James is an american who’s been living in Argentina for quite a while now. What struck him the most when he first arrived there, was that argentine’s spanish was nothing like the spanish he was taught in high school; full of colloquial expressions, gestures and insults.
James not only got fascinated by this new culture, but he also realized that no american will ever be near to understanding the wide variety of expression that could be found when talking to an argentine.
So he created the most complete guide to understand the complexity and curiosities of argentine culture.
He reached us to convert this guide into an interactive app, and bring the argentine personality not only to its content, but also to its design.
The “Fileteado” is a form of decorative art that has its origins in the 20th century. Italian immigrants used to paint them in Buenos Aires wagons and it quickly spread to trucks, buses, window shops and so on. Now it is as close to Argentina’s culture as “mate” or soccer. We wanted to bring back this tradition and reinvent it to fit the fresh and modern look the client was looking for in his guide. We took the ornamental shapes and color and gave them a clean and bright feel.
The guide puts emphasis on the argentines' candid and expressive forms. So it was nothing but natural to make the app personality and tone of voice follow this manners.
The formal aspects as well as the color palette incorporate traditional elements found in “fileteado porteño”.We created a unique graphic, that even though it refers to this classic technique, it fits a more modern medium in which it will be reproduced.
Translating the guide into an app opened an array of multimedia options to represent the identity printed in argentines' gestures and vocabulary in the most faithful way. The app leans strongly on audio content in which users can hear the accent while reading both the spanish expression and its meaning.
