"Huerta del Rey" Center asked the artist Arantxa Lucas to design XIV World Conference logo and poster.

She was born in Barcelona in 1976, and she is presently in her fifth year of Fine Arts' at Complutense University in Madrid. She is working to become a painting specialist.

She was awarded with an Erasmus-Socrates grant what has given her the chance to follow specialized studies in London at Wimbledon School of Art during the academic year 1999-2000.

When she started to attend "Huerta del Rey" Center at the age of 13, her mother was proud at that time to show her nice and creative drawings and paintings which were unusual by someone at her age.

Arantxa was a shy, curious, hard-working and perfectionist girl and through years she has turned to be in a resolute, wilful and persistent woman what will empower her to reach her goals.

Arantxa started to paint at 13 years old. From that age, she has showed to be seriously committed with the task of developing her artistic talent. And this can be proved by the great number of showings and meetings of which her curriculum is plenty.

Since 1991, Arantxa has achieved 14 individual showings as a painter. The last one took place at Angeles Penche Gallery in Madrid in 1999.

Since 1989, she has participated in more than fifty group showings in Spain, Portugal and Italy.

Through these past years, Arantxa has been given several painting awards in different painting contests which guarantee her creativity and artistic talent.

She has also studied Graphic Design, what makes her capable to undertake works like the design of the 14th World Conference logo.

To design the logo which should be the image or representing symbol of the 14th World Conference on Giftedness, I considered as the starting point its identification with the host city where it will be held, Barcelona. Then I decided to be based on the shapes showed by the Sagrada Familia Church, a Gaudí's work, as the most emblematic and recognizable building in the city of Barcelona.

I tried, in my first testing sketches, it was very dynamic, something like a free hand drawing, without any geometry, like a gesture or some free lines which simply mean an outline of the shape of the Sagrada Familia main front, the Nativity Front. But I wasn't proud of results, it seemed to be a claw and it presented a too agressive and unsuitable aspect. So, I decided that the solution was to simplify as much as possible the sketch shapes, trying to insinuate only the building structure but with the minimum number of lines. Finally, the four slim and sharp towers are only designed by four straight lines together with some more free strokes to simulate volume.

To complete the Church figure, I had to symbolize somehow the three sharpest arch-shaped doors which appear in the front rising the main of them among the central towers and which is topped by a cypress. These three doors provided me with the pace and dynamism I was looking for from the very beginning through a quick but strong stroke, up to becoming the most outstanding element of the logo design.

Once made this logo format, it seemed to me extremely stylized, so that I included an ellipse to balance such a verticallity, but being drawn with the very same dynamism as the design of the three doors, and which, apart from serving for this function also represents The Earth, bringing also the worldwide character of the conference.

Once defined its shape; its colours, versatility, text inclusion, etc should be defined.

Concerning colours, the first thing I made was to include a rectangular coloured bottom to avoid the logo lines being lost on the white colour of the page. I selected cold colours since they could bring the required touch of lightness, distinction and seriousness in addition to result appropriately for both enlarged and reduced copies. To conclude, as it happened when introducing an ellipse, the text with the conference data introduced on the lower part on the rectangular coloured bottom would bring the balance for the logo verticallity.

And such is the process which led me to design the final logo. I consider to have got a remarkable result. It is simple, dynamic, identifying, and adequate to achieve its goals.