When a Passion for Art Meets the Digital Age

The gist of what I do: My job is to communicate to the public that there is so much to see and do at Getty, in a lighthearted, not-too-scholarly way.

I create designs for advertising and marketing materials. Sometimes I feel like a mixologist. I’ll get a great piece of art or a beautiful photo, add some typography, throw in some complementary colors, shake it well until the composition is just right, and the result is a new poster, web banner, or series of ads.

In 2019 Getty underwent a rebranding, which included a new logo, color palette, fonts, and guidelines for how to apply them. I am working with colleagues across Getty to implement those components. Brand image matters; when we present Getty’s brand with consistent visuals, words, and content, it’s recognized and remembered more readily.

A passion for art is born: My parents are both from Medellín, Colombia, but I was born in Queens, New York, where my dad completed a business program. When I was three or four years old, we moved back to be closer to family. My Uncle Carlos spent some time in Spain and brought me—I will never forget this—a polka-dot flamenco dress and a set of watercolors. Those watercolors became a whole obsession for me. I painted up a storm—flowers, animals, and views of my family’s country house. He would buy my paintings for five pesos, or about a quarter, each. Then I realized, “Oh, I can make money with this,” and I started painting rocks and everything I could find. While I was growing up in Colombia, I didn’t go to a lot of museum-related activities. So, I satisfied my curiosity for art mainly through books. My dad bought me books that had all the Disney stories, and remote places to visit. He also bought me a huge set of colored pencils. I spent hours looking at the books and drawing.

Discovering advertising: In high school we were assigned a project to create a product and advertising for it. My team created a makeup line. My friend and I did all the packaging and faked the eye shadows using little rounds of watercolor paper, all based on colors of the Sahara Desert. Then we did a photo shoot for the brochure. I loved coming up with ideas and doing the photo shoot using my team members as models.

During our last year of high school, a guy who worked in an advertising agency gave a talk about his job, and I thought, “Oh, my God! I love this.” That was when I started thinking of an actual career that involved art, and saw that it was possible to make a living doing art.

Return to the US: I wanted to come back to the US, so I enrolled in a five-month English-language immersion program at Clarke University in Dubuque, Iowa. I arrived on January 12, 1986, with the five other Colombians in the program, wearing a linen suit—because I obviously did not know what I was going to encounter. We’d seen beautiful green gardens in the brochure, but when we arrived, everything was covered in snow. After the program I went to stay with a friend who lived in Los Angeles. I called my parents when I arrived and their brains exploded. This was the single most outrageous act of rebellion I had ever committed. I went to Santa Monica College and transferred to UCLA for a degree in visual communications and computer graphics. I made a deal with my dad that I was going to go to school here, and once I graduated, I would go back home.

That never happened because unfortunately, I graduated in the early 1990s. Colombia was in turmoil with the drug wars. The economy was bad. Everything was bad.

Transitioning from painting to graphics: In college I took a class where I worked primarily with gouache, an opaque watercolor. It’s what Disney animation cells are traditionally painted with. It was so freaking hard. But my boyfriend at the time was an editor for Telemundo. He started experimenting with new computer programs for editing and drawing, so I began playing with those programs. I thought, “Huh. Computer graphics will be a really good way to not have to worry so much about if my gouache is too watery and bled up the line a little bit. Or if my contours aren’t as clean as they could be, or the circles aren’t as round as they could be.” Painting a circle is hard, man.

That’s how I made the transition from painting, and creating work by hand, to creating on the computer. Typography used to be set by hand—photography and illustration would be scanned, and then separated into cyan, magenta, yellow, and black, and you’d get four overlapping pieces of film. That era was dying when I graduated from school, when Mac computers and graphics became the industry standard. I was lucky that I got into computers right at the beginning of my career.

Joining Getty: I worked as a graphic designer for Thrifty Drug Stores and as an art director for various ad agencies, and then as a freelancer for 15 years, working with automotive brands and other clients, until a friend told me about a position as a graphic designer at Getty. I couldn’t turn that down. Getty has always been one of my favorite places to visit and take relatives from out of town. This has been my dream job in many ways. It’s provided me with a chance to work with art, which I’ve loved since childhood, and work on different projects that allow me to be creative.

Favorite assignment: One of my all-time favorites was designing the exhibition Julius Shulman’s Los Angeles (2007), because it was my first exhibition work for Getty. We got to bring Getty to the people. We had an exhibition at the Los Angeles Public Library Central branch. We also traveled to the Guadalajara, Mexico, book fair with it, and to the ARCOmadrid art fair in Spain. We installed these beautiful photographs of mid-century modern Los Angeles architecture at Sala Canal de Isabel II, an old water tower in Madrid that was converted into an art gallery. It was a tremendous learning experience to work with the installation team adjusting frames and graphics to compensate for the circular walls of the tower. It was also so humbling to watch people from all over the world admire Shulman’s photographs, and get transported by a narrative I helped create. Usually, I do not have the opportunity to observe—in real time—people’s reaction to something I designed. That was an incredible gift.

Favorite work in the Getty collection: Jeanne Kéfer, by Fernand Khnopff. The young girl reminds me of myself as a child because my mother was always very proper. She hated my straight hair, so she always put curlers in it and dressed me really doll-like. Of course, I would get dirty and then she would scold me.