Max Rompo designs Art, Books & Music

Designing Sudamericana

by Max Rompo

As a designer at Penguin Random House Argentina, I am currently leading a project aimed at capitalizing on the visual identity of our strongest local imprint, Sudamericana. Conducting a series of brief interviews with some colleagues is crucial for me to document their diverse experiences regarding the implementation of similar brands in other branches of the company. Therefore, I would greatly appreciate it if you could spare some of your time for a brief meeting at the NYC offices on October 31 or November 1. Please let me to provide some context to elucidate why it is imperative for us to underscore the importance Sudamericana deserves.

Probably because of being the first publishers of Gabriel García Márquez’s ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’, Julio Cortázar’s ‘Bestiary’ (his first short stories book ever issued), Hesse, Greene, Hemingway, Capote, Faulkner, and Melville’s first translators into Spanish (the last two by Jorge Luis Borges himself), Sudamericana is one of the most renowned publishers in Latin America and one of Penguin Random House’s strongest imprints in the region.

Founded in 1939, we can be sure that most of its reputation belongs to its founding members: Victoria Ocampo, Antonio López Llausás, Oliverio Girondo, and Carlos Mayer. It was Victoria herself, a decade before, who founded Sur, a literary journal that quickly became one of the most prestigious and emblematic publications in the world. Featuring several of the most important authors of its time, they are closely linked to Sudamericana since then: Walter Gropius, Pablo Neruda, Ernesto Sábato, Federico García Lorca, Vladimir Nabokov, Jean-Paul Sartre, Jack Kerouac, Jorge Luis Borges, Albert Camus, and Aldous Huxley, among many others. Two decades later, the Latin American Boom ended up consolidating its influence in our region.

 
Buenos Aires, Argentina’s main city, has the highest rate of bookshops per inhabitants in the world. Although it has also been the home of many well-respected publishers since the beginning of the 20th century, Sudamericana, in particular, emerged as one of the biggest players in the industry. So strong is its influence that being published by this imprint still remains the common desire of most contemporary authors.

Its symbolic capital continues to be very influential to a diverse range of audiences in the shape of a surprisingly heterogeneous catalog that includes politics, cooking, memories, biographies, all fiction and nonfiction universal classics, scientific dissemination and essays, artist books, comics and graphics novels too. All of them under three different divisions: adult (Sudamericana), young (Sudamericana Joven) and early readers (Primera Sudamericana).

As it’s a well-known strategy from Penguin Random House to encourage the autonomy of each one of our local imprints in order to get the best performance, it’s necessary for us to make improvements in terms of branding and design standards, particularly in the scope of three facts:


1. Although its name was written in a variety of typefaces on each different cover throughout its lifetime, there has never been a certain logotype that identifies Sudamericana. In the beginning, once you opened any of those earlier editions, there was just an illustrated ex-libris with the figures of the “Southern Cross” constellation, a ship, and a plume penetrating the continent’s map. Then it was the turn for a wooden initial monogram printed at the bottom of every book spine, which was redesigned during the nineties and remains today as the only identifying element among modern editions: the ‘S’ logo, which now we know may be designed by in-house Art Director Iris Alba.

2. Over the last years, our company has been expanding through the acquisition of other Spanish publishers like Santillana, Ediciones B, and, recently, Salamandra. Some of the new books that come with those acquisitions are moved into Sudamericana’s catalog to enhance its commercial potential.


3. On the other hand, all of the interior design guidelines that we use in Latin America were designed in Spain but just for those European imprints like Lumen or Random House that get published in both regions. So there is an absence of design direction for those books that our editors decide to publish under Sudamericana in Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Miami, Perú or Uruguay.

This functioning clearly impacts the lack of a uniform visual identity strategy among our different locations in Latin America. It becomes a major need, especially in 2020 when Sudamericana is celebrating its 80th anniversary in publishing. It is also a necessity in the field of this brand’s communication resources and capabilities.

In conclusion, developing a general design plan for Sudamericana as a brand, in pursuit of an upgrade of its communications and production standards, takes on fundamental importance to take advantage of the strong signature that represents to our readers. Also, the reason why I would really appreciate it if you could give me the chance for a brief meeting at the NYC offices from October 31 to November 1, that can help us develop this project.



Thank you.
Cordially,
Max

Buenos Aires, Argentina. 2019

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