History
MITO
Commemorating the magazine's legacy and impact on its 60th anniversary.
MITO was a Colombian literary and cultural magazine that circulated between 1955 and 1962. It brought together a group of intellectuals who looked at Colombia through culture, and opened up the first publishing spaces for Latin American's most important writers, including Julio Cortázar, Carlos Fuentes, Gabriel García Márquez, Octavio Paz, and others. In 2015, to commemorate the 60th anniversary of its first issue, the National Library of Colombia celebrated the magazine through an exhibition and a mobile app.
The app MITO features summaries of all the magazine’s issues, along with fragments of their primary texts, audios illustrating the intellectual debates of the time, as well as photos, interviews, and biographies of the founders, editors, and contributors. It also includes an interactive map that visualizes the influences and relationships among publishers and authors, and a short film highlighting the magazine’s legacy and its impact today.
The creative concept for this application took shape through a hackathon organized by Manuvo and the Digital Laboratory of the National Library of Colombia on October 7 and 8, 2014. Teams of programmers, designers, communicators, writers, historians, musicians, and library service experts collaborated to develop three prototypes. The winning prototype, chosen by judges María Osorio, Juan Pablo Mojica, and Camilo Paez, became the foundation for the app.
A very special thank you to all the participants and attendees for their contributions to this project.
