Mexican Tiles

I have been looking for inspiration for the actual design side of my project. Of course I have been predominantly looking at strictly day of the dead imagery, with skulls and skeletons and other various connotations of the day. However I thought about exploring a different route and ending up stumbling across an incredibly large selection of Mexican tiles. After visiting the country I am fully aware of the popularity of these tiles, for they are not strictly indoor decorations, they are often used to cover exteriors. There are incredibly vivid and often quite intricate. The designs that you see below are all handcrafted and therefore each one is 100% unique, however not all tiles in this day and age are produced in the same. More often than not to ensure detail is perfect and no major mistakes are visible most tiles are printed using modern methods. These can range from completely digital to using templates and painting over in several colours.

I think that I will bear these designs in mind when it comes to working with aesthetics and brainstorming visuals. I really like the colours and I think that blue, red, yellow and white will feature heavily in my compositions. In terms of the production of these particular tiles, the whole process from beginning to end can be found by clicking here. It is really quite fascinating.

Obviously all the tiles you see above are a single example of each particular set, so to help with visualising a completed piece of tiling I have duplicated each one and rotated it accordingly. I personally think the final thing is incredibly impressive and visually exquisite.