For Christmas 1969 the Spanish design tandem Elías + Santamarina from Asturias created the greeting for the Grafistas del FAD. It represented a unique form of illustrating the moment of creation according to the particular style of the 28 colleagues in the Association: Baqués, Barba, Bas, Costa, Creus, Cruspinera, Domenech, Dorado, Escutia, García Benavides, García Yagüe, Giralt Miracle, Grau, Graus, Huguet, Martínez, Moradell, Morillas, Parramón, Pedragosa, Santamarina, Ribas, Romero, Santandreu, Seix Perearnau, Serrasolas, Vellvé and Vendrell.
Using a language that referred to the theories of Roland Barthes, the writer of the greeting’s text insisted on one of the most basic reflections when designing: the importance of the idea, not the style, or graphic resource, more or less brilliant, more or less according to the current trend.
The greeting was resolved in four parts which when closed measured 18×18 centimetres and accompanied by the following text:
“The ideas of the designers are images. Their thinking is graphic. Their desire is to communicate the deeply iconic. The head is always recognized and accepted as a core source of thought, intellectual or graphic, and it crystallizes in the transmitter and receiver significant powerful signs that with time and reiteration become the words that are transformed into a new code. Therefore, the FAD graphic designers have not only extroverted the images that are their own and had been used throughout the previous year, they introverted their thinking in order to raise the awareness, in a graphic manner, of the most intimate of their minds: their own ‘Imago’ in an act of sincere manifestation.”