Image design by Vanessa Zúñiga Tinizaray
Join us for a talk by Ecuadorian designer Vanessa Zúñiga Tinizaray who has created a design system modeled on the visual richness of indigenous culture.
"Tinkuy: Meeting in Diversity" is a visual archive that is part of the research project “Crónicas Visuales del Abya Yala,” which connects the designer with her ancestral roots, it is a return to the elemental, to the irreducible, to the origin. A journey through several archaeological pieces of different cultures that inhabited the Andes, where she finds visually represented the concept of Tinkuy (meeting between opposites and different), a Quechua word that encompasses the richness of diversity, a point where different ways of thinking, interests, traditions and cultural expressions converge, a space to exchange knowledge, strengthen ties, forge alliances to work on projects that benefit different communities as a collective being and not individual.
Tinkuy is a modular system that allows for infinite possibilities of combinations, which hold simple yet complex hidden visual codes, bringing back to life the cultures of the inhabited Andes through typography, textures, posters, decoration, textiles, ceramics, etc.
Vanessa Zúñiga Tinizaray, is an Ecuadorian designer. Her curiosity and passion for learning about the ancestral cultures of Latin America have led her to investigate and play morphologically with the visual signs of indigenous cultures. With one foot in the past and the other in the future, the visual universe she designs is continual evolution, sharing through this universe traditions and oral expressions, elements that continue to give new life to ancestral cultures.
Her achievements, after 19 years experimenting in the research project “Visual Chronicles of the Abya Yala,” have led her to be a finalist, win an award and two mentions in the Ibero-American Design Biennial, some of her experimental typefaces have been selected in Bienal Tipos Latinos and with her book she has obtained a Certificate of Typographic Excellence from the Type Directors Club in 2017, and another in 2019 for the typographic animation of the Fixture typeface family together with the Sudtipos foundry. She has given talks in United States, Francia, Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia, Venezuela, México and Ecuador, as well as workshops on the different methodologies used in the research project. Her work has been featured in Letterform Archive, Femme Type, Graffica, Computer Arts, Communication Arts, Typography Seoul, among others.
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