Tijuana’s strategic location, workforce, and technical capabilities make it a natural manufacturing hub. The team at Freaner Creative utilized visual elements representing Tijuana’s industrial progress in their city branding campaign to communicate a competitive advantage, including innovation and futuristic concepts.
The campaign’s success led to multiple opportunities, including the creation of manufacturing plants, jobs, and foreign investment. Another plus? The team was honored with a coveted Gold Award in Graphis Advertising 2023. Learn more about this inspiring story of collaboration and creativity below.
March 1, 2023
By: Ariel Freaner
Freaner Creative is a leading creative design firm in the United States in San Diego, California, serving both sides of the border and clients abroad. Ariel Freaner, principal at Freaner Creative, was selected by the City of Tijuana and its former mayor, Jorge Astiazarán, to create and develop a new branding image to promote the Tijuana manufacturing capabilities and its worldwide benefits in Mexico and overseas.
Tijuana is a natural manufacturing heaven hub due to its privileged strategic location, workforce, technical capabilities, and ongoing innovation in manufacturing, to name a few. For example, Baja California stands as Mexico’s top aerospace cluster, with more than 80 companies operating within the state. In contrast, Tijuana alone is home to 48 of the country’s largest concentration of operating aerospace firms. It has developed a specialized aerospace and defense manufacturing ecosystem over the last 40 years.
Our design approach was to create a city branding concept to achieve a competitive advantage, increase investment attraction, and strengthen international identity. To achieve this, we utilized brand identity visual elements that best represented the word TIJUANA and Tijuana’s industrial, business, and innovation progress. We used concepts such as digital technology, workforce, academic strength, people’s strength, government support, power, energy, solidity, resourcefulness, innovation, and, why not, futuristic. In addition, to ensure no other visuals interfered with our message, we included a solid black background to make the word stand out and give elegance.
All branding and promotional materials, from the city brand logo, brochures, flyers, videos, outdoor, social media, etc., were made to coordinate and tie in with our clean visual concept. The content is designed with an elegant editorial design style and hierarchical organization with a slight “splash” of visual elements that link the different graphics, photos, and text.
The creative design and campaign success represent Tijuana mayor Jorge Astiazarán’s vision of Tijuana, the Secretary of Economic Development Xavier Peniche and their team, and Mr. Jorge D’Garay, PR adviser and special consultant to the mayor. The former mayor and his representatives went on a tour to personally promote Tijuana and bring investors for manufacturing, creating multiple opportunities for Tijuana and Baja California, including manufacturing plants, manufacturing jobs, foreign investment, arts, and culture. The Tijuana City branding image can be seen at the Farnborough International Aerospace Show England and Le Bourget in Paris Aerospace International among many other trade shows and conventions in the United States, Asia, and Mexico.
Ariel Freaner is the principal and founder of Freaner Creative & Design, with more than 35 years of experience in creative development, illustration, and design. His award-winning, San Diego-based full-service firm offers creative, digital, and graphic design services to clients in North America, Latin America, and abroad. It specializes in web and app design, editorial and print design, brand development, online marketing, and 3-D development. Freaner Creative recently received several Graphis Awards, including platinum, gold, and silver, as well as two Emmy awards and four Emmy nominations.
