The P’urépecha Flag

The Purepedha Flag, although not glamorous, was designed as recently as 1980 and suffers from an enormous lack of unity in the central crest. Many variations can be fine but the rather unnatural colors, nearly those of a home inkjet printer, strike me as particularly bizarre.

Who Am I and Why I Chose to Voluntarily Take on a Monumental Project

I am taking on this project completely self-motivated and without any financial backing or support other than a few friends and allies I’ve met along the way. As my photography skills grew I realized i wasn’t doing more than taking nice street phtos around the world. Well, as I reconsider my career trajectory and the skills I’ve picked up here working in both French and Spanish, interfacing with indigenous communities and attempting to offer myself as someone who can project outwards what they cannot. 2026 is my moment, 1826 I would beg them for help or die in the forest. This new journalistic approach is an unexpected but incredibly interesting addition to my previous portfolio and has taken me about a year to pull together the first version. Because I see my chance to help those who cannot help themselves in a digital era, I set off on my own, wthout a single clue what I was doing. Guided by Colibrís and instinct. I began introducing myself as a photojournalist which felt like a farse but. upon further examination it’s exactly what I was doing and intended to produce. To this point many months along, including a dozen setbacks, I still have not earned a dime from financiers, ONG’s or otherwise. But money was never the goal. I’ve learned how to structure and build structure around an incredibly complex narrative, and amongst many other things, I have created an effective network of contacts allowing me to get shots that are rarely taken by offering exchanges of service or a small tip. In order to perfect a first edition of this work I need to align myself with the indigenous groups and perspectives that exists in organizations around the lake. Infomation on the effectiveness and true intention of gov initiatives is hard to find, obscurely tucked behind beautiful photgraphy; exactly the reason I turned down potential work with the city to bring more and more and more until Pátzcuaro loses that which made it worthy of being a UNESCO site in the first place. This is without yet mentioning that this area is the highest level in every western country, in my own us.travel.gov you’ll find an imposing red banner stating Level 4, don’t travel, don’t even bother with increased precaution because the US has it on good word that your death is impending. What makes me laugh in the most sadistic, sad way, is that coming from Detroit I see AR-15’s on my street, 5 cars stolen. between friends, houses broken into, 18 year olds eagerly buying their first pistol and shooting it in my alleyway. The violence is different herem but if Michoacán is Level 4, Detroit is Level 7 - Bring an AR-15 with bump stock, order a 3d printed version, make an AK-47 out of it. Now you might be okay in Detroit. To conclude, life is astonishingly difficult here without a US salary. I’ve experienced it both ways now. I want my extensive digital, print, brand, and photgraphic skillset to go to those who missed their chance to specialize in anything of the sort.

Resume

Voces del Lago | Este proyecto es lo que ves plasmado aquí mismo en esta página, Involucra foto periodismo, fotografía, interactuando y haciendo redes de contactos con indigenas para ganar su confianza. Pasé 100 horas en lo mínimo investiganto y lo demás busco (porque sigue en pie el proyecto 3 meses más) alinearme con las organizaciones P’urépechas que llevan hasta 30, 40 años dedicando su vida al proteger el ecosistema que dio luz por así decirlo a sus antepasados por sus aguas sanas y sosteniblemente usado hasta más o menos los 70. Es el proyecto más grande de mi vida, un año entero casi, entrevistando, haciendo mil cosas que nunca había hecho antés, campañas de educación, metiendome en territorio del cartel para conseguir las fotos, dormiendo con pescadores. Finalmente lo que hará es este sitio que funciona ojalá como una propuesta internacional a los 500 ONGs a las que pretendo enviarlo. Primero consigo la perspectiva. P’urépecha y despues plasmarlo en su complejidad de manera fácil y claro a primera vista. Igual hay un libro que plasma más o menos las mismas imagenes y texto pero considerando el costo de la calidad que exigo es posible que se postergue unos meses.

Commercial Photography | I have what I’ll call sufficient experience documenting commercial events to stay afloat but unless we know each or you have an extraordinary idea this is rarely a service I offer. I have experince photographing for events in the Catholic Church, quinceañeras, weddings, restaurants, plating and lighting food dishes for restaurants, climbing competitions. Events of all kinds really. Don’t let the first part of this paragraph scare you off, I’m open to working with all kinds of people but I refuse to create mediocre art, a principle of life, so let’s make something amazng if we step into this orbit.

Peritas | Senior Staff Designer: Product — Remote Designer for an incredibly complex tracking system involving 3d hardware, sensors, screens and object recognition to assure mistakes were not make in the surgery tray assembly process. From there our plan was to move into the operation room and collect and compile enormous amounts of data, insight, and recommendations to save hospitals money, time, and ideally fit more weekly patients into their schedule.

EIA-International NGO | Principal Product Designer (I was the only designer to be clear). This was by far the most career oriented project I worked on until I began my own here Mexico. To keep things as brief as possible, using data sent to us by workers on the ground we could pinpoint the location, owner, and movements of a tree across the entire supply chain from the moment it topples to the ground to the moment it exports. This allows for governments to track and combat illegal logging as each tree, as long as it is recorded correctly is fully traceable with only one small gap that is explained in the full case study and still serves as an extremely educated guess worth stamping on the wood before exporting. We started in Gabón, I designed from scratch the entire system according to their documentation, we iterated for three whole years and when Liberia opened up due to a coup d’état we were able to begin working with the new government, albeit not the tranquil atmosphere you hope to begin a poject with.

Photography and journalism work | carried out over 8 months in Asia. To enter that world you have to take initiative, have the resources and go find what is interesting. Even if I didn’t make it big with the first round, which I did not expect to, you’ll see this very site and project, Voces del Lago is a significant development on a relatively amateur attempt to build contacts and document, in my case, deforestation in Vietnam in accordance with the project above.

Nomenclature Type Design Foundry | A personal project, and an all consuming one at that. I have designed about ten typefacesto date, coded the website, built a brand and print samples to show off the details in print, and continue to use them extensively in my projects. Of the ten typefaces 6 are ready for commercial use, 2 are waiting italics, 2 more are waiting their fundamenals which I quickly add when I decide I’d like to use one. Website can be found here.

IBM Consulting | Senior Product Designer 2021—2025
IBM iX | Junior Product Designer —2019—2021

Movement Climbing and Fitness | My work for them was largely as a Poduction Designer, managing and creating assets for social media. Maintaining calendars and events, both printed and mounted and digitally, heping with the overhall of a new website and working across two, and then 3 teams to keep our offerings, competitions, and team trainingschedules up to date. Branding, video, animatiion and illustration work were a large part of this work as I had a keen interest at that point to build professional identity systems at the beginning of my career, however this was not extra work I chose to do in many casess and not a core responsibility. | For many years we were the sort of epicentre of pro climbing trainingin the US, with locations in Boulder and Denver. At the time I enjoyed meeting th absolute best of the best as they came through for competitions or the Colorado Rockies

Freelance Design and Career Course Work Post Graduation | 2015, I realized fairly quickly that the degree I had chosen for myself at the wise and experienced age of 18 was not going to lead me where I wanted to be, nor did I know where that “want to be“ was at the time. What resulted was a series of branding projects working with a freelance Project Manager in Denver while I spent any time I had left over on SuperHi coding courses (HIGHLY recommend), learning animation through After Effects and Type Design which at the time Glyphs 1 had just come out if I’m not mistaken. There were few turorials, a lot of searching through forums (similar to code) and a lot of frustration, so much so that success struck like a bolt of lightning when it arrived. Essentially in this part of my career I leveled up significantly in terms of branding and identity systems, printed works, logo and type design while also maintaining a variety of interesting albeit small and inconsequential freelance project. Neverthelesss, wihout this period that ultimately began after graduating and continued until my last days at IBM where I began to see the possibilities using my collective abilities to tell every aspect of a story; essentially a one man agency.

Voces del Lago

Un proyecto independiente de fotoperiodismo.