Espasa

Austral, the first Hispanic pocket collection, was born in Argentina in 1937 as the civil war was taking place in Spain. One of its distinctive features from the beginning has been it's design, wich with different variations along these 75 years, has been part of the collective imagination of several generations.

It was created by Attilio Rossi, a Milanese who arrived in Buenos Aires in 1935. His approach shared with German Albatross and English Penguin the cultural democratization spirit that consolidated the paperbacks model. After discarding a polar bear as a logo (thanks to the intervention of Borges, who made them notice that this animal does not live in the southern hemisphere!) they chose the constellation of Capricorn.

Our intention was to recover the spirit of the original design, but this required some changes. For example, the screen dots in the first version are a metaphor of reproducibility, of almost universal access to culture. Today it inevitably refers to a particular decade. Keeping it altered its meaning.

We softened and simplified the logo, and recovered the black bar from the original version that was removed in later redesigns, although placed vertically, with the identifying character it had in 1937. Compositions with strong vertical tension refer to a particular visual tradition of editorial design in Spain, so it seemed particularly appropriate.

Laus Bronze Collection design, Adg Fad.