Designer José María Cruz Novillo has passed away at the age of 89, leaving a visual legacy that marked the Spanish Transition. From the Correos logo to that of the PSOE, his clean, geometric lines symbolized the shift from dictatorship to democracy. His work provided a renewed identity for a country seeking to modernize, moving away from the symbols of the past and embracing a functional, recognizable aesthetic.
The technology of the stroke: from brush to vector 🖌️
Cruz Novillo worked in an era where graphic design depended on manual precision and the steady hand of the marker, not touchscreens. His method combined scale models, analog photography, and mathematical grids to achieve perfect symmetry. Each logo was an exercise in visual synthesis, where a single line had to communicate an entire institution. Today, his designs are redrawn in vector software, but the conceptual foundation remains the same: clarity, balance, and the absence of visual noise.
When a logo weighed more than a political speech 💬
They say that in the 1980s, a politician once asked if the circle in the PSOE logo was a sun or a wheel. Cruz Novillo, with the patience of a secular saint, replied that it was a geometric shape. The best part is that the logo survived debates more heated than those of the investiture. While politicians argued, the design remained, unshakable, proving that a good corporate image can have more stability than a government. Rest in peace to the man who brought visual order to political chaos.