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This project centers on the Recycled Orchestra of Cateura, a globally recognized ensemble that creates and performs music using instruments built entirely from recycled materials sourced from a landfill in Cateura, Paraguay. When traditional instruments weren’t available, founder Favio Chávez worked with local recyclers to build them from discarded materials like oil cans, scrap metal, wood, and plastic. The orchestra’s story embodies sustainability, creativity, resilience, and cultural exchange, values that were challenged to be visually communicated through design practices. 

This design concept explores how this narrative can be translated into a cohesive visual system supporting a UNESCO Music Cities Tour, spanning across five international cities. The goal is to create a unified yet flexible system that communicates the orchestra’s mission while adapting to diverse cultural contexts across print, digital, and physical deliverables.​​​​​​​

CROSS-CULTURAL CONTEXT
The orchestra’s tour across five UNESCO Creative Cities of Music introduced a global dimension to the project. Each city carries its own musical heritage, ranging from Afro-Cuban rhythms and flamenco traditions to contemporary composition and instrument craftsmanship.

Instead of designing isolated visuals for each location, I began to highlight certain aspects of the different cities and the orchestra itself in simplified or abstract forms in order to create a modular system:

    - Observed shapes and repeated motifs of the cities and instruments reflect the orchestra’s consistent mission

    - City analyzation of specific colors, rhythms, and forms introduces cultural nuance

    - Instruments that appear across multiple cities (such as strings or percussion) visually reinforce interconnectedness

Analyzing these characteristics supports both local identity and global unity, aligning with UNESCO’s emphasis on cultural exchange.

IDENTITY MARK
The logo mark breaks apart the initials of “Recycled,” “Orchestra,” and “Cateura,” then rebuilds them into a single unified form. This act of deconstruction and reconstruction reflects the orchestra’s own process, transforming discarded materials into functional instruments, and symbolizes renewal, creativity, and new meaning formed from what was once overlooked.

VISUAL SYSTEM CONTEXT
In this postcard series exercise, I explored global context and visual diversity by selecting five UNESCO Music Cities and creating digital collage postcards that captured each city’s unique musical identity. I began by researching the dominant sounds and genres associated with each location, such as jazz in Kansas City or orchestral and globally influenced music in Daegu, and translated those musical characteristics into abstract visual forms. Instead of literally illustrating instruments, I used shapes, lines, repetition, and composition to symbolize their essence. Color choices reflected each city’s mood and rhythm, while recurring forms suggested shared instruments and cross-cultural connections.This exercise became a key foundation for developing the design system for The Recycled Orchestra of Cateura. It helped establish a flexible yet cohesive visual language that could adapt to different cultural contexts while remaining unified through shared themes of transformation, rhythm, and connection. Experimenting with abstraction, typography, and varied aesthetics allowed each piece to feel distinct to its city while still aligning with the orchestra’s broader narrative.

DELIVERABLES
In developing the deliverables, the project emphasizes the immersive nature of the Orchestra’s experience and the transformation of discarded materials into objects of beauty and meaning. The work invites audiences to engage more deeply by examining the visual representations of deconstruction and reconstruction, reflecting the Orchestra’s identity and mission.