Edel Rodriguez on the Risk of Staying Quiet

0:00From the Association of Registered Graphic Designers, this is the Design Thinkers podcast. Design Thinkers is Canada's largest graphic design conference. Originally launched to mark the conference's 25th anniversary, the podcast now reaches a global audience of designers and creatives. Join our host, Nicola Hamilton, as she connects with Design Thinkers speakers to explore the work and ideas shaping today's design industry. Adel Rodriguez refuses to be small or quiet. He's the illustrator behind some of the most recognizable political images of the last decade. That 2016 cover of Time magazine, the one of Donald Trump melting down, that was Adel.

0:43The Deerspiegel cover of Trump beheading the Statue of Liberty, also Adel. At this point, he's produced more than 300 images of a single, very orange subject. As a kid who grew up in a country where saying the wrong thing about the wrong leader was dangerous, Adele has spent his career speaking up. In this conversation, Adele talks about hustling his way into an art director role at just 26 years old. We talk about how that experience informed his editorial illustration process. We talk about how social media is a great place to share the kind of work you want to be making and to rally interest until someone notices.

1:19We get into how he wrote his graphic memoir, called Worm, a Cuban-American Odyssey, backwards. He designed the cover before he wrote a single word. We talk about how the book's ending, which is a visual rhyme between the events in Havana in January 1959 and the storming of the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, came together at the very last minute. He talks candidly about why he refuses to self-censor, why he's not tired of the Trump-based work, and why the question he'd most want to ask himself in 20 years isn't about politics at all. This episode is for illustrators, designers, and anyone else who's been told to play it safe and isn't sure they want to.

2:01Hello.

2:03Edel Rodriguez:Hi, how are you? Hello. I'm good. How are you? Good. So we don't have a title or a description for your talk yet, but I thought we might maybe start there and you could just tell our listeners a little bit about what you're sort of planning to cover, what you think you might talk about or any like early little nuggets of ideas. Yeah, I think one of the things I want to talk about, because I was inspired by the theme of out of office, theme out of office, the idea of out of office, the idea of just stepping out. I think we're so obsessed with being on social media and what's happening and the latest, etc and we're missing out on what's outside and uh and i i so much of my work is influenced by by not being in in the studio is by being even just in the yard i mean yeah so i'll show some work that was just came about random accidents um of like just doing yard work even um or finding things you know plants insects etc so that's one and the other one is you know dancing culture it lives outside, out there.

3:11Edel Rodriguez:It doesn't live on the internet. I think one of the things that has happened with so many of us around the world being on the same, basically watching the same stuff online is that culture, art, design has become homogeneous. People that are working on something in Paris or it's the same thing that people are doing in New York, the same thing in Miami. And unique culture and unique art came from these little concentrations of people working on something, not knowing what people were working on on the other side of the globe. And I think that you get much more unique work and unique ideas when you focus on the specific rather than on culture, on the worldwide culture.

3:57Edel Rodriguez:I'm not that interested. I'm interested in pockets of art, design, music. And I try to find that in places like New York City, going to look at or listen to bands from Africa or bands from Latin America or the Caribbean and inspired by their lyrics. So most of my work is very much inspired by just, and also things like the cover of The New Yorker, for example. Those ideas come from being out of my office. It doesn't come really, rarely do things come from here. This is where I do my work, but the ideas are out there and so I'll be showing examples of how some of my projects came about even my personal work my paintings my political work some projects I've done where I've brought shows to Cuba to my hometown and I think I think I'm very much inspired by conversations you know that I have with people, people in my family.

5:00My graphic novel was all, most of it,

5:04Edel Rodriguez:the dialogue came from interviewing friends and family members. And that's how I built the entire manuscript was conversations and recording what was happening. It didn't happen in my office. So I really got interested in that theme of being out of office because I think that there's this idea that you have to go to work. You know, you're only serious if you show up at the office and you people see you etc and I'm pretty I'm very much against that I actually even when I when I had a job I tried to leave my office as much as possible and I somehow got away with it but there and I was always against it even even you know I'd say why are you guys guys let's have some fun you know we'd have a deadline like let's go do something interesting you know um because I think that's where the magic and inspiration comes from it doesn't come from grinding and all of that Was the last in-office job Time, like art director at Time?

5:57Edel Rodriguez:Yeah, I think that was my last job was Time magazine. I worked first. I worked at, when I left college, my first job was in college at the college newspaper. That's where really I learned a lot about design and graphics and putting together a publication. And my first illustrations were for the Prattler, which was the newspaper of the Pratt Institute. And it gave me enough of a portfolio. My major was painting. I wasn't even studying graphic design, but I got enough of a portfolio at the school newspaper that I was able to get my first job at Spy Magazine, just doing freelance work. And I was able to bring that to some interviews.

6:38Edel Rodriguez:And eventually I got a job, entry level job at Time Magazine as a designer. And I stayed there for a few years just on staff on the domestic magazine. and um i i was even at 22 or 23 i was like i have an idea for a cover i would just i would mock it up i would show it to because i was bored half the time because in news magazines you're just waiting for something to happen you're waiting for the news always there's so much waiting you're waiting for copy to land you're waiting for coffee to circulate you're waiting for someone to approve a thing yeah and i yeah and i almost felt like they're gonna get rid of me because i'm not doing anything you know so i was like i gotta do something to show that I'm so I would just come up with a cover right I would find out what the topic was that week I'd come up with a cover or two or three ideas and I'd show them to the head art director uh name was Arthur uh Hoxstein at the time and he was great he's like oh I love this it's a good job I like it and he was always sort of encouraging me to to submit ideas to him and a few of them were were chosen uh that and it got to the point that um so it was 94 then by 97 they were looking for an art director for Time Canada and Latin America and I was basically like 26 25 or 26 and and he said I think Adele can do it and nobody wanted me to do you know like the editor was like no this is crazy he's 26 he can't be he can't be the art director so they tried me for about three months it was I was like on a trial basis and I was hiring illustrators for the cover designing the entire magazine and I got hired as the art director um but you know a lot of it was was me kind of um saying I can do this I want to do this and showing work um and not really being a wallflower like waiting for something to happen I just said I want to do this I think I can do this and then uh yeah I was there for about 13 years and and then at some point um my gallery work and illustrations and children's books came to be too much that I really couldn't couldn't do both at the same time so I left in around 2008 I think it was well and now it feels like time as like one of your most visible clients at least yeah yeah when when I was there I did maybe um maybe about four covers while I was on staff uh like of my own work because I never really wanted to hire myself that was weird so I was waiting for some other edition like they had a European edition or the American edition they would hire me to do something and at your show you're also exhausted once you you put out a magazine you don't want to go home and like you know go paint a cover but once I left yeah I've become like their one of their go-to illustrators I think part of the success that I've had is that I really understand how how the place works how a news magazine works you know things very simple things and this is why I tell young students go get a job like any job even if it's entry level at a place that you like or you want to work at because what I learned there was weird things like the schedule like when do they make the decision of as to what's going to be in the cover that's really important timing if something happened in the news I have a sense of the timing of when to send them something what do the editors want to look at and what will they actually print how you can I mean one of the things that I talk about in some of my lectures is how I was able to kind of mess with.

10:09Disrupt?

10:09Edel Rodriguez:Disrupt. Very good. Thank you. Disrupt what magazines will publish on their covers, right? And I did that basically online. I use the internet as a self-publishing, you know, that's what I think of it as, it's self-publishing. And as a place to say, I want you to publish this on your cover. You're not going to do it yet but if i get enough attention for what i'm doing on my own i know that you're going to want that attention right and i i and i i went on it's like a campaign especially the trump stuff um early on i was doing stuff online for about six months and really like getting a lot of conversations started getting a lot of stuff going on and eventually the art director uh from time called me hey i see what you're doing online because i know that they're watching what you're doing to make a decision to hire you yeah always we're always watching yeah yeah and it's like yeah I see what you're doing you think you can do something like that for us and I just went all right I did it I got I got through you know and that was the just the call and once you get the call I'm like okay I'm I did it it was the first cover which was the meltdown cover um and I thought okay they're not going to publish it this is too much right but i was i was pushing it trying to see because i really my main concern at that time is i didn't want every cover to be donald trump smiling or looking presidential or looking legit i really thought he was a danger and i i needed a magazine to publish it as a danger and they did it and once they did it then of course everybody once, you know, kind of, they were watching what Time was doing, and it creates an effect where people just go, yeah, I saw what you did for Time.

11:55Edel Rodriguez:Can you do that for us? You know, their Spiegel was the next magazine that wanted the similar strong point of view about Donald Trump, but it just creates, once it gets published, whatever I was doing online multiplies. It becomes even more because these magazines have a billion followers or people that watch it online, etc. so um it's sort of knowing the medium and understanding how it works and then um disrupting it as you as you said i love doing that i love disrupting norms i mean the idea of like sort of publishing for yourself online first and then sort of pitching that work as like hey look people are engaging with this to a magazine because like the institutional like nerve or risk that it takes to publish some of those ideas, like still surprises me to this day.

12:44Like magazines should be the risk takers. They should be commenting on a lot of things, but it, it takes a lot to get them there. Our next Design Thinkers event is happening in Toronto on October 20th and 21st, 2026. Join us in person or watch live online from anywhere in the world with presentations, hands-on workshops, intimate discussions, and opportunities to connect with the other 2 ,000 designers, creative and art directors, managers, educators, and students in attendance, Design Thinkers Toronto is a journey into the creative process and a celebration of strategic design thinking. Speakers include graphic designer and writer Chip Kidd, lettering designer and author Martina Floor, visual artist Tammy Coker, information designer Valentina DeFilippo, and best-selling author and artist Adam J.

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13:52Edel Rodriguez:Yeah, they're considering subscriptions, whether they'll lose subscriptions, whether they'll lose advertisers. And I know that. So I'm very aware of that. So I know the risk that they would have to take and that they do do it, Time has done a bunch of, I don't know, I think I've done about, I can't remember, maybe 10 to 12 covers for them now on this topic. Tim O 'Brien's another illustrator has done work on it. And these covers sit like in the middle of, in Oklahoma or Nebraska on a coffee table, in a grocery store. And that's the distribution that I like and that it's a permanent object. It's not online where it just comes and goes.

14:32Edel Rodriguez:it's going to sit there and your family's going to have to talk about this thing but it is a team effort it's me creating the thing and and saying this is important i want you to publish it but then they have to make their own decision and the editor has to take a risk everybody's taking a risk all the way up and down the line and uh um i i really appreciate having that i mean um the editor in in of their spiegel in germany would write an essay on my covers you know every time he published one of my covers he didn't just he didn't they didn't just put it on the cover they wrote a reasoning behind it and um and i love that they did that because it just gives you extra support you know yeah i think that also is like a reflection of your experience having worked inside a magazine like often often illustrators who work who have spent time in magazine art departments like are thinking through things editorially more deeply they're sort of bringing their own ideas to the table.

15:28And I think that's so wonderful.

15:29Edel Rodriguez:Yeah. I encourage my, I encourage my students to, um, use social media. What I tell them, why are you posting selfies and, or picture of your cat at the same time? They're taught or even they've graduated and they're like, I'm not getting any work. I don't know. Well, okay. Let me check out your Instagram. Oh my God. It's your cat and your trip to the beach and whatever. Like, that's not what this is. If you really want to work, use the tools you have to get your work out there. You know, no one knows who you are. Don't be shy. You know, I really do try to explain, and it's the way I think about my work.

16:04Edel Rodriguez:I don't attach myself to my work. I made it. I made it. And then it's, I really think of it as, maybe it's my fine art background where I just feel like it's an object that exists in the world and it has a mind of its own and it's going to cause problems and people are going to love it, hate it. But they don't love or hate me. They're focused on the work. And I'm very, I feel that way about my work. I'm not, if you criticize it, I actually get excited when people criticize it because at least you're paying attention to it. So, you know, I'm a bit of a masochist when it comes to that. Does that feel like it was learned though?

16:38Because there's so much of you in the work to begin with. Like there's so much of your sort of opinions or ideas in the work to begin with.

16:46Edel Rodriguez:Oh, everything of me is in it. Like I'm making my opinion, my materials, my things that I love. but I what I feel is I've taken all of my experience my my memoir it all it's all so honest that you can criticize it in any way and I don't really care because it's honest it was the thing that I made at that point in time and it's raw it is right there say whatever you want about it I mean something like a book that you've written especially it's your life that is my life that that is what I experienced in these so if someone has a beef with some you know so and And then I don't really, I look at criticism with a grain of salt because my book has two parts, or not two parts, but it can be seen different ways depending on your own politics.

17:33Edel Rodriguez:So you might, say, be against more of a conservative person. And I've gotten this online reviews and things like that. I loved the first part of it, but there's Trump derangement syndrome at the end. or people that really don't, they're more left-leaning people. They think I'm being sort of like I'm not being fair to the Cuban dictatorship. They don't like that part, but then they really enjoy the anti-Trump stuff. So it's more of a Rorschach test of the viewer or the reader than of me. I'm just saying and explaining things as I see them. And I do try to get that across to my students. Don't get, because they take it so personally, any criticism, any, if the work is not liked, sometimes it's okay.

18:24Edel Rodriguez:It's good to have work be disliked. At least you're getting some sort of emotion out of the viewer. Yeah. Which is ultimately the goal, right? Is to make somebody feel or do or think something. Feel something. Yeah. Feel something. If you made something and there's nothing and it's just flat, I don't want that. I want someone to either love it or hate it or, you know, but to be dismissed. this kind of lane. I want to talk about the memoir. I like totally miss the memoir. And I told you this in our, you know, correspondence and arrived last night. And I'm so looking forward to spending some time with it because sort of I spent some time in Cuba when I was younger for a couple of years.

18:59And like, I'm still sort of making sense of the history and my experiences experiencing that history. But you you wrote an entire memoir. The memoir is called worm, which is a word that was used against your family and many other families and people by the state. I keep thinking about how hard it would be to sit with that. Was the book always called that? Did you pick Worm from the beginning?

19:21Edel Rodriguez:Yeah, pretty much from the beginning. Yeah, yeah. I think I first thought of writing it around 2012. And I start off by kind of making a cover. It's kind of weird. I start the backwards. Usually people start writing the book and then they come up with a title later. and they do the, I make the cover first so that I feel like, okay, it's there. Now I got to write it. You know, it already exists. And that was the cover. Yeah. The cover is a portrait of me as a kid. So I had this idea for cover, which was basically because I made cover. So I, the title was Worm and that, and I felt like it was a very strong word juxtaposed with a very like innocent looking kid who's who's in his school uniform and basically did the right things went to school etc but then his family and him is the cover you yeah yeah yeah I don't did you go to school in that uniform down there oh wow you did that's him that's insane I've never I've actually never I don't think I've ever met a foreigner that went to Cuba and like as a kid and dressed in the uniform.

20:32We did. We went to public school.

20:34Edel Rodriguez:Wow. And we we skipped. So like every morning there was about an hour long sort of political assembly every morning. And my parents, we they sort of kept us out of that. We did not go to that often. That was like they just like couldn't quite make sense of it. And I've not asked them again. I'm like still sort of making sense of my experiences there. But I did wear the uniform. So you this book was like in you for a very long time. Were you working on it from 2012 onwards um yeah it grew out of um I had done a few picture books and whenever I met with my picture book editors you know books for children we just got into conversation and and as soon as they found out where I was from like oh this is a story you have to write a book you know and I had heard it enough that I mentioned it to my agent she's like of course you got to write this book you know so I I started um conceptualizing like yeah 2012 13 14 and by 14 or 15 I started doing more interviews with my parents my mom my dad my sister my cousins just to try you know I had my memories of what occurred and and the the sort of the the step by step of of how we got out of the country but I wanted to find out about logistically how this all happened and uh and I had my parents my parents side my my memories but I also wanted to link it up with my cousins who were the ones who went to pick us up, what was happening politically in the country, et cetera.

22:01Edel Rodriguez:And those interviews eventually and my writing, I was able to finish, well, I did a kind of a proposal around 2019, and then it got bought by Betra Paul and Books. and then um i wrote finished writing it in 2020 and it was published in around 2022 23 i think so yeah i spent basically like i think it was a year writing it and putting it together and then two years drawing it uh it was a lot of work yeah so then did you add the sort of like at the end good question journalist you're doing the math right because you sort of like parallel Well, Havana in January 1959 with Capitol on January 6th, 2021.

22:46So did you add that late in the game?

22:49Edel Rodriguez:Yeah. So I was working it. Yeah, I was working it in 2020. I just started, you know, I had my manuscript. I started working on it and the early pages. And I was going to finish with my story as an illustrator in America and the work I was doing politically, right? and then um i'm just i'm really just drawing a page in in the book here in my studio and i had the tv here back then and i see a bunch of weird looking dudes in congress like like with the helmet and spears and i'm like what the hell is going on and then i started i'm like this is awful what's happening and i'm like but i think i have the ending now of my book so i just i shifted a lot of what's happening so that like the last chapter um or the second last chapter is what happened on January 6, 2021.

23:42Edel Rodriguez:So it became even more relevant to what I was talking. I was talking in the book about how easily the dictatorship can take over. Then the mirroring of bearded men with guns in Cuba in 1959 is bearded men with guns in Washington, D.C. So there is a spread at the beginning. That's the Cuban, the rebels invasion of Havana. And then at the back is the same, almost the same image, and it's the January 6th invasion of Congress. Because both countries actually share almost the same plans for the congressional building. And the buildings appear in both spreads. So, yeah, it just kind of came together.

24:22Edel Rodriguez:And it's one of the things I talk about in terms of writing and putting something together, that taking your time and procrastinating or being out of office and doing other things and coming back to a project eventually starts melding and coming together you know marinating um instead of it's as i don't procrastinate i marinate and i have a bunch of different projects going on and i have them right now folders of picture books for you know books for kids i have two or three graphic novels that i'm thinking about paintings that i'm working on and i don't rush things just because I got to do it.

25:05Edel Rodriguez:I got to do it. I just kind of like, okay, the idea is there. The basic concept is there. Let me just wait a little bit, see if I get more information. And I'm gathering things for different books and research and my paintings. And eventually it just clicks because it works. I think timing is something that is not appreciated as a designer or an illustrator, you know, and the timing is about when you publish it, who's going to pick it up. Why would someone publish something? That's something that you have to ask yourself when you want something published. Because you're like, I have this idea for a thing.

25:38Edel Rodriguez:I'm like, well, okay, why would I publish that? And then if you don't have a good answer, then you maybe don't have a good idea. Because there has to be, and it's something that goes back to news and what I did work in a long time, is we always needed a peg to publish something. why do I need to read this right now why should we put this on the cover of time why is this a story and news pegs or what's happening culturally does matter and publishing a book especially if you publish it at a time where it matters that's important but sometimes that takes time because what's relevant now will not be relevant next year and in two years it'll be some other topic so I sort of have the projects going and if I see a reason why I should share it with a publisher share for possible publication, go, hey, this is happening right now.

26:31Edel Rodriguez:This is important. I mean, right now, I think the biggest story in this country is what's happening with immigration and ICE and people getting killed by American soldiers and things like that. So people want to understand more about immigration. How did people get here? Why did they get here? So I have a book that I've been working on for a few years. I've been interviewing family members that came through Mexico and all of this. And I'm trying to see if I can create either a nonfiction or fiction story on immigration. So there's, you know, sometimes take your time. Don't feel like you got to do the thing, you know, do other things in the meantime.

27:14It makes me think a little bit, you've sort of said before, there was this line, I can't remember where I read it, but self-censorship is a heavier burden than like the risk of speaking out, sort of stopping yourself from sharing some of those things. And I think about writing Worm, writing the memoir, illustrating it, which is a whole other thing, right? You like have to sit with the story and then you have to illustrate the story. But has it changed how you think about that trade-off? Like now the risk isn't so hypothetical, like your family story is sort of out there, out there in print. Whether you're interviewing for a job, hiring a designer for your team, or wondering how to price your work, it's helpful to know what salaries and rates are standard in the industry today.

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28:21Edel Rodriguez:no i still i still think that i mean i i the the danger of what we're doing in societies here in the united states i don't know if it's happening much in canada is when you censor things or you say that's that's not you know that's not um appropriate we shouldn't talk about that then you have a bunch of artists going why should i do that no one's going to publish it right And that's the self-censorship part. I tend to just be like, no, screw that. I'm still going to do what I want to do. I don't care who I offend. I'm very, I really don't care. I'm too, I don't know. People ask me, what are you doing, bro?