Isabel Castillo Guijarro, Art Director Refinery29 / Designer & Illustrator

SPD: What year?
Isabel Castillo Guijarro: 1998-99

SPD: What were you up to?
ICG: I grew up in the publishing world. My great-grandfather owned a printer in Madrid, Spain during the early 20s, working mostly on embossing books; my grandfather worked for him as a typist since his early teens before going on to designing some of the big magazines and newspapers in Spain at that time — Marca, ABC, As and even special projects for Francisco Franco— my uncle was the Creative Director at Hachette. My point is, that there where always magazines around.

SPD: What magazine?
ICG: My first real understanding of a magazine was Ragazza, a Spanish fashion magazine that closed doors in 2008. Only because I was in one of the early issues as a baby in 1990. My mom still has that entire year saved somewhere. When I was 8 or 9, she showed my uncle's name on the masthead as the Art Director so I've subconsciously always looked, thinking he would be there. To this day, I'm always curious to see who are the creatives behind it. Before even reading the actual magazine.

SPD: What was it that so enthralled you?
ICG: Ragazza had no appeal to me but introduced me to magazines. My teens were spent looking at Print, Wallpaper, Rolling Stone and Squire until I became obsessed with Italian Vogue as an intern at Vogue Spain. I had the side job of organizing their archive. Italian Vogue always had the most elegant, simple, and clean but bold covers.

SPD: Do you know now who the creatives were?
ICG: For a while, I was obsessed with Franca Sozzani + George Louis

SPD: How does that inform your creative now? 
ICG: Even though I work in media and mostly do digital, I inevitably crave print.