Epson ColorWorks C3500 printers have been utilized to make customized passports for admission to different museums in Mexico.

The project of 101 Museos started when Manuel Ríos and his wife decided to create a guide of different museums. The couple, who has always enjoyed traveling around Mexico City, noticed by talking with their friends that there wasn’t accurate information about the variety of museums in Mexico. A concern for them and their inner circle, in 2016 they decided to change that by providing quick and easy access to information about several museums.

The project has changed over time. Originally a book with only 101 museums, a larger number could be added to the project, so in 2019 they decided to create a website with 200 museums. Today, the project has over 700 museums from all over the country.

“Our work does not consist in ranking museums. We are only interested in providing a list of museums for visitors,” says Manuel Ríos Martinez, general director of 101 Museos Mexico. “Some of them are very small, but it does not make them less important than others. The idea is to provide information about all types of museums for travelers with different interests.” 

In order to promote the website and museums, Ríos and his team decided to hold an event called Rally. Designed as a competition, participants have to solve clues about the museums they have visited and do certain activities in order to win. Each participant is given a passport for the competition. In 2021, the original passport of the Rally was redesigned and is now almost identical to the Mexican passport.

The passport provides access to all the museums in Mexico and their benefits for users. With each visit to a museum, tourists or visitors receive a new stamp on their passports. Epson decided to collaborate with this project by providing a ColorWorks C3500 printer. This has helped them to offer the participants a fully customized passport.

“We realized we were going to need labels and a customized control printing system because we were printing in large quantities. The ColorWorks C3500 printer gave us such independence and easiness when printing,” says Ríos Martinez. “Print size, speed and quality were critical when we contacted Epson. Our passport is almost identical to the Mexican passport. It has the same size, color and finishes, but it has the coat of arms of the museum passport instead of the Mexican national coat of arms or the Eagle.” 

The ColorWorks C3500 features a compact, robust design, provides fast printing speeds and high-quality labels in several colors, achieving crisp, clear, easy-to-read texts, images and barcodes that are smudge and water-resistant on plain, synthetic and matte or even glossy paper. According to Ríos Martinez, “101 Museos has benefited greatly from the labels printed by the Epson ColorWorks C3500 printer. Quality is essential and supports our project.”

Although the process of 101 Museos requires intensive, long-term management, they have already been able to see the results. There are more and more museums and institutions that want to include their information on the website. In addition, a lot of people are willing to join the Rally experience and obtain their own passport – in addition to Mexico, people from Argentina, Spain, Colombia, the United States, and Guatemala have also been involved. 

The initiative is becoming very popular and print volumes are increasing. 101 Museos aims to buy a new Epson ColorWorks printer to increase its passport production.