Pachanga - Grafikdesign-Inspirationen aus dem cloud forest

While her friends are still celebrating pachanga [= party], at new moon the Ecuadoran
graphic designer Belén Mena is drawn away from Quito to the rainforest. In the night’s solitude, she observes moths along the ruta verde; these at first inconspicuous creatures, threatened by prejudice and flyswatters, that flutter about the street lamps. She carefully picks the sleeping moths from leaves in the first light of dawn, gently places them on contrasting backgrounds – and photographs them. As if obsessed, she collects these portraits and distils patterns from them – patterns created by nature. Patterns, which cause palpitations and a whirlwind...

of enthusiasm at first glance, an enthusiasm that stays and grows the more one sees.
An Ecuadoran arrived at the Frankfurt Book Fair with a small folder of these photos. Schmidt is open for such »madcap projects,« he’d been told. We were won over. Countless emails, a few phone calls, one wavelength. Passion! The book became larger and more opulent than ever planned – not least due to the efforts of Petra Reichenbach.
European lepidopterists discovered moths they’d never seen before in Belén’s photographs, while graphic designers immediately recognize the creative potentials of the basic patterns that can be abstracted from the wings...

and bodies of the creatures and shown off in sequences, reflections and rotations. They make creative souls want more madcap adventures and Belén Mena [with a heavy heart] parts with her patterns, burns them on a CD and lets them fly into the Macs and PCs and hearts of the design scene. A visual celebration with flights of creativity.

inspirations for graphic design from the cloud forest
With enclosed CD [for Mac and PC]
With 100 samples for unlimited personal use
332 all-colour pages printed using aniva on FSC-certified paper
Opening pages on butterfly-wing-light paper
Hardcover coated with individually woven, pigmented foil-embossed silk binding
Size 24,5 × 31,5 cm
ISBN 978-3-87439-729-2