Workshop: Fewer formulas, more context: editorial redesign made to measure

Carolina Ocampo and Lucía Stagnaro (UY), Casa Perotti09.09 — 14:00–17:00

Redesigning a publication is usually thought of as a formal operation, settled behind the closed doors of the design studio. In this workshop we start from a different hypothesis: redesign is a collective construction, and its results — deep or superficial — always answer to a need that has to be studied, analyzed and shared before any formal changes are made.

We start from two real redesigns, complete and documented — the weekly Brecha and the magazine Jacobin Latinoamérica —, resolved with radically different strategies, and we propose shifting the axis from “how should it look?” to another substantial question: who are the changes decided with, and why? Graphic and methodological formulas are guides, never rules. This is a workshop for thinking of redesign not as a series of steps to apply, but as a relationship — with a team, a history and a context — that is built together.

We work in groups on real copies to build, all of us together, our own editorial diagnosis guide and to compare it against the process that was actually carried out in each project.

Carolina Ocampo

Carolina Ocampo holds a degree in Visual Communication Design (FADU, Udelar, 2018) and a master’s in Art and Visual Culture (Fartes, Udelar). Since 2012 her independent professional practice has unfolded across illustration, editorial design and identity design, for clients in Uruguay and abroad, with a focus on the conceptualization and development of diagnostics and methodologies.

Lucía and Carolina met in 2015, working together on an editorial project for the graduating class of the Industrial Design degree / Fashion track, and have kept crossing paths on different projects ever since. Both teach in the Departamento de Proyecto de Comunicación Visual (Instituto de Proyecto, FADU-Udelar) and are co-authors of the editorial redesign of the weekly Brecha, launched in 2020.

Lucía Stagnaro

Lucía Stagnaro holds a degree in Visual Arts, Graphic Design track (IENBA, Udelar), and a diploma in Editorial Production (Universidad CLAEH). She is finishing a master’s in Analog and Digital Editorial Media Design (UNL, Argentina). Her professional practice centers on editorial production — design, content management and editing — with an extensive track record in academic publications and the print press.

Although they have developed their professional practices along independent paths, both have a long career specialized in editorial design, and share the same concerns and a way of understanding and thinking about design processes: as continuous construction, and not only as a result.