Modernize post-Franco Spain with a blow of logos

Barcelona“There is a man in Spain who does it all”, sing Astrud in the opening credits of the documentary The Man Who Designed Spain, which premieres on Filmin this Fridaypremieres on Filmin. The lyrics fit the film's protagonist, José María Cruz Novillo, perfectly, who during the 70s and 80s renewed the iconographic imagery of post-Franco Spain. He was the creator of the logos for PSOE, Correos, Renfe, Repsol, Endesa, the newspaper El Mundo, Cope, the Community of Madrid, and even the peseta banknotes launched in 1978 and the blue of the National Police uniforms. But the most surprising thing is not that one man signed all this – and much more – but that most of it continues in use decades later, resisting the fads and trends of an ever-changing society. It is the most compelling proof of modernity: becoming a classic.

A The man who designed Spain directors Andrea G. Bermejo and Miguel Larraya discover the figure of a pioneer, the man who cleaned up the image of a gray and backward country where design did not exist. And, at the same time, a relatively unknown figure, even to the documentary's directors. Bermejo, a journalist by profession and editor-in-chief of the magazine Cinemanía, discovered Cruz Novillo's work while preparing a report on Spanish cinema poster artists. “On a blog I discovered three posters of his for films like La escopeta nacional, and by following the thread I realized that he had designed a good part of Elías Querejeta's productions: titles like El espíritu de la colmena, Ana y los lobos... I felt almost ashamed. How was it possible that I didn't know him?” Afterwards, Bermejo suggests Cruz Novillo's modesty as an explanation: “He has always led a discreet life, far from the spotlight. And he did his most important work at a time when design was not yet valued”.

From the rural Conca to New York

Born in Cuenca, Cruz Novillo began his career at the Clarín advertising agency in Madrid, where he got in thanks to his father's contacts. From there, a fluke took him to New York, to work for the Spanish pavilion at the 1964 World's Fair. “It was an incredible spatial and temporal leap: from the rural world of Motilla del Palancar to the cosmopolitanism of Manhattan –he explains in the documentary–. A good part of what I've done since comes from this coincidence, which for me was like having a career”.

After working as a temporary employee at the BBDO agency (“It was just like the series Mad men”, he recalls), he returned to Madrid with a groundbreaking design idea that moved away from the pictorial style dominant at the time and opted for geometric lines and minimalism, a detail that makes it even more surprising that so many clients from that gray Spain sought him out. “It was going to be a mix of things –Bermejo points out–. On the one hand, his talent, but also his contacts in the Society of Industrial Design Studies. Furthermore, at that time, if you wanted a design, you went to the Clarín agency, because design studios didn't exist”.

But perhaps the most interesting aspect of Cruz Novillo is that, after changing the commercial and institutional image of a country and turning his name into a verb – “acruznovillame eso”, was often heard in advertising agencies in the 80s–, in the third act of his life he reinvented himself as an artist with works of surprising conceptual ambition. The most eloquent example is Opus 14, “the greatest work of art in the world”, says the presentation text, which interprets all possible permutations of the twelve notes of the dodecaphonic scale, twelve colors, and twelve fragments of time. It premiered at Arco in 2010, has been performed for ten years (it can be followed online) and when it ends, in about 34 centuries, Cruz Novillo has said that “a cocktail should be served”, a conclusion that says a lot about his sense of humor and poetic vision of art. “All the money he earned as a designer ended up being spent on his career as an artist –Bermejo points out–. Because, above all, he is an artist and, in fact, his career is very fluid but there are themes and motifs that are always repeated”.