Hi everyone, it’s finally Friday.

Welcome to Afirmativo!, where I send updates about articles that I publish on my blog and share things that have been on my mind lately.

That community feeling

I consider myself lucky to have been part of a professional community that puts curiosity and generosity above other interests.

People working on various creative disciplines have built groups of different sizes, shapes, and lifecycles that I have always benefited from: I got questions answered. I got book recommendations. Knowledge sources to follow. Blue links to click. I got jobs. I learned to create motion graphics on After Effects or web apps on Ruby on Rails. I met my co-founders. I attended events. I created them… the list is endless.

I always tried to give back to the community (these emails are part of that), and for a while I had the feeling that the good old days were over. But I was wrong. Let me give you an example.

Every single month, I get the chance to learn something new about Artificial Intelligence: for two hours, a couple of experts share new tools, methods, or creative applications of some new technology with me and a group of about 20 people, whom I get to meet in person.

Maquinito is a meetup organized by Both Rocks! and La Nave Nodriza.

This week, a few of us on the Maquinito community have gathered to follow Google’s 5-Day Gen AI Intensive Course. Registrations are now closed, but you can still follow along. Here’s how:

1. Join Kaggle's Discord

2. Check the #5dgai-announcement channel for official course announcements and livestream recordings

3. Connect with other participants in the other #5dgai channels Join the Telegram group that Both Rocks! created for discussions & help.

What’s the value of all of this? Well, they charge me the equivalent of about two beers for attending the meetups. And I also get the beers.

So a big shout out to Juan, Edu, Dani, Isa, Juanan and everybody else involved for bringing back that community feeling.

The Event

One of those communities was Ovillo, the CSS and web standards Spanish mailing list that Ana Belén Ramón and José Florido created back in the early 2000s.

I loved discovering just now that you can still browse the archives. There’s some messages by yours truly!

Anyway: fast forward ~20 years, José is organizing Upscale, a 2 day conference on AI, Design and Creativity.

It’s happening next week in Málaga and, if weather allows, I will be attending. Hit me up for a coffee if you’re attending too.

The AEE brand shit show

If you haven’t heard about Agencia Espacial Española, here’s a summary of what it is and how they handled their brand design. Pure Ibañez.

1. The Agencia Espacial Española is an agency of the Spanish government responsible for the Spanish space program. It was officially announced on 27 May 2021 and it became operational in 20 April 2023. (Source)

2. In 2023, they hold a tender to choose designers for a new brand, leveraging READ, the Spanish Network of Design Associations, for the process.

3. A joint offer by Rubio Y Del Amo and Cruz+Cruz wins the contest. I’m sure they do so at a loss, lowering their fees to make sure they get access to such a relevant project: AEE pays them €7,800 (yes, you read that right, that’s how embarrassingly cheap we are when it comes to paying for Design), and they deliver the job. Keep reading.

4. A year later, the Agency introduces the new brand. Surprise: it is not the one that the winners of the tender created.

5. Astonished, Rubio Y Del Amo and Cruz+Cruz release a note sharing details about the process. A few days later, they decide to share their original design too. And it is brilliant: please take a look.

   

6. Weeks later, we learn that the public Agency has spent an extra 70k in visual identity related services, through minor contracts that allowed them to finger pick vendors. So far, Agency spokespeople have kept silent about the issue.

7. Thanks to transparency laws, we’ve got the data, but we’ve lost a great brand. My dear César Astudillo took the bull by the horns and printed his own t-shirts with the winning logo. And he sent me one.

That’s all for now.

If you enjoyed reading this, someone you care about might enjoy it too. Here’s a link you can share with them → https://buttondown.com/albertoromero/archive/my-new-favorite-t-shirt/.

Alberto