“He designed the Selena logo and gave it to Selena as a present.”Įven as he was working in the commercial art world, eventually starting his own ad firm, A Big Chihuahua, Cubillos continued working with Latin Breed. We lost a good friend,” said Abraham Quintanilla, Selena’s father, who met Cubillos in the early 1980s in Houston. The logo appears on Selena merchandise to this day. “This is my own hand script I dropped in there, which later became her icon,” Cubillos told KUT reporter Ana Cecilia Calle in 2016. “He was quick to share his knowledge and praise other people’s talents and contributions.”Ĭubillos worked on a Coca-Cola ad with Selena while he was with the company, and that connection led to the “Selena” album cover with the signature-style title treatment. “Ruben Cubillos was a creative star and a Tejano music guru who brightened everything he touched, whether it was music, advertising, graphic arts, friendships or family,” Lionel Sosa, who was one of the firm’s partners, said in a statement. After returning to San Antonio, he took a job with the ad firm Sosa, Bromley, Aguilar and Associates as an associate creative director. “He wanted to become a graphic artist, he wanted to finish his college.”Ĭubillos studied graphic design at the Art Institute of Houston. “He was a good singer, but he had other goals in mind,” Escobedo said. It went so well that Cubillos soon decamped to San Antonio, settling into the role of lead singer for the band. Band co-founder Gibby Escobedo called Cubillos and asked him to fill in. That paid off when the San Antonio-based Latin Breed needed a replacement vocalist for a gig. In a 2020 interview with “State of the Arts,” a program on El Paso public radio station KTEP, he said he made it a point to get to know musicians with other bands, making sure they knew he was available if they ever needed a singer. “You can tell by everyone feeling the impact of it as he’s now gone.”Ĭubillos grew up in El Paso and played with a few bands there when he was a teenager. “When a giant falls, the earth shakes, and Ruben was a giant,” he said. “I’m looking at Facebook and seeing so many pictures I’ve never seen before and it fills my heart with joy,” she said.Īnthony Medrano, a violinist with Mariachi Campanas de America who often crossed paths with Cubillos, said his death is a big loss. That outpouring of love meant a lot to her, she said, and it would have meant a lot to him, too. The couple was married for almost 37 years, but Gloria Cubillos said she hadn’t been aware of the impact he had on so many people in the music business until after he was gone and her phone started ringing with condolence calls. “He had a love for Tejano music,” said Gloria Cubillos, who met her future husband at a Little Joe concert in Victoria “He hoped that one day there would be a museum solely for Tejano music so that the younger generation would know the history.” And he was involved with the founding of the Tejano Music Awards and created design concepts for Vegas Tejano Week. He also designed album covers for Little Joe y la Familia, Ruben Ramos, David Lee Garza and Mexican pop star Juan Gabriel. Selena wasn’t Cubillos’ only big-name client. He is survived by his wife, Gloria, and their son Cory.
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