EDWING MENDEZ

good afternoon my name is edwing mendez

I am a Mexican-American and my latino heritage is something i am proud of but i was not always this. As a kid i hated being a latino because of all the negative, offensive, and inaccurate perceptions upon the culture. This is a problem all foreign cultures go through.

THE QUESTION
How could a cross!media campaign or system help cultural preservation in the local Kansas City Latino community?

So this leads to my question How could a cross-media campaign or system help cultural preservation in the local Kansas City Latino community?

I wanted to focus on local community because I wanted to go meet and interact with people and the community which i felt was important when working on an advocacy project.

one of the first things I did was get involved with a bunch of latino organization and advocates here in KC I took an internship with the hispanic chamber of commerce, i became president of LOCAL which is KCAIs latino student organization, and just tried to become a regular face at some of these places to make connections. This turned out to have a huge effect on my project.

I even got to meet and talk with Edward James Olmos who is probably the most important spokes person for latino-american advocacy

 L AT I N O ? C U LT U R E ? P R E S E R VA T I O N ?

Who/what exactly are these Latinos? How is the culture getting misunderstood? How do you preserve culture?

I looked at a lot of of data out there on hispanic demographic in the US and theres a lot of us out and a weird fact is that latino or hispanic is not considered a race its an ethnicity because there are many different races with in it you can black, white, asian, native and so on but still be latino

and we stand together as latino-americans because we often share a lot in common but we have very different cultures and that often gets lost and it get generalized as one culture. so what the best way to educate people about this including latinos because we often lose touch with our culture.

EXPERIENCE

turns out experiencing it with people of the is the best way to become aware and begin to understand it.

PROPOSED SOLUTION

so my proposed solution is

jardin de las americans an educational experience of latin culture which is a hypothetical lecture series

C U LT U R A L SOCIAL HISTORICAL

that will discuss cultural, social, and historical topics unique to latin american countries

and using agriculture and food as the appeal to that information each event will be decided to one country and one of its most important agricultural commodities which the guest chef will base his or her dish from. agriculture is also a common theme amongst latin american countries

So these lectures would be mixed with some awesome cuisine, social interaction, and so much more.

L P R O M O T I O N A L M AT E R I A TENT DURING THE EVENT CON

so my original plan was create an identity to be used a promotional poster series, website, plus a few thing that would presented during the event

V E R S AT I L E COLORFUL TRADITIONAL PRINT C R O S S - C U LT U R E

So I came up with these four attributed for that identity and found some inspiration to get me started. Since I will be representing different cultures the system will need to be versatile It will need lots of color to express latin culture //

V E R S AT I L E COLORFUL TRADITIONAL PRINT C R O S S - C U LT U R E

V E R S AT I L E COLORFUL TRADITIONAL PRINT C R O S S - C U LT U R E

traditional print will speak to the hands on of nature of agriculture // and mixed-culture because historically latin cultures are actually a mix of indigenous and colonial cultures that have mixed together over the centuries

the shape overlapping speaks to the cultural mix as well as brings in a screen print look and feel. plus it makes for some interesting modular typography

Using this as a base I created this poster series and focus on three coutries that i had little knowledge

Guatemala has a strong and growing Mayan community they are thriving because of the coffee they grow. The same coffee that their ancestors harvested as slave for the spanish conquistators

Peru has the larger Chinese population of all the latin american counties. in the late 1800s china sold 90,000 slaves to peru to be used on sugar cane plantations. sugar is now one of perus most important crops

50% of the panamanian population is said to be of africa ansestry. African slaves where brought to Panama because of its prime location for shipping. at the same time Banana from africa where introduce on the land and panama be came a large producer of banana

The website will serve as both space see detail about upcoming lecture and videos from past lectures

during the event you will be presented a trifold brochure which will serve as a lecture schedule with bios of the speakers and a detail about featured chef and the dish her or she will be presenting.

a secondary print price is introduced in the from of a drink coaster they will contain bit of knowledge about the county being presented

they also function as a small take away that could also be considered collectables.

what I learned -balance of work and networking -listen to people -value of the community

Q+A

Q+A