Lamas Burgariotti on how creative curiosity allows it to merge graphic design and fine art

Despite running a multi-disciplinary creative studio together, Vicky Lamas and Joaquín Burgariotti are first and foremost friends. Pushing aside the term “partner” or “creative collaborator”, the basis of Lamas Burgariotti is the pair’s long-standing relationship. Vicky and Joaquín have created an artistic space where no idea is too embarrassing to say, or too ambitious to suggest. As a result, they’ve carved out a niche as a studio, pushing the boundaries of what “graphic design” can be. “Today we know this was the best foundation for our partnership,” the pair reflect. “We help each other in the path of growing personally and professionally, and to us this is very important.”

At first, Vicky and Joaquín were just two friends sharing a co-working space. They founded the Costa Rica Friends Club in 2012 with friends and freelancers, the usual collaborative space where creatives worked alone. However “when huge projects arrived, we preferred to work on them together,” explains Vicky. In 2016, the pair were given the chance to move to a workshop with even more artists, “where we found a new place for our creativity and teamwork.” The new home offered possibility, plenty of space and new surrounding artists to provide daily inspiration. It led the pair to realise a desire to push their practices as far as possible, finally “encouraging us to found a studio together.”

Lamas Burgariotti also draws admirers in its ability to switch between sub-disciplines within the umbrella of graphic design. A quick browse through their portfolio showcases publication design, photography, art direction, and Vicky’s quintessential typographic eye that Joaquín aforementioned. “We believe that our personal enrichment is to learn from everything around us,” continues Joaquín. “By intuition, luck or curiosity, we meet people who consume and generate a lot of cultural content, which ends up being the very essence of our approach.”

Establishing a partnership that “blends graphic design with the visual arts,” forming the studio boosted confidence for both Vicky and Joaquín. By believing “more of what we do and being more confident in the challenge of bonding graphic design and art” prospective clients quickly jumped on board, too.

Their first joint commission was an identity for Arqueologías Del Futuro (A-F II) or Future Archaeologies, a contemporary dance and performance festival. The creative approach for this first identity consisted of several posters – including an installation at its opening, a video, a small publication and several flyers. The main media used was a process of scanning which the designers liken to expressive dance. “The idea was to experience the action of scanning and the result was a record of the body in motion in space-time,” explains Vicky. “Later, that led us to use the scanner as a tool to generate images.”

In its first joint project, Vicky and Joaquín executed a design approach which is led by expressive thought. Rather than a certain look or feel, this became the crux of Lamas Burgariotti’s practice. “If there is an aesthetic in our work, we believe that it’s very close to contemporary art,” adds Joaquín. “We try to use all the resources in our favour. We do not specialise in something in particular, we try to make aesthetics come from experimentation, to use techniques that we might never have imagined we could use.” The only constant, it seems, is a want to combine both digital and analogue visuals, in a method the pair describe as a “constant transfer”. “We like our material to travel from one state to another, which means losing and adding information – transforming.” In this transformation comes Lamas Burgariotti’s tone of voice, “working equally on artistic and design projects, erasing the line between art and design.”

Pushing the studio's creative capabilities further is another firm aim for the future. Rather than learning new skills or programmes, it’s a wider cultural creative knowledge that piques Vicky’s and Joaquín’s interest, adding that “we try not to lose the freshness in our work, and we do this by projecting ideas into what we aspire.”

With this in mind, the horizon seems endless for Lamas Burgariotti. “Our biggest goal is to travel,” say the founders when imagining a post-Covid world. “It would be super exciting if one day our projects allow us to know other cultures and meet new people. We would love to live abroad for a while, to do an artist residency, an exhibition or design project, sharing and exporting what we know.” Collaboration, just like the one that brought Vicky and Joaquín together in the first place, is what this studio will always seek.