Martín Fierro was a fortnightly, not a fine-press object. From February 1924 it came off the presses at Imp. Araujo Hnos. on Rivadavia 1731 in one black ink on cheap stock, ran to a print run near 20,000, and carried the loudest writing in Buenos Aires: Borges, Girondo, Evar Méndez as director, Xul Solar drawing the caricatures.

The design follows from the constraint. A fat bracketed-slab masthead flush across the full measure, a letterspaced grotesque subtitle, a hairline-boxed dateline, then columns packed to the edge of the sheet with rules running full depth. One large pen-and-ink drawing per spread does all the work a second colour would have done.