El Sistema by Reena Karia

ASSIGNMENT
Our class was part of the World Studios Design Ignites Change program. In addition to mentoring youth, our instructor asked us to create an identity system for a non-profit organization.

SCHOOL
Portfolio Center
Atlanta, GA

COURSE
Design Ignites Change

INSTRUCTOR
Melissa Kuperminc

Approach

The first thing I do is tons of research. As I was watching videos of the youth orchestra performances, what struck me was how lively they were. The performers would get up and dance and much of the music is written by Latin American composers. Though El Sistema has become an international phenomenon, I wanted to keep the system playful and create an homage to the country it came from, Venezuela.

I started out with a moodboard to understand the feeling I was trying to achieve. Then came sketches, and surprisingly this system came easier than others. The abstracted instruments I drew were interesting, so I vectorized them and put them in the computer. They were very geometric and lost the character they had previously held in my sketches. My teachers suggestion was to cut the shapes out of paper. This small nuance completely changed the mood of the identity.The colors were chosen from picking them from a landscape of Venezuela. And the patterns were designed while actually listening to the music they played to invoke the idea of rhythm, pitch, and layering.

Sketches and Process

Sketches.

Solution

System Manual.

Posters.

Reena Karia’s Website