Designer, painter, and sculptor José María Cruz Novillo has passed away at the age of 89. His visual legacy is part of Spain's everyday landscape: from the fist and rose of the PSOE to the flag of the Community of Madrid, as well as the logos of Correos, Renfe, and the National Police. He was a creator who knew how to synthesize complex concepts into simple, recognizable strokes.
From pixel to vector: geometry as the foundation of institutional design 🎨
Cruz Novillo worked with almost mathematical precision, long before computer-aided design was common. His logos were based on golden ratios, modular grids, and elementary geometric shapes. The coat of arms of the Community of Madrid, for example, starts from a rectangle and an inscribed circle. Renfe's identity uses a split ellipse. These systems allowed for reliable reproduction both on a rubber stamp and on the facade of a train station, anticipating the principles of today's responsive design.
The man who even made politicians look good 😏
That the PSOE went from the hammer and sickle to a fist with a rose was a visual masterstroke. Cruz Novillo managed to make a political party look like a Swedish cookie brand, but with more ideological weight. And then came the National Police: a shield with a crown and a lion that doesn't scare anyone. The man proved that even an armed institution can have a logo that doesn't look like it came from a 90s video game. A miracle of national design.