Every project starts with an idea. AlejoAyaM started with a simple question: what happens when design, curiosity and meaningful places come together?
Some ideas arrive fully formed.
Others take their time.
AlejoAyaM belongs to the second kind.
It began with an interest in visual communication and a fascination with the way we represent information. A map can turn an entire territory into a composition of lines and shapes. An ebook can take a complex idea and give it structure, rhythm and a visual language.
Both start with information.
Both become something different through design.
That connection is where AlejoAyaM began.
From a blank page
Starting a creative project is rarely as straightforward as it looks from the outside.
There are ideas that sound good but don’t work once they reach the page. There are designs that look interesting on a screen but lose their balance when printed. There are details that seem insignificant until you realize they affect the entire composition.
So the process usually begins with something less exciting than the finished product:
a blank page.
From there comes research, organization, sketches, decisions and, inevitably, a few things that end up in the digital trash.
That’s part of the process.
Design isn’t simply about making something look good. It’s about deciding what the final piece needs to communicate and finding the clearest way to get there.
Why maps?
Maps have always fascinated me because they combine information and visual language in a very particular way.
They are precise, but they can also be beautiful.
A map can tell you where a place is, but it can also remind you of where you’ve been or make you curious about somewhere you’ve never visited.
There is something satisfying about taking a complex geographic reality and reducing it to a few carefully considered elements.
A coastline becomes a line.
A city becomes a point.
A journey becomes a path.
And somehow, we still recognize the place.
That balance between information and simplicity is one of the ideas behind the maps created for AlejoAyaM.
Why ebooks?
Ebooks offer a different kind of challenge.
A map can communicate a place almost instantly. A book needs more time.
It needs structure.
It needs a beginning, a progression and a reason for the reader to continue.
That makes editorial design especially interesting. Typography, hierarchy, spacing, images and composition all have to work together without getting in the way of the content.
The objective isn’t to decorate a book.
It’s to make the ideas easier to understand and more enjoyable to explore.
Good design should serve the content, not compete with it.
Making things worth keeping
The digital world has made it incredibly easy to create and publish things.
It has also made it incredibly easy to create things that nobody remembers.
At AlejoAyaM, I want to take a slightly different approach.
Whether it’s an ebook on a screen or a map printed and hanging on a wall, the goal is to create something with enough thought behind it that you want to keep it.
That doesn’t mean everything has to be complicated.
In fact, quite the opposite.
Sometimes the most successful piece is the one that feels obvious once you see it — even though getting there required a lot of decisions.
A small studio with a big curiosity
AlejoAyaM is still growing.
There isn’t a huge catalogue or a team of dozens of people behind every product. At this stage, it is a creative project built around curiosity, design and the simple pleasure of turning ideas into tangible things.
That also means there is room to experiment.
New places to explore. New subjects to research. New formats to design.
Some ideas will become products.
Others will remain sketches, notes or files quietly sitting on a hard drive.
That’s okay.
Not every idea needs to become a product.
But every good idea deserves to be explored.
Where we’re going
AlejoAyaM will continue to grow around the things that started it: maps, ideas, design and curiosity.
There will be more places to discover, more stories to explore and more ways to turn information into something visual and meaningful.
The products may change over time.
The principle won’t.
Start with an idea.
Understand it.
Remove what doesn’t belong.
Design what remains.
And turn it into something worth keeping.
That is the story behind AlejoAyaM — so far.