Third installment about jury members of challenge #Benidormbytalents (logo, slogan and pattern). It’s time for Ricardo Basurto, the elegant designer and publisher of the very elegant Loff.it magazine.
Ricardo Basurto; una de sus fotos oficiales.
Ricardo is a man from the media; he proves that as publisher of loff.it and, specially, because he spent a lot of time at Unidad Editorial. We shared some years there, time enough to become good friends.
As visiting loff.it can be seen, Ricardo loves details and elegance. But he’s also very innovative: he was a pioneer using Twitter for TV programs during his time in VEO7.
How did you professionally landed on design?
By chance and against the tide. I had a Design teacher in high school, it was a subject and he was an architect. I had to take my exams in June because I didn’t pass despite my passion for the subject. That bad experience carried me towards English Philology, but the same September I had to start in college I accompanied a friend to the Plastic Arts and Design School because she was going to enroll, and I couldn’t get out of there until I got in my hand the grade for the senior final project. It was the start of an intense relationship, both professional and vital. Design is (and there’s where I found it) in the deepest part, in the way we move around the world, watching, interpreting, recollecting, creating. Creativity is perhaps one of the most stimulating processes. And design is a multidimensional field in which creativity is as necessary as is capable. And it’s a constant challenge.
Which requisites do you think a good logo should have?
Emotion. I think, both in the personal and professional fields, that whatever the emotion linked to an experience, to observation and to understanding, the result is exponential. If the parameters on which we built an image, a logo, are erroneous, its value is always negative, even more if it includes an emotion. If they are correct and in the development you can put together the communicational needs and, at least one emotion, the result works and not only adds, but multiplies. The emotion linked to a brand is a memory, an experience, an evocation, a sense, a taste, a touch or an instant. It’s what it transmits, what moves us. In numbers, for every logo, for every brand, the criteria about good or bad should be bound to the emotional result: there’s no room for anything that subtracts or gives a void result, only that whose result is able to move, come and stay. Even more the tourism, bound to the best moments of our lives, intense moments, happiness and leisure, emotions. There are very few sectors in which the care of emotions by a brand is so imperative as in tourism.
What do you think Crowdsourcing can do for a project?
For many years I considered future belonged to ideas, until a dear friend, Jaime, pointed out I was wrong: the future belongs to the ideas that become a reality. Almost every idea deserves to come to life, to have a chance. And everyone should have the opportunity to participate, to be a part of the good ideas. Freely. I believe in what the human being is capable of creating, of imagining, of developing alone. But I believe infinitely more in which a society is able to build (and destroy) together, adding up. Collective effort is one of the best success warrantees, a big effort from a few or a little effort from a lot of people. If the talent is there, but not the capital, what a great human response is to contribute, a little or a lot, in its development. The formula is great and I want to believe that, within crowdsourcing, lies the seed of another big moment of evolution for our world, one we weren’t expecting: all sorts of ideas becoming realities, ideas multiplying. As a concept, never before in history we could find such a high number of materialized projects being generated, being developed.
Ah, impossible. I can’t remove, or sieve. I could tell you which one I like the least, the one I’m not interested in, but I can’t segregate one out of all of them. Expression is a vital organ, it’s necessary, and art is too; what and who we’ve been, what and who we are even. I find in ever art discipline an excuse or a reason for existing itself, a goal, a valve, fuel, the most beautiful pieces and the least ones. I’m passionate about a clock’s mechanism, the spectacular work of engineering and talent, of art, behind Breguet’s tourbillion, from 1801, but I’m also passionate about Rodin’s sculptures. If you would ask me about an artist, a designer, an architect… it happens the same. Each one, as the era of their works, takes up a fundamental place in the essence of who we are. But I’m passionate about art because it’s personal and in some way, free, I’m passionate when it’s a limitless contribution.
What do you think about the Talents United project?
I’m fascinated by it. Same as with the crowdsourcing, I think Talents United is one of those wonders that allows ideas and talent being alive and develop. It will be easy knowing how each portfolio has influenced the artistic and professional life, in the development of a talent in an individual way, but I don’t think we are yet conscious of what a project like Talents United can suppose for art and society, of how it can help development, or the ability of getting better, of learning, of motivating, even inspiring another talent to start blooming. And in this, everybody wins, no one subtracts, no one stays immune. Every talent, every portfolio, ever work presented in Talents United helps everyone improving. I believe that it’s so indispensable that it could only come from talent itself.
The one I haven’t done yet. Maybe it’s not the next one, but the next one will be better than all of the prior ones. Nevertheless I think Loff.it it’s one of the most interesting things I created, in every aspect. A challenge of 4 years of continuous design and development. It’s a living being (also in the graphic) that develops, evolves, adapts and has been taking surprising forms, developing members with great personalities that give entity to a global and harmonious being at the service of information. If I had to highlight one, this would be it, but it’s not the last either.
The first one, for sure, in all of the others I find some progress, some improvement. That first one was also my first order, an interior design and architecture studio had to develop the corporative image of the Redes Natural Park, in Asturias. I was in my last year of college and I opened a minuscule design Atelier. I didn’t charge much and the probably charged as much as any consolidated company. It was a complete corporative identity work that still survives today, the natural park keeps using the same identity, even when the colors have faded, stained… And even when I consider it my worst work I think that it was interesting for being 1993. I have a special affection for it, as I’d have for a wounded pet.
Did you know Benidorm before? What is your perception about the city as tourist destination?
How would you define your current Project, Loff.it?
Loff.it is a lifestyle magazine and it’s a lifestyle in itself. It’s a social media and format. The “starting note”, the first aroma, is in the beauty of the things, the places, the people, the actions, the “heart note” is an harmonious space of shape and function, esthetic and ethic; and the “base note” is a clear hedonist intention, a way of understanding and living life based on a personal conviction: “the only commitment with life is being happy”. Loff.it is not materialistic, but it is esthete, it’s not what is expensive, but the work that is well done, the quality; it’s not what you desire, it’s what you build, what you create, and above everything, it’s the person, the one that’s out, the one that’s in, it’s aspiration and inspiration evenly split, the beauty, the useful, both if possible. And it’s a society model, a business model, in which the only structure is the implication and each person’s work, we are all part of the achievements, of successes and distributions in the fairest way we could find: the equitable distribution of the group, of what we are able to get off the ground, of achieving because of effort and personal work. Loff.it is a magazine and it’s the cradle in which we’ve conceived a life project much more ambitious, as tiring as it is gratifying.
What do you renounce in design or, at least, what you are the most tolerant about its decreasing?
Personal expression. The impression, individual style, is a pattern that’s hard to quit, but I understand design as a profession, not as a service, not as artistic expression. Graphic communication and, as that concept, process and result must respond to the premises, to function. A good designer must be eclectic, versatile and prolific, able to move with the same skill in various styles, shapes, to be able to respond to any demand, any necessity. Personal expression is a graphic frontier as unlimited as it is circumscribed to such a reduced environment as ego.
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CEO de Talents United, profesional de internet, escalador y, ahora, apasionado emprendedor rodeado de arte. Ver su perfil en Talents United.