Martin Azambuja is a graphic designer from Uruguay, currently living and working in New York. Formerly on Micheal Bierut’s team at Pentagram, he’s now working as a senior designer at Porto Rocha. He also co-founded, together with Pentagram partner Andrea Trabucco-Campos, the publishing project Vernacular, and started an online archive tracking down his country’s illustrated heritage.
His new print above is part of the “Unfolding” series, a set of accordion prints from Flecha Books. “The artists are given this format, a folded problem/opportunity,” says Francisco Roca, who in 2018 co-founded the indie press with Leandro Castelao. “We like to think of it a bit like a portfolio piece, something that can capture the graphic essence of the person—as much as that can be done. … When viewers are confronted with these prints, they unfold the artist’s work, hopefully to a pleasing surprise.”
The images are hand-printed in silk, four inks on the front, one on the back. They can be kept closed in a library, unfolded on a shelf or framed on a wall.
Roca notes that there is more to come: At the end of the year, a new title, Iris Alba: Gráfica, will be out. They are also working on an ephemera book about Buenos Aires bookstore labels, and tracking down Milton Glaser’s only conference appearance/interview given in Buenos Aires in 1987 (a significant event for the community, because it took place just two years after the creation of the graphic design curriculum at the University of Buenos Aires).
