Berta Rojas

Concept

For the classical guitar world, Berta Rojas is the living heir of Agustín Barrios Mangoré: the guitarist who took Paraguayan music to Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center and London's Southbank, and who won a Latin Grammy with Legado. For Paraguayans she is something more: an ambassador, and a teacher who gives back what she learned through projects like Jeporeka, Ensamble Pu Rory and the Instrumentoteca.

Her site is the door through which the world enters that career: where a festival programmer in Alessandria or an NPR journalist finds the calendar, the discography, the reviews, the press photos and the management contact, and where a guitar student in Asunción finds someone from their own country playing the biggest stages. I have looked after that online presence for more than fifteen years.

If La Casa del Habano was a scene to explore with the mouse, this site is a well-laid-out magazine: elegant serif type on cream and tobacco brown, studio photography, and a reading rhythm designed for someone who arrives looking for one specific fact —a date, a contact, a record— and stays for the design. Each section solves its content with its own metaphor: the discography is a turntable that spins and changes the record, the projects are 3D books, and the calendar is a chronological archive from 2011 to 2027 with free-text search.