Naranjo — Etxeberria design the Spanish Advertising Annual

Date
12 October 2017

Award-winning Madrid design studio Naranjo — Etxeberria, whose portfolio of solid design work has been featured liberally on It’s Nice That over the years, has revealed the concept, design and create direction of this year’s Club de Creativos Spanish Advertising Annual.

Containing the nation’s most thought-provoking advertising ideas from the past year, the brief from Club de Creativos provided Naranjo — Etxeberria with the opportunity to follow in the footsteps of Cordova Canillas in seizing the role as the eighth designer of the Spanish Advertising Annual. Signalling a radical departure from Cordova Canillas’ nostalgic take last year, this year’s annual is coated in a transparent film overlayed with black block text which reads Spanish Advertising Annual in both English and Spanish. The plastic film is designed to be torn off to reveal a stark tangerine neon cover uninterrupted by lettering.

Not only does the annual re-live the year’s finest ad campaigns but it also features portraits of the jury shot by Berta Pfirsich and the judge shot by Inés Ybarra lit to match the publications orange, white and black colourscape.

“The concept of this Annual is based on “Discorso sull invisibilità” of Young Pope where the main idea is that the visible figure seeks fame but the hidden figure gets recognition and admiration,” N-E explain cryptically.

“The book presents a dichotomy between showing and hiding,” Naranjo — Etxeberria continue. “At first glance, the book may seem just an orange block but at the time we put it in plastic we can detect that inside is the best of Spanish advertising. Disguise makes sense. A book that conceals between its pages subtle and almost imperceptible details that are discovered those who decide to open it.”

With the weight of considerable pressure to create a publication to house the freshest ideas in Spain, where did the agency mine for inspiration? “We started with several references,” the studio explain. “The first one is the painting of The Lovers by René Magritte. This picture raises a dialogue of how the hidden always generates more desire. In the same direction, artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude in their project Wrapped Projects presents a dichotomy between showing and hiding. Also the monolith concept of 2001: A Space Odyssey is a block of stone, a hard and solid metamorphic rock composed of a single element representing the evolution of man. In our case is an orange monolith. According to the artist Vasily Kandinsky the orange provokes feelings of strength, energy, ambition, determination, joy and triumph.”

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About the Author

Bryony Stone

Bryony joined It's Nice That as Deputy Editor in August 2016, following roles at Mother, Secret Cinema, LAW, Rollacoaster and Wonderland. She later became Acting Editor at It's Nice That, before leaving in late 2018.

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