We, as the Designer Interviews ("DI") had the distinct pleasure and opportunity to interview award-winning, most creative and innovative Yamile Salomon ("YS").
Yamile Salomon (Joy) is a Cuban graphic designer. In late 2018 in Havana she launched Joy Color Design, a project dedicated to the design of jewelry and various products that are strongly influenced by graphic design. Now, from her Little Havana apartment in Miami, she creates designs with a visual and conceptual synthesis. As a sort of wearable graphics, her pieces represent where textile meets silversmithing, using embroidery to unify materials and surfaces. Her designs are an elegant yet playful mix of materials, shapes and stories that carry a distinctively Cuban vision of minimalism that seek to be the joy and detail of your day. She currently works with 999 fine silver and recycled acrylic as her main materials. Each piece, imperfect but unique, is manufactured by the designer herself.
Yamile Salomon Designs
We are pleased to share with you original and innovative design work by Yamile Salomon.
Yamile Salomon Design - Desert Desire Earrings
Designer Interview of Yamile Salomon:
DI: Could you please tell us more about your art and design background? What made you become an artist/designer? Have you always wanted to be a designer?
YS : I came to design by pure chance, and when I had an idea of what it means, I said to myself I want to be a designer. I graduated from the only design school in Havana, in the specialty of graphic design, which I still practice. At the end of 2018 I started, as a hobby, making necklaces with small waste acrylics and that's how Joy Color began, as a way to recycle materials, as a need for expression outside the bi-dimension of the graphic world.
DI: What is "design" for you?
YS : For me, design is storytelling, through shapes, colors, materials, and textures.
DI: What kinds of works do you like designing most?
YS : I love the personalized work; the unique pieces designed for a specific person or event, a request that makes me think and find the uniqueness of the solution for that work.
DI: What is your most favorite design, could you please tell more about it?
YS : A chain made for a Cuban friend and writer. A request with a special theme: exile, a subject that touches the fibers of this person and of the current Cuban panorama. The concept of being a soldier of words, a soldier in exile was the main idea. The piece ended up being a military dog tag with the words Libertad and Espanto (Freedom and Dread, his definition of exile) stamped in low relief, as well as his initials, and central detail in red thread as a reference to the blood and the Cuban flag.
DI: What was the first thing you designed for a company?
YS : The first design was a necklace called MelonJoy, almost a logo taken to a necklace, and it was this piece that marked the appearance and style of Joy Color.
DI: What is your favorite material / platform / technology?
YS : My favorite materials are silver and acrylic. My favorite platform is Instagram.
DI: When do you feel the most creative?
YS : When the job represents a challenge.
DI: Which aspects of a design do you focus more during designing?
YS : The concept is for me the fundamental thing, the meaning of each element that I am going to use, the reason for that shape, size, texture, etc.
DI: What kind of emotions do you feel when your designs are realized?
YS : As a designer you can mentally visualize the result, but reality almost always exceeds fiction, I say almost always, because sometimes it's the opposite. But to be able to see an idea, made object, to feel the weight, the texture, the size, that moment when you say, this is part of the real world is something really unique and enjoyable, it is fuel to keep creating.
DI: When was your last exhibition and where was it? And when do you want to hold your next exhibition?
YS : My last exhibition was at the Iberoamerican Design Biennial, Madrid, Spain, at the beginning of 2021.
DI: How would you describe your design style? What made you explore more this style and what are the main characteristics of your style? What's your approach to design?
YS : I would describe my style as tropical minimalism, a mix of pure and basic shapes, mixed with the explosion of colors and textures found in the Caribbean. The main characteristic of my style I believe is the influence of graphic design in my pieces. My jewelry designs can be drawn or printed on paper without losing their essence because, in reality, I design them from the reverse process, I first draw the solution, I make it graphically, and then find a way to bring that graphic design to the three-dimensional. My work, in this sense, comes as wearable graphic pieces. The design is always approached from the concept, finding the idea with a meaning, not just shapes, colors or textures with no more sense than beauty.
DI: Where do you live? Do you feel the cultural heritage of your country affects your designs? What are the pros and cons during designing as a result of living in your country?
YS : I am Cuban and I have been living in Miami for two years, which culturally maintains a strong connection with the Cuban culture, so it is a total influence on my designs. The cultural heritage, the expressiveness, and the joy are things that I always try to express. I am very influenced by the Cuban way of making posters, which is based on exposing an idea through a few graphic elements but with a great concept, which invites you to interpret, to think. I am also influenced by the culture of saving that we Cubans have acquired by force by the scarcity of resources, which leads you to use only what is necessary or learn to work with what you can have available. And although I currently have all the resources at my disposal to develop my designs, I always try to keep that idea of saving, approaching the solutions not only from the visual minimalism but also from materials. The design and the culture of no waste.
DI: What are 5 of your favorite design items at home?
YS : Chairs and furniture, posters on wall,s and glasses.
DI: What is your "golden rule" in design?
YS : Simple, appealing, and with concept, with meaning.
DI: What skills are most important for a designer?
YS : To know how to ask the right questions and to know how to find the connection between ideas, themes, and elements, that allow you to solve in a creative way the request you have been asked.
DI: What is the most frequently asked question to you, as a designer?
YS : Can I have it for tomorrow?
DI: Do you work as a team, or do you develop your designs yourself?
YS : I work by myself.
DI: Do you have any works-in-progress being designed that you would like to talk about?
YS : A collection inspired by music approached from different instruments and musical styles.
DI: How can people contact you?
YS : My email: joycolordesign@gmail.com and my Instagram account: Joycolor_design