Across bordersAcross borders
Across Borders is a global, collaborative and cross-cultural event directed by Mayúscula that believes in design as a tool to break boundaries and create a positive impact on society. In a world where 272 million people live outside their countries of origin, Across Borders cross-cultural initiative reclaims our cultural identity, diversity and multiplicity of points of view, deepening our differences and similarities through design. We believe in borders as meeting points, not barriers; crossroads where we can all meet to imagine a better journey.
An entire world in movement
Globalization is creating standarized societies that lose the flavour of their origins and heritage, and a considerable percentage of new generations are beginning to identify themselves more as a citizen of the world than as a citizen of their country of origin. And yet, never before in our history have we lived in a world so divided and compartmentalized. Every year, we produce half a million tons of barbed wire, enough to circle the earth 200 times. Across Borders acts in this contradictory situation by raising awareness and celebrating cross-culturality in a positive spirit.
Barcelona Design Week
Across Borders offers an itinerant hybrid proposal to blur the boundaries between the physical, digital and virtual, expanding the possibilities of participation at an international level. For 2020 edition, a physical exhibition was held at the Disseny Hub Barcelona museum mixed with a live immersive experience in a virtual reality environment, and online dialogues with participants from different origins.
Barcelona Design Week was just our second stop. It is in our DNA to be truly global and accessible from anywhere in the world.
Creatives for refugees
In 2020 edition Across Borders was able to donate dignity kits with essential toiletries to Syrian refugee women in Lebanon camps trough the NGO Rescate. Trough the contributions made trough the posters sell and direct donations we were able to contribute to the cause and to help return female refugees a basic human right – their dignity.
This is just the first step, and as more funds are needed you can still contribute trough our Charity page or by buying the poster on our Shop.
Highlights
Exhibition
Participants
For the 2020 edition, Across Borders has connected more than 50 renowned creative women from 30 different countries with the aim of helping refugees, while leveling the balance of gender inequality in the creative industry. Among them are Tina Touli, Asuka Watanabe, Irene Pereyra (Anton & Irene), Soraya Syed, Lupi Asensio (Two Points Net), Maria Montes, Maria Fabuel (Domestic Data Streamers), Jane Bower, Kaoru Akagawa, Yarza Twins or Nadine Chahine.
Tina Touli
London-based Greek, of German and Greek origin.
Tina Touli is a creative director, graphic communication designer, maker, speaker and educator. She currently runs her own London based multidisciplinary studio, and teaches at Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London. She works in a great variety of design fields, including print and digital design, with different clients, such as Adobe, Dell, HP, Ciroc Vodka, Fiorucci, Tate, Converse, Kappa and Movement Festival. She had the honour to be selected by Print Magazine as one of the 15 best young designers in the world, aged under 30 (2017). Her work has been featured in Communication Arts magazine, Computer Arts magazine, Digital Arts magazine and Creative Review blog among others and design publications such as “Design{h}ers” by Viction:ary. She has been invited to present her work in various events and conferences all over the world, as for example at Adobe MAX, FITC Amsterdam, KIKK Festival, TOCA ME Festival and the Bump Festival.
Irene Pereyra
New York-based Dutch, of Peruvian origin.
She is the co-founder of the interaction design studio “Anton & Irene”. She has created interactive experiences for a large variety of clients and projects, including the digital redesign of the Met Museum, the American newspaper USAToday, the artist Shantell Martin, the Austrian lighting company Zumtobel, and a survey in collaboration with SPACE10 about the future of communal living. The studio also spends 3 months a year on self-initiated design projects. Irene has been a guest speaker at numerous conferences such as OFFF and FITC, and has lectured at SVA in New York, Hyper Island in Stockholm, Elisava in Barcelona, and the Design Academy in Eindhoven. Her personal projects have been shown in Amsterdam, London, Antwerp, Paris, New York, Copenhagen, Cincinnati, Singapore and Tegucigualpa.
Alexandra Schwarzwald
Born and based in Germany.
Graphic designer and typographer. She was born and raised in Berlin, Germany. During her study in visual communication at HTW — University of Applied Science, she began work at FontShop as a Font Technician intern and supported FontShop’s eCommerce Business — including FontFont, Fonts.com, Linotype, and MyFonts — with graphical work after her bachelor’s degree.
In 2017 she started working for Monotype as a freelance graphic designer in London, and joined the company full-time in 2018. As a Senior Graphic Designer, her passion was always on the creative side of type release marketing, where she created and delivered visual assets for Futura Now, Helvetica Now, Macklin, Walbaum, Madera & Unitext, and many more. Alexandra was also a key member of the Monotype brand team, developing and delivering the company’s re-brand in 2019. Her interest is also in jewellery, 3D, UXUI, and type design.
Kaoru Akagawa
London-based Canadien of Japanese origin.
Artist and master of Japanese calligraphy, kana shodo, was born in Canada, grew up in the U.S. and Japan, and since 2007 in Europe. Akagawa’s new style of art has been picked up by various media, including CNN, The Guardian, Deutsche Welle and BBC Radio. Her artworks are created based on her technique as a master, yet are free from preconceived ideas of Japanese traditions. Akagawa strives to keep an ancient script, which is referred to as “woman hand”, alive through her art. Her globe-trotting and the discrimination she experienced growing up in the U.S. led to “Crossing Borders” becoming one of the core ideas of her work. Akagawa has held exhibitions in cities such as Berlin, Paris, London and Tokyo. She has held lectures on kana shodo at venues like the University of Oxford, the University of London School of Advanced Study and the University of Zurich.
Juhi Vishnani
Born and based in India.
Graphic Designer and Art Director from Mumbai, India. After completing under-graduation in Design from India, she pursued her MA in Communication Design from UAL, London. She worked at reputed agencies like TSK Design and Landor Associates before forming her own plural design practice, November, with partner Shiva Nallaperumal in 2018. November has worked with a wide variety of cultural and commercial clients like Uber, Apple Music, Nicobar, Elle Magazine and National Basketball Association (NBA) etc. on Identities, Installations, Editorial Design, Lettering and Typeface Design. In parallel to her design career, Juhi is also a certified and practicing Yoga Instructor.
Rachel Joy Price
London / Paris-based English.
Lettering Artist based between London + Paris. Descended from a great grandfather who was part of the team of sign painters who worked on the titanic, Rachel’s work is versatile, spanning a variety of media from traditional sign painting for commissions as art pieces, to crafting scripts & 3D lettering for brands worldwide, working on advertising, packaging, book covers and prints. Her clients include Google, Apple, Adidas, Karl Lagerfeld, and Heineken.
Veronika Burian
Germany / Spain-based Czech.
The multi-award winning type designer Veronika Burian originally studied industrial design in Munich and then worked as a product designer in Vienna and Milan. Discovering her true passion for type, she graduated with distinction from the MA in Typeface Design at the University of Reading, UK, in 2003. After a few years at DaltonMaag in London, she founded TypeTogether together with José Scaglione, today with twelve employees working around the world, one of the most important, independent type foundries. As a founding member of the typography platform alphabettes.org by and for women, she is particularly involved in the mentoring program and for the GRANSHAN project for non-Latin fonts and typography, she engages in communication and sponsorship. Veronika teaches as a guest lecturer at the Faculty of Architecture and Design NTNU (Gjøvik, Norway) and gives lectures and leads workshops at conferences and at universities around the world.
Laura Meseguer
Born and based in Barcelona, Spain.
Laura Meseguer is a freelance graphic and type designer, she works for international and domestic clients but also in self-initiated projects. Through her own type foundry, Type-Ø-Tones, she publishes and promotes her type designs. Since then she has been teaching and giving talks and workshops around.
As a typographer and type designer she is specialized in all sorts of projects involving custom lettering and type design, for branding and publishing design. For her personal practice she gets the inspiration from what is around and focuses in projects that mix that with her own vision of type and lettering, exploring the expressivity of letterforms.
She is the author of TypoMag. Typography in Magazines, published by IndexBook and co-author of the book “Cómo crear tipografías. Del boceto a la pantalla”, published by Tipo e in Spanish and translated into Polish, Portuguese, English and Chinese.
Premio Gràffica 2018. Member of the ATypI Board since 2017
Marga Oller
Born and based in Barcelona, Spain.
Marga joined Mucho in 2015 as an Art Director and is now one of three Associate Partners. Her prior experience includes the branding and consultancy agency Summa also as Art Director. She has over 15 years’ experience leading and delivering branding projects, coordinating teams and supervising brand implementation as well as the strategic coherence of each project.
Rendani Nemakhavhani
South Africa-based, Black Woman.
I am an illustrator and art director by trade, who is influenced by urban African as well as traditional cultures. I draw inspiration from women as well as the vibrant nature of African people. My work has been written about in various publications. Nataal, being the most recent one. I’ve exhibited with galleries In Johannesburg, both online as well as traditional spaces. Founder of a project called All Hail the Honey as well as 30 Days x a City.
Maria Montes
Australia-based Spanish.
Maria Montes is a multidisciplinary designer and educator passionate about illustration and letterforms. Her practice is set by the principals of constant learning, sharing and educating about the creative process. In 2011 she studied a Postgraduate Course in Advanced Typography in Barcelona, and in 2012 a Typeface Design Condensed Program at Cooper Union in New York City. In 2018, she published her first display font called Green Fairy. Nowadays, Maria works across illustration commissions, lettering projects and emotionally-charged visual identities. She currently teaches live online calligraphy classes.
Sasikarn Vongin
London-based Thai.
Sasikarn Vongin is an independent type and graphic designer based in London. She grew her interest in typography while studying Communication Design for her Bachelor degree in Bangkok. She then worked professionally as a type designer for more than 7 years creating retail fonts and custom fonts for local and global brands. After receiving her master’s degree in type design from The University of Reading in 2018, she then has moved to London in 2019 and started her freelance career. She is currently a frequent collaborator with renowned type foundries and design studios from around the world.
