Generally speaking, Mexican posters are recognizable for their crowded quality, characterized by photo-ensembles of musicians and showgirls, along with disembodied logos liberal in their use of drop shadows, outer glows and novelty fills. The logofied aesthetic is directly influenced by subcultural fixations like superheroes and death metal filtered through the prism of the digital (it could be at home on VFiles or DIS).

But in order to fully appreciate their origins, you have to go back to the late ‘80s and early ‘90s—to Tepito, a historic barrio of Mexico City known to locals as “Little Puerto Rico” for the confluence of Caribbean genres such as Salsa and Matancera that thrived there, and Polymarchs, the iconic weekly rave that was recently the subject of a short documentary narrated by design legend Jaime Ruelas. Ruelas, the son of a watch repairman and a graduate of a polytechnic institute, whose interest in robotics and engineering informed his handmade technodystopian designs, was responsible for Polymarchs’ brand identity. The new generation of designers has lost the cyberpunk vibes but kept the counterbalanced symmetries of his original logo. (Kantun recalls seeing Ruelas’ flyers around the place, but couldn’t identify him as the artist.)

At the center of this ecosystem is the figure of the sonidero, a type of DJ or emcee particular to Mexican culture, who is known for giving shoutouts over the volume of the beat. The sonidero is a technician as well as an artist, a musical devotee who brings his sound system and archive of rare, collectible tracks with him to every gig. His stage is the outdoor ragers that typify the nightlife scene in the marginalized neighborhoods of Mexico City, moving outward to immigrant hubs like New York and Los Angeles.

Kantun, who comes from Peñon de los Baños on the northeastern outskirts of the capital, says the tradition runs in the family. The logos he designed for his outfits Sonido Descarga Latina and Soramix are an homage to the Colombian and Ecuadorian flags, which share a palette. The practice is a fairly common one: he gives the example of Sonido Pancho, an act based out of Tepito, who uses the colors of the Puerto Rican flag instead, in reference to the area’s nickname.

According to Kantun, a true sonidero is one who treats his craft like an investment, arriving and unloading early, keeping his equipment and discography meticulously organized, and above all else, bringing new or undiscovered sounds to the people. He is “obsessed” with having good audio quality and an impressive light show, as opposed to “the guy with the laptop, who just downloads everything from the internet.”

Kantun’s rationale is partly nostalgic: “There’s so much violence nowadays that they’re cracking down on events in the street. The sonidero as we know him is a dying breed.” He brings a similar obsessiveness to his design, adding that he started out making visuals for himself because he wanted a “more unique and cooler look” to stand out in the sea of competitors. But when it comes to business, Kantun says he prefers his American clients to the Mexican ones. “People in Mexico want everything for free,” he jokes.