{"id":106352,"date":"2026-07-22T01:27:32","date_gmt":"2026-07-22T01:27:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/106352\/"},"modified":"2026-07-22T01:27:32","modified_gmt":"2026-07-22T01:27:32","slug":"monterrey-design-mexicos-swiss-style-graphics-capital","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/106352\/","title":{"rendered":"Monterrey Design: Mexico’s Swiss-Style Graphics Capital"},"content":{"rendered":"

Marco Garrido, associate dean for international affairs in art, architecture and design at the Universidad de Monterrey (Udem), is holding a stack of packaging labels for salsa that are rife with clich\u00e9s: quirky illustrated bowls with folksy typography. \u201cHere, 10 or 15 years ago, companies didn\u2019t think that there was more to design than looking cute,\u201d says Garrido. \u201cThey didn\u2019t recognise that a well-designed bottle or label was good for business.\u201d So when Udem awarded its design school a new building over its medical, engineering and business counterparts, Garrido was surprised.<\/p>\n

The Centro Roberto Garza Sada, a twisting block of concrete designed by Japanese architect Tadao Ando, has been an ode to a changing Monterrey since 2013. Today the city is a hotbed of sophisticated graphic design and branding studios winning over international clients with their taste for Swiss-style precision. \u201cWhen Tadao Ando came here he told us, \u2018This is going be the gateway to Latin America,\u2019\u201d says Garrido. Two hours\u2019 drive from Texas\u2019s southwestern border, in the state of Nuevo Le\u00f3n, Monterrey is Mexico\u2019s industrial capital. Home to steel foundries and breweries as well as international manufacturers such as BMW, Samsung and Boeing, it is Mexico\u2019s most Americanised city. The landscape is threaded with highways and peppered with malls and fast-food drive-throughs. Residents are quick to reveal that it feels culturally isolated from the rest of Mexico, less hermetic about its language, food and art.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s not much cultural history,\u201d says Gerardo Ortiz, who co-founded Menosunocerouno (recently rebranded as -1 Simplicity Lab), one of the city\u2019s most influential graphic-design studios, in 1998. \u201cAs a designer you don\u2019t have a legacy to pull from but you\u2019re also free to find your own way. Back in the late 1990s \u2013 before the internet \u2013 all the design influences we had were American.\u201d But then Lyon-based design studio 3\/4 Face visited Monterrey to deliver a lecture. Enamoured by the city, the firm opened a studio there and its rigorous attention to clean grids and purposeful typography made an immediate impact on native designers. Though 3\/4 Face left two years later, its European influence can be seen throughout the city\u2019s design scene.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat Swiss style is something we adopted \u2013 and the city\u2019s other studios did too,\u201d says Ortiz, who also co-founded Brands&People, a branding and advertising firm that has worked with clients such as Gatorade and McDonald\u2019s, in 2015. \u201cMonterrey shares a love for that clean design and style of typography.\u201d The city is now one of Latin America\u2019s best graphic-design hubs, centred around the ritzy municipality of San Pedro Garza Garc\u00eda.<\/p>\n

As globalisation helped to dissolve borders, multinational companies opened branches in Mexico; the appearance of Starbucks and Home Depot outlets led to the closure of independent coffee shops and hardware retailers. \u201cThe arrival of the international market made Mexican brands realise that they had to rethink how they presented their products,\u201d says Garrido. Before the multinationals arrived, the idea of a tailor-made brand was unheard of here; it\u2019s since become a necessity for the city\u2019s seemingly endless roster of entrepreneurs. \u201cI\u2019ve lived in Madrid, the US, France and Japan but there\u2019s something in the city here,\u201d says Ortiz. \u201cPeople are constantly launching new businesses.\u201d In 2010 the crisp and clean interior of Theurel & Thomas, a Monterrey-based French-macaron shop, propelled Anagrama, the firm behind it, into the spotlight, helping it to become a sought-after studio. \u201cIn a city where everything looked similar, people were stopping their cars just to look at it,\u201d says Daniela Garza, CEO and creative partner at Anagrama.<\/p>\n

\"DanielaDaniela Garza<\/p>\n

\"PamphletPamphlet by Monumento<\/p>\n

\"FourMonumento (l-r): Eduardo, Ricardo, Rik and Ra\u00fal<\/p>\n

\"ThreeParametro (l-r): Cristina Arreola,Vanessa Santos and Debbie Kennedy<\/p>\n

\"PinkParametro\u2019s design for a Monterrey coffee shop<\/p>\n

\"StackP-Magazine by Monumento<\/p>\n

\"RTDFashion label designed by Monumento<\/p>\n

\"PrintPrint materials by Parametro<\/p>\n

\"BusinessBusiness cards by Parametro<\/p>\n

\"MonochromeVisuals for Peana, by Monumento<\/p>\n

The firm was founded in a garage in 2007 but its 40 designers, architects and web developers are now housed in a converted warehouse. The team hail from across Mexico but past employees have come from the US, France and Denmark. Anagrama\u2019s clients are split between Mexican brands \u2013 such as tequila-makers \u2013 and multinationals, many of whom are surprised that the firm is based in Mexico. But for co-founder and creative director Mike Herrera, borders are irrelevant. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t matter where it\u2019s made, it\u2019s the philosophy and principles that matter,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Though the city\u2019s designers have an international perspective, their work still has a sense of place. When Monumento, a creative studio based in a three-storey house with a black fa\u00e7ade, were tasked with designing an identity for Peana, a contemporary-art gallery in Monterrey, they were told that it had to look Mexican. \u201cWe felt that the contrast between modern design and raw materials has a sort of Mexicanism,\u201d says Ra\u00fal Salazar, Monumento\u2019s chief creative officer. So the firm designed cotton-stock business cards and cardboard envelopes bearing the gallery\u2019s monolithic wordmark. On top of its design work, Monumento also sells Mexican textiles and Danish homeware from Materia, a small shop inside Peana; an art fair launched by the studio is aimed at plugging the drain of artists leaving Monterrey. \u201cThis city has traditionally lacked entertainment, culture and art,\u201d says Salazar. \u201cWe\u2019re trying to put our finger on what it needs.\u201d<\/p>\n

Designer Gerardo Ortiz, of firm -1 Simplicity Lab, has used good graphic design to improve the city. His clients include national parks, Monterrey\u2019s ballet and even local firefighting services. In February, his firm won a competition to design a new identity for one of Monterrey\u2019s municipalities \u2013 its application will span city vehicles, building fa\u00e7ades and street signs. \u201cNo city in Mexico is doing this,\u201d says Ortiz. \u201cBut if you go to Copenhagen, Paris or London, you realise that design is a strategy to attract people and businesses to a city, and to improve quality of life. These projects construct a city\u2019s identity \u2013 and its spirit.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re teaching our students to have a global point of view,\u201d says Marco Garrido, back in the airy confines of Centro Roberto Garza Sada. The university\u2019s satellite programmes send students to New York, Barcelona and Mexico City, while professors from as far afield as Italy and Japan have visited Monterrey to teach at the school. The city\u2019s design studios regularly receive applications from eager young designers in Europe, Asia and the US in search of internships.<\/p>\n

\u201cMonterrey is a city that\u2019s stolen things from all around the world and made them our own,\u201d says Cristina Arreola, a Udem graduate and former Anagrama designer who co-founded her own studio, Parametro, in 2014. \u201cWhen I was a student, I went to Barcelona for two-and-a-half years. Back then, if you really wanted to be on the map you\u2019d have to go there, or to London or New York. But if I was a student now, maybe I wouldn\u2019t have to go for as long. It seems like everyone is coming here.\u201d<\/p>\n

Eyes open
In the studio
How a French studio landed in Mexico.<\/p>\n

Lyon-based studio 3\/4 Face arrived in Monterrey six years after it was founded by Vincent Delpeux, Pierre Raine and Pascal Thivillion in 1990. In France it worked with art galleries and theatres but in Monterrey the scope widened. \u201cIt allowed us to expand into working for businesses and industry but with the same logic and approach to design,\u201d says Delpeux. The studio disbanded in 2000 but its designs still loom large in Mexico.<\/p>\n

\"OpenDesigns produced for France\u2019s Ministry of Culture<\/p>\n

\"OpenBold typography for Le Lutrin, a Lyon-based gallery of contemporary art<\/p>\n

\"OpenA communications project for Th\u00e9\u00e2tre de la Renaissance<\/p>\n

\"OpenPrint materials for Lyon\u2019s Conservatory of Music<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Marco Garrido, associate dean for international affairs in art, architecture and design at the Universidad de Monterrey (Udem),…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":106353,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[4],"tags":[52012,7247,52013,52014,193,20690,52015,8203,52016,41,31169,17,50175],"class_list":["post-106352","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-switzerland","tag-anagrama","tag-branding","tag-design-studios","tag-graphic-design","tag-latin-america","tag-mexico","tag-monterrey","tag-monumento","tag-parametro","tag-swiss","tag-swiss-style","tag-switzerland","tag-tadao-ando"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ch\/116961033942992929","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106352","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=106352"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106352\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/106353"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=106352"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=106352"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=106352"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}