also to commercialize them is a dominant concept that plays out in the publication’s design. As Varela notes, “For the object itself, we wanted to do something different from conventional books. To evoke the industrial-design content, we chose a yellow Eva foam … also to create a tactile experience for the reader.” Through this winning combination of material and content, design becomes inseparable from industrial manufacturing, a fusion of which this book is living proof, existing both as a high-design object and a mass-produced product. by Mayi Carles