Meet the designer behind our Pride Month logo! 🏳️‍🌈

We're chatting with Paw, a talented queer artist based out of Argentina. [View this email in your browser]( If you haven’t yet noticed, Tastemade’s streaming and social logos are [looking a little different]( this month. We worked with [Paw]( a talented artist based out of Argentina, to redesign our existing logos in honor of Pride Month. Paw’s artwork and animations helped to bring our "Made with Pride" campaign to life — you can check out his artwork in action on our streaming channels all month long! We chatted with Paw over email to learn more about his journey in graphic design, the process behind creating our new logo, and what Pride means to him. Tell us about how you got into graphic design? I started being an activist in an LGBT+ organization called Zona Igualdad, [from] there I found out that one of the things I enjoyed the most was making the design for the content we posted online. I learned a lot from my colleagues who had more experience than me, and that motivated me to start exploring and designing other things just for fun, like fantasy posters for movies I like. Then, at my current job, I also learned a lot from my peers who have been graphic designers for many years now. Can you tell us about your inspiration behind the design for the logo, and your process of designing it? I tried to think of the different people you could run into at a Pride Parade, or as we call it here: La Marcha del Orgullo. The idea was to be inspired by the letters of “Tastemade” and I wanted each one to be a different character. First I thought about the shapes of them and how I could turn those shapes into people, how those people could be standing, dancing, or sitting in order to mimic the letters. Once I figured this out, I started with the ones I found easier to make so that I’d get it rolling. And then it was just a fun process of trying different poses and characters. I really wanted to include as many identities as possible, so I kept that in mind while I was choosing which one would go in each letter. But yeah, the main idea was to celebrate people at a Pride Parade. How do social justice issues, especially LGBTQ+ issues, overlap with your creative work? From the start it has been the main driver of my creative work. Firstly, I always had an important need to represent what I felt as an LGBTQ+ person and show that to the world, especially when I had recently come out or was still very much exploring my own identity. Also even if it was just sketches I haven’t shown anyone, it was really important to me to just grab a pencil and try to express some of it on paper. Aside from the need of showing this aspect of myself, I have also made many illustrations for specific political claims we have here in Argentina as a community. For instance I made some designs and drawings to keep claiming for the appearance of Tehuel de la Torre, a 22 year old trans man who went missing more than a year ago. Even if I’m making some drawing totally unrelated I still like giving my characters chest surgery scars or making them kinda queercoded, for instance. That’s just because that’s what I know, my surroundings, and what I enjoy. I do like exploring other topics and illustrating situations and images that may have nothing to do with social justice issues though. I think we are a lot more than just our gender identity or sexual orientation, it’s just one more side of a whole package that makes each individual unique. Who do you consider artistic influences and inspiration? I usually find inspiration in other artists I follow on social media whose style I find similar to mine. I also see a lot on Behance, where I can discover extremely talented people that are making really cool stuff all around the world. In particular, I really enjoy reading comics. Some of the artists I like that work with this in specific are Simon Hanselmann, Leo Fox, Femimutancia, Carla Ocho, Celeste Mountjoy among others. I’d also like to mention Francisco Solano López, cartoonist of El Eternauta, Eduardo Risso, cartoonist of Parque Chas (both very famous graphic novels from Argentina) and Rocambole (illustrator of Los Redondos, a great band from here as well). In Argentina, Pride month isn't in June — the Buenos Aires Pride Parade usually happens in November. Can you tell us a bit about what Pride means to you? To me Pride is the moment of the year in which I feel that the streets are ours, that we are millions and millions and we’re unstoppable. It’s absolute freedom to celebrate ourselves and scream to the world that we’re not asking for anyone’s permission to be who we are. It’s a party and a celebration, but also a very important moment for us to make a political statement and to share the causes we’re fighting for to the entire population. Catch up with Paw [@paw.ilustra]( [Facebook icon]( [Instagram icon]( [Pinterest icon]( [TikTok icon]( [YouTube icon]( [Twitter icon]( Was this email forwarded to you? [Sign up!]( Copyright (C) 2023 Tastemade. All rights reserved. You're receiving this because you opted into our email list. Our mailing address is: Tastemade 3019 Olympic Blvd, Stage CSanta Monica, CA 90404 [Add us to your address book]( [Unsubscribe]( from this list. If you have a Tastemade account, transactional emails are managed separately in your [account preferences](.