For my final year at Otis College of Art and Design, I wanted to take on a project more personal to me and my culture as well as explore various unconventional printing techniques I hadn't used previously. There were many different directions I wanted to take this project in but ultimately decided to look into cultural hybridity with Mexico and other countries. In this initial research stage, I had remembered a popular Mexican snack that goes by the name of cacahuates japones, or Japanese peanuts, and began to look more into the origin.

What I found led me to a rabbit hole of Japanese-Mexican hybridity, dating back to the 1500s.

One of the most important aspects when designing for this project was preserving the hybridity between both cultures. As I researched more and more about ties between the two countries, I also looked at individual design histories. This led to one of the main components of this project being icons inspired by older Mexican designs of hand-carved stamps combined with a method of printing known as Risograph which was invented in Japan.

For my final designs, I created a 40-page risographed zine containing a research journal written by me. The zine is divided into 5 chapters, beginning with initial connections between the two countries dating back to the 1500s and ending with current-day connections. The zine is paired with letterpressed 'recipe'/history cards that detail important Japanese-Mexican immigrants as well as snacks created by them, such as the peanuts mentioned earlier.