The drama was far from over as they headed to the border at Brownsville, Texas. “Policemen from Mexico were chasing us, literally, and we were ripping these papers up, because we were afraid that [American border guards] would know that we were in prison in Mexico, and get the wrong idea.” Finally, Lopez and his family crossed a yellow line into American territory. “We were so happy that the policemen chasing us couldn’t cross that line. So that was the best part. Because everything that we had gone through was pretty rough,” he says.
Like many Cubans, they settled in Miami. But they now owed money to various characters who had helped them on their passage. After school, Lopez helped his parents scrub and vacuum offices. “We would do anything that we could to earn money, so we managed to pay our debt pretty quickly,” he says. “It was a whole family effort.”
Photoshop helped him pay his way. Lopez worked part time at a music studio, where the owner needed design help. “I told him, ‘Hey, let me do some album covers for you, and if you like them, you can hire me.’” Soon Lopez was earning $7.50 an hour doing what he loved—working in Photoshop. He created colorful band posters, album sleeves, and MySpace layouts (it was the early 2000s). He spent his first paychecks on telephoning Cuba, at $1.35 per minute. “I missed my friends,” he says.
Aged 17, Lopez embarked on another journey, this time alone. He moved to Texas without his parents to further his education. While still in high school he supplemented his part-time graphic design work with wedding photography and valet parking. “I was here by myself,” he recalls. “I had to pay for my own school because I couldn’t put [my parents] in that position.” When he volunteered to create signs at his school, he impressed educators, who hired him. And at home he developed his own personal style, drawing inspiration from surrealists like Salvador Dali.
“I didn’t ever post anything online,” he explains. Design was just a way to pay the bills, like parking cars or cleaning offices.
Then one day Lopez noticed an online challenge. A community of designers had committed to creating a poster every day for a whole year. “I jumped on it,” he says. Lopez released new artwork on his Instagram account every day for 365 days. He created surreal pieces with rainbow gradients and bold type. “And that was the big break,” he says. “Back then I only had 600 Instagram followers. Within a month or two that went up to 20,000. Now social media is a huge part of my business.”
With each new day, his posters brought attention from a global audience. Lopez was featured in the New York Times, Cosmopolitan, Entrepreneur, and Awwwards. The exposure led to design work for some of the biggest brands in the world, including Apple, Nike, Absolut Vodka, MTV, and Warner Brothers. Today, Lopez is currently enjoying a partnership with Adobe as a design mentor to younger creatives—and he has nearly 100,000 followers. “I believe in teaching people what I know, no secrets,” he says. “So, I recently created a Youtube channel with the hope of being able to share knowledge with more people and influence younger designers.”
Perhaps it was his boundless work ethic that allowed Lopez to create 365 posters in a single year, without missing a day. He believes the work was therapeutic. “Sometimes I’m feeling down and I make something that resembles that,” he says. “If I’m upset about something, I try to somehow put that on paper. I remember I had a huge argument with a friend who I consider very close to me. I was hurt about it. And I made a three-poster series with that.”
One of his favorite posters in the series is number 114/365, he says. “It’s called 'amaneceres,' which means something like ‘mornings’ or ‘new beginnings.’” At his new home in Dallas, Lopez runs his own design agency, Belmont Creative. And now he is the father, bringing home new things to entertain his young child. They watch Disney cartoons together, laugh, and draw. His son’s upbringing is much more colorful than his own, Lopez says. “You get to relive your childhood basically, when you have a kid,” he explains. “You look at things through his eyes.”
