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A local designer´s development on the country’s most representative icons, the Argentine Identity project was exhibited in New York at AIGA, the world’s most important designers association.
Created by Argentine designers Hernán Berdichevsky and Gustavo Stecher, the Argentine Identity project (idArg) was born with the purpose of rethinking and exhibiting Argentine identity from a different view. And to do so through a thorough analysis of its main icons, which synthesize and communicate the idiosyncrasy of national identity. A first time for Argentine design, idArg was exhibited in New York from June 12h to August 15th 2008 at the world’s main designers association, the American Institute of Graphics Arts – AIGA.
This is not, however, the only recognition this project has been awarded. The prestigious Taschen publishing house also selected it as a study case among the world’s finest branding projects for its book Logo Design. It was also declared of cultural interest by the Nation’s Secretary of Culture. Both the icons and some projects inspired on them were exhibited in several countries. In 2007 a mate icon –an object inspired on the project’s graphic piece- was taken to the End of the World design exhibition in Japan. They were also in Chile and Great Britain.
An interesting publication condensing 75 indisputable Argentine icons, idArg also turned this iconography and critical insight on Argentine identity into an innovative line of products and industrial objects that promote Argentine design through the Nobrand brand.
Genesis of an identity
In the middle of the Argentine economic crisis of 2001, Hernán Berdichevsky and Gustavo Stecher found –oddly enough- a stimulant and favorable atmosphere for artistic creation. With the intention of publishing an icons book, they dived into the scary project of rethinking and redefining Argentine identity. Not just any aspect of it, but its more representative symbols, those which can relate to Argentine identity at a glimpse.
Such an endeavor would not come easy. National identities are complex cultural concepts in constant evolution, which hold inside a flow of contradictory meanings and senses that respond to historic, cultural and political traditions.
With no other factor than the analysis of an identity going through profound changes, Berdichevsky, Stechen, and their team created an aesthetic-cultural dogma from which to tell the story of a new Argentina through printed means. Thus, the Pampa, the country, the gaucho, the mate, the cow, the beef, the obelisk, soccer, tango and characters like Maradona, Gardel, Che Guevara and Evita –to name just a few- where object of an iconic conversion into Argentine symbols.
The objective was not, however, to clean the images of these referents, but, on the contrary, to re-cast them through a graphic synthesis and a verbal anchorage that would allow thinking on the Argentine identity through self-criticism and humor. Therefore, the combination of a deprived and synthetic graphics together with self-critical and humoristic verbal stories resulted in a redefinition of Argentine identity from a contemporary, fresh and innovative perspective.
What was maybe idArg’s only explicit objective, the road to printed publication was both enriched and modified by fortuitous events: the calling by Tashen publishing house to participate in its Logo Design publication, the commercialization of icon’s products (clothing, accessories, objects and publications); the call for a New York exhibit, and the almost unwanted condensation of a cultural graphic inventory of Argentine identity. It’s a considerable achievement, even if they were not seeking it.
