Known as "Amuki" (inner silence), Vanessa Zúñiga Tinizaray, is an Ecuadorian designer. Her passion has led her to investigate the visual signs of the ancestral cultures of Latin America. In a stage of globalization, her mission is to design, share and teach people to revalue the Latin American cultural heritage, to amplify and translate it globally. Her intention is to learn to appreciate and celebrate that heritage with pride and without prejudice.

Her achievements, after 19 years experimenting in the research project "Visual Chronicles of the Abya Yala", have led her to be a finalist, win an award and two mentions in the Ibero-American Design Biennial, some of her experimental typefaces have been selected in Bienal Tipos Latinos and with her book she has obtained a Certificate of Typographic Excellence from the Type Directors Club, and has also given talks in United States, Francia, Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia, Venezuela, México and Ecuador, as well as workshops on the different methodologies used in the research project, teaching young Latin Americans the importance of research in the creative process.

Her work has been featured in Letterform Archive, Femme Type, Graffica, Computer Arts, Communication Arts, among others.

Her work of kinetic typography with the foundry Sudtipos of Argentina for to promote the typographic family Fixture in 2018 has obtained together with Alejandro Paul, a Certificate of Typographic Excellence from the Type Directors Club of New York (2019).

At the end of 2014, Amuki started the enterprise of the "Rukuyaya" brand, where she captured the patterns and illustrations of the research in different physical and digital media.

While studying for my Master's Degree in Design in Argentina, I had the honor of meeting my mentor Gustavo Valdés de León and he left me a great teaching that summarizes what the Studio focuses on.

Amuki is a study and experimental laboratory, a space for interaction of different products, techniques and disciplines, but converging with the aim of generating qualitative changes in design and teaching; "a space to imagine and apply new values, objectual, visual and communicational, suitable for the fluid deployment of creative thinking and, at the same time, sensitive to the demands of society".

The focus of Visual Chronicles of Abya Yala is to document experiments carried out with the visual sign repertoire of the native cultures of Latin America, collected by the researcher. The aim is to demonstrate that these visual signs, present in archaeological objects, textiles, and other artifacts, can be reinterpreted and reused to create new symbols through a process of recontextualization. This allows the historical memory of Latin America to be revalued, celebrated, amplified, and globally translated, moving away from a passive attitude where signs of other cultures impose their presence in our collective imagination.

Currently, Visual Chronicles of Abya Yala has a total of 194 archives developed since 2004, including over 100 modular and experimental typographies, more than 10 books containing over 10,000 patterns and more than 20,000 modules. Numerous illustrations and posters, among other visual elements, have also been generated. Each record represents a playful experimental investigation aimed at contributing to the enrichment of the visual identity of Latin America.

So far, records have been included for Ecuador, Colombia, Bolivia, Peru, and Mexico, and this shared land will continue to be explored to broaden our vision and strengthen our historical memory.