Sensational Mexican Design is an exhaustive iconographic investigation of Mexican creativity that has more than 500 images of labels, posters, packaging, signs, and other advertisements painted on street stalls, small businesses, fences, or markets throughout the country, whose originality and diversity contrast with its modest design and technique. This journey through the imagery of the Mexican is accompanied by a curious text by Carlos Monsivais written on the spine of the book, as well as reflections on this sui generis type of advertising creation written by the former leader of the rock group Talking Heads , David Byrne, the art director of the New York Times Book Magazine., Steven Heller, the digital art director of Disney Studios, Isaac Víctor Kerlow, the Mexican writer Emiliano Perez Cruz, the French painter Herve Di Rosa, creator of the concept of "modest art".

“This book reminds us that underneath the smugness and logos there are still human beings”  David Byrne

“The design nostalgia displayed in this book is a moving attempt by disillusioned people like me seeking to recapture a lost soul”  David Byrne

When in 1994 I began to take photos of signs and signs, attracted by their ease and originality, signage was an obsolete art that had gradually succumbed to the use of more modern techniques to advertise products in many countries, especially the most developed ones. The standardization of design canons triggered by the globalization of the market and culture imposed recognizable graphic styles anywhere in the world. 

Sensational proposed to look back at a graphic that, not because it was native or popular, was less effective than that which came from design and art schools. 

In addition to the presence of signs in shops and streets, there are certain activities such as poster design, advertising prints, graphic novels and product packaging that have developed their own graphic language. When we see a poster with the naked eye, it can be distinguished by the typeface used, its color and its graphic composition if it is a group dance, a fight or a revue theater: there is an ad hoc style for each activity that indicates the presence of immense richness and imagination . The creativity of generations of untitled printers and designers have created a fascinating visual environment that was not only unrecognized, but considered outdated and commonplace. 

The characteristic they have in common is their invoice: the authors do not follow the rules of the academy, the conventions of plastic composition, much less the latest fashions, because they do not know them. However, they belong to guilds or are part of a tradition and, therefore, their work has a style. Added to the ingenuity of the owners and their ideas on how to communicate the virtues of their products to the consumer, the result is almost always a hybrid, a combination of graphic skill and audacity.