Figma Source Material：平面设计师 Aitana Picó 谈欣赏坏趋势

The multidisciplinary designer and artist shares what’s in her “mental database”: an off-putting tarot deck, a Jockstrap CD, and a recurring dream about aerial silks.

Share Source material: Graphic designer Aitana Picó wants us to appreciate bad trends

Welcome to Source Material, a weekly series where the designers and creatives shaping culture share the references that shaped them. Our next guest is Aitana Picó, a digital designer, creative technologist, and visual artist based between Berlin and Valencia.

After the shoot, we caught up with Aitana about her creative process:

What were you making when you realized, “This could be my job”?

As a child, while I was painting, I was asked what I wanted to be when I grew up. I didn’t know the word for “artist,” so I said “graphic designer” instead, so I had to stick with that.

What’s the first thing you do when you sit down to work?

I write a big list of everything I need to do for the day and then get really stressed out about it.

What’s a design object you’d take to your grave?

If I’m being honest, it’s probably my iPhone.

Whose work makes you jealous?

Anyone who clearly has a strange and intricate inner world and is able to bring that into real life. Robert Valley, Mason Lindroth, and Nadia Lee Cohen are the first that come to mind.

What current design trend are you tired of seeing?

I’m a bit tired of everything and nothing all at once. I think things are moving so fast that there’s no real time to actually get tired of anything, as it’s out of your sight soon enough. Actually, I think that might be the problem: I think we should all slow down a bit and enjoy the bad trends for longer. But also my answer is AI.

What rule do you break the most?

I’m always being told that my Figma files are “too messy” and “completely unintelligible,” whatever that means.

What song do you put on to get out of a creative rut?

“Beach Life-In-Death” by Car Seat Headrest.

What’s a piece of feedback you resisted, and later realized was right?

I come from an arts background, so I’ve always focused less on the technical and more on trying to get my vision out regardless of technique. That resulted in a sort of Dunning-Kruger effect where I thought I was better at design than I actually was. I eventually realized that you do actually need to learn the basics if you don’t want to stagnate your growth.

What’s a part of your process that most people don’t know about?

Most of my ideas come to me in my melatonin gummy dreams, or in spiritual-adjacent visions, not unlike Hildegard von Bingen.

What’s the last thing you came across that made you want to go make something?

I keep having these recurring dreams where I get really good at aerial silks, and I’m just making all these impossible shapes in the air, and everyone’s really impressed by me.

Catch up on previous episodes of Source Material on YouTube.

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