about me

Kindly Kindly written by Ramón Úbeda

Someone once told me that I wouldn’t recommend commissioning a project from an architect who didn’t know how to cook. Since then, I can’t help but extend that advice when I have to choose a designer. There are many people who are dedicated to visual communication and they know how to sell themselves very well, but you have to look beyond their facade and reach the kitchen to know if it is the right one for us. That’s why Lolita likes to receive directly into hers.

Those of us who prefer to work with people rather than companies appreciate that welcome. In this country there are still creative artisans who leave a trace of their personality in what they do. That’s why we look for them. They are professionals who like to work with their clients more than for their clients. The nuance of the preposition is what makes the difference and is seen in the result. Personality, in this case, has been simmered through various cultures and experiences.

Lolita Cortés was born and spent her early years in Mexico. She is the granddaughter of refugees of Catalan origin and an illustrious surname, with an aristocratic past that can be seen in the refined lines of her work. Her heart remained in that welcoming land, which will forever be her motherland, while she became a cosmopolitan designer, trained at the Llotja school in Barcelona and the Parsons School of Design in New York. The perfect mix between the ancient culture of the Mediterranean and the Anglo-Saxon business culture.

His professional debut was in the field of contemporary art. He spent two years at Marisa del Re, the gallery on 57th Street in Manhattan where artists such as Arman, George Tooker, Robert Indiana and Karel Appel exhibited, which was part of the CoBrA movement, for which he worked as an assistant. The next stops were Monaco, setting up the III Biennial of Contemporary Sculpture and Paris, to digitize the Galleries Magazine.

All that experience together with her passion for design led her to be the European creative director of a large luxury retail company, based in London. At Value Retail, he began as Development Manager for the creation of new Outlet Villages, no less than nine, and ended up devising fashion campaigns and supervising teams of graphic designers in seven European cities. Crazy.

A mutual friend who works in this same profession often says that the most difficult thing is knowing how to leave it in time to find yourself and unlearn. Make a conscious effort to abandon known patterns and open yourself to other ways of doing things by embarking on a transformative journey. Lolita went to India, where in addition to touring the country, she was working at a school for children from the slums in Delhi.

With all that baggage and a life soaked in cultural wealth, she returned to Barcelona where she co-founded Creative Hot House and later her own consulting company, Lolita & Co. From there came the branding and packaging projects that can be seen in her portfolio.

Now she creates her narrative as an artist, graphic designer, packaging designer  and illustrator under her own name, Lolita Cortés, in a workspace, next to the kitchen, that says everything about her.