OS GÊMEOS A mural by two Brazilian graffiti artists who call themselves Os Gêmeos has burst upon a corner of Houston Street and the Bowery (photo: Justin Maxon/The New York Times)

Which is to say that their fantastic, epic mural, on a concrete wall about 17 feet high and about 51 feet long, is light and frothy, a dream of happiness with an underlying chord of melancholy. And everything in it is exquisitely fine-tuned and detailed, a dazzlement of effortless technique that sustains long bouts of close looking. It will remain up until March.

The delicate black lines that thread throughout the entire image like drizzled charcoal dust are feats of spray-can painting. The prismatic color of everything else has a saturation unusual in graffiti art. The sky alone is half a spectrum. It begins with deep blue green at the top and descends through green and chartreuse to a golden, sunbathed yellow that serves as land, water, light, human skin and more.

And the storybook imagery is out of this world, yet not. Sure, people and things often levitate or are impossibly stacked, and the setting is a tad unreal — simultaneously wet and dry, or hard and spongy. But both the subways of New York and the favelas of São Paulo are here, and the figures wear brightly patterned garments (thanks to ingenious small-bore stenciling) that seem truly Brazilian. Plus, there are enough fish to placate the fish lovers of both cities. Sometimes these creatures have scales of many colors. Often they carry something in their mouths, like the bringers of good luck they are supposed to be: radiant little shacks, people or heads, whole figures. It’s magical realism with a touch of grit.

While the onslaught of figures, episodes and colors is at first overwhelming, a casual left-to-right reading suggests some narrative possibilities. Basically what we have here is a tale of escape and growth that begins in darkness and — after taking a few tips from the Bible, Hieronymus Bosch and M. C. Escher — ends in a stunning vortex of brilliant color. At far left, in the gray dimness of a narrow, cell-like space, a small figure strains toward the golden light seeping through a chink in the wall. Wearing pants, a jacket and a girlish scalloped bonnet and shouldering a bag, she’s leaving home, as the song says. A small spotted dog watches from the safety of a tenderly, elaborately wood-grained floor.

Through the chink the golden world awaits, arrayed around and above what seems to be a nearly circular waterfall; it’s a world populated by spirit guides, with or without gills. And it all adds up, or at least it is all visibly linked. You’re supposed to keep going, from one thing to the next, gaining wisdom along the way.

To sketch in some of the action, the connections begin with a boy on a four-poster bed (Dreamland’s point of origin) with a peacock on his back, using a second peacock as an ear trumpet. He listens to a whale whose skin, a mosaic of blues, is dotted with extra eyes. Atop the whale lies a girl (maybe our heroine, but older) so relaxed that the dots on her lavender-pink blouse are rising into the atmosphere like bubbles. The whale’s tail hooks over the rail of a snaking subway track, while the beast itself balances on a stack of three figures teetering on a rope bridge with iffy wood slats (San Luis Rey, anyone?) extending from one side of the waterfall to the other. (Don’t ask.)

Back on the tracks a subway car — the N train — is straddled by a large boy, who has human heads gathered around him like the day’s catch and a galleon on his head. A fish that is also a dirigible on its side is anchored to his hand. (Behind all this stretches a yellow out-of-focus landscape where the hills are faces.)

Next we are in the city where two boys who could be Os Gêmeos (Portuguese for the Twins, which the 35-year-old Pandolfo brothers are) are cramped inside a two-story, two-room house. The tracks continue into a station with an Escher-like mural of bright checkerboards receding to a vanishing point, and also the tag of Dash Snow, a New York graffiti artist who died last month and to whom the mural is dedicated.

The station is also part of a boat (touring the waterfalls?), with plush red seats tufted with yellow faces. At the front of the boat, next to a protective figurehead, sits a knowing young woman looking out at us amid bundles of patterned fabric. She has little houses in her green-and-black hair and wears a blouse whose planetlike dots are, this time, staying put.

The final third of the mural explodes in the rainbow vortex that is fabulously explicit in color but physically indeterminate. Sometimes it is a beach at low tide, sometimes a prison wall, sometimes quicksand, at least for a figure carrying a grandfather clock. Also here is a small Trojan horse (or maybe a mule), which brings back the lovely wood grain in warmer colors. Its neck is open and forms a double cameo for the faces of a boy and girl.

This telling omits many wonderful details. One of the best is front and nearly center in the image: a boy who seems to sit on a waterspout, wearing a fish mask and a T-shirt that is one of the painting’s best moments. It depicts a landscape: note the white stenciled stone wall, the changing greens of the tiny stenciled trees, the golden setting sun. It is an idyll of pastoral, escape-from-the-city living, cottage and all.

via Art Review – Os Gêmeos – Os Gêmeos, Brazilian Graffiti Artists, Create a World on a New York Wall – NYTimes.com.

Read Also:

• Rojo Magazine’s “RojoOut Urban Stage”, São Paulo
• Roots: Oiticica, Hélio (1937 – 1980)
• Roots: J. Borges (1935)
• Discover the Brazilian Cinema
• Roots: Monteiro, Vicente do Rêgo (1899 – 1970)

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"FedEx", by DDB Brasil

Communication Arts Magazine announces the winners of its 2009 advertising competition. Now in its 50th year, the prestigious competition selected 155 projects, representing the work of 97 firms, for inclusion.

DDB Brasil was awarded for several campaigns, including FedEx, in which Fedex Express service is presented in an advertising campaign in Brazil showing the personal side of its service – delivery from one pair of hands to another. Three print advertisements use boxes between pairs of hands exchanging a trumpet, a robot and a vase. DDB Brasil was also awarded for its Terra Travel, Latinstock, and Brasileiros Magazine campaigns.

via Communication Arts – 2009 Advertising Annual Winners.

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• REX Design Awarded by Communication Arts Magazine
• CLIO honors Marcello Serpa with “Lifetime Achievement” award
• Business Week’s Bruce Nussbaum talk about the “Best Design From Brazil”
• Brazil featured on Advertising Age’s “The Best of Latin American Marketing in 2009″
• Roots: ADG Brasil (Associação dos Designers Gráficos)

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Supermodel Gisele takes Sky Brasil viewers on a fantasy HD tour (from Advertising Age)

Sky Brasil

Brazil’s biggest satellite TV service, owned 76% by DirectTV and 24% by Brazilian media giant Organizações Globo, launched Sky High Definition TV channels with great fanfare in 2009. One ad, by São Paulo agency Giovanni DraftFCB, brings HDTV to life with Brazilian supermodel Gisele Bundchen in a São Paulo airport departure lounge. Perched on a red sofa, she clicks a remote control and a football team swarms the lounge. Another click and soldiers are fighting a war. With a final click, a New York City taxi appears in a flurry of snowflakes and Ms. Bundchen hops in and rides off.

Hyundai Brasil

In a market dominated by Volkswagen and Fiat, Hyundai arrived late but has been growing fast from a small base. Sales doubled to 43,000 cars in 2008, and were projected to climb to 70,000 units last year. And Hyundai last fall revived plans to start building a $600 million plant in Brazil in 2010. Working with Havas-owned agency Z Plus, Hyundai advertised heavily to launch the i30 and the Tucson, one of the best-selling imported vehicles in Brazil, and promote the Azera. In one campaign, Tucson owners were asked if they knew why the Tucson had been named the best SUV in Brazil and the world. Most of them didn’t, but were happy to volunteer their own reasons for liking the car.

HSBC Brasil

Brazil is the largest Latin American market for HSBC, which livened up its marketing last year with the $40 million launch of HSBC Direct online banking for busy people with a campaign from JWT, São Paulo, using the slogan “The bank that likes to get straight to the point.” The site drew 1.1 million visitors to HSBC’s website to open a new online bank account.

"Havaianas Verão", by Marcello Serpa's Almap BBDO

Outstanding Agencies of the Year

Marcello Serpa’s shop Almap BBDO again led Adlatina’s ranking of most-awarded agencies in Latin America with colorful work for clients like Havaianas flip-flops.

via Advertising: The Best of Latin American Marketing in 2009 – Global News – Advertising Age.

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• Brazil’s Digital Ad Shops to Reach $500M in Revenue by 2010
• CLIO honors Marcello Serpa with “Lifetime Achievement” award
• Brazil outsourcing industry featured in Design Council Magazine’s “The Latin American renaissance” article
• REX Design Awarded by Communication Arts Magazine
• Roots: J. Borges (1935)

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"The Map of the Interior World", by Eduardo Recife

One of Eduardo Recife’s earliest artistic memories is of a robbery. One night after dark, he and a friend were midway through their first attempt at pixação, a Brazilian graffiti style, when thieves ambushed them, took their shoes and told them to run. “We were 13, skinny and wussies,” Recife says. “We ran.”

His shoes were gone, but not his creative spirit. Recife, now 29, has become a prolific illustrator, collage artist, font designer and photographer with a bevy of high-profile clients like The New York Times, HBO and Panic At The Disco. Recife is careful to delineate between his personal work and commercial work (he has separate websites for the two, and declares that his personal site “is my playground!”), but both are well-regarded in the admittedly niche world of design blogs. “What made his work stand out was the looseness and spontaneity of it,” says John Martz, editor of illustration blog Drawn! “None of his work looks labored, yet it still has a very cohesive style.”

Recife’s collages blend typography, vintage photographs and illustrations with his own drawings. The aesthetic of the latter is simultaneously lush and barren, beautiful and grotesque. He admits that images of his home country—from distressed typography on signs to vernacular paintings on walls—have influenced his designs. “Brazil, apart from its problems, is such a beautiful place,” he says. “It is definitely a source of influence in my work—the colors, the people, the mountains, the ocean, the bright blue sky.”

via Eduardo Recife Finds His Footing :: Features :: Paste.

Read Also:

• London Design Festival’s “Brazil Illustrated”, featuring Bruno Kurru, Wagner Pinto and Eduardo Recife
• Movements: O Gráfico Amador
• Brazilian design featured on Computer Arts Magazine’s “Viva Brasil” article
• São Paulo’s Modern Art Museum “Brazilian Design Today: Frontiers”
• Roots: Monteiro, Vicente do Rêgo (1899 – 1970)

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Capitu's Title Squence by Lobo featured on Creative Review's "Annual Best in Book"

Capitu is a Brazilian TV mini-series adaptation of 19th-century novelist Machado de Assis’ work, Dom Casmurro. The story centres on an ageing man looking back on his life in an attempt to discover whether his best friend is the true father of his son, who he has raised with his wife, Capitu.

De Assis’ novel is now considered one of Brazil’s most important Modernist texts and, in order to convey its radicalism, motion graphics studio Lobo looked to the Dadaist movement as inspiration for the TV show’s opening titles and interstitials. The team referenced what several avant-garde artists called ‘décollage’, a process where – rather than building up an image through layering – cutting and tearing instead reveals layers of buried images.

Here is the title sequence:
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And here it’s how it was made:
[There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed. Visit the blog entry to see the video.]

via Creative Review – CR Annual Best in Book: Capitu.

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• Paste Magazine interviews Eduardo Recife
• Brazilian design featured on Computer Arts Magazine’s “Viva Brasil” article
• Rojo Magazine’s “RojoOut Urban Stage”, São Paulo
• Roots: Wollner, Alexandre (1928)
• Brazil’s Digital Ad Shops to Reach $500M in Revenue by 2010

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Lacoste Logo by Campana Brothers

Acclaimed Brazilian design duo Fernando and Humberto Campana redesigned the famous Lacoste logo for a special – and rather expensive – 2009 Collector’s Series of polo shirts. The redesigned logo illustrates the way crocodiles congregate in the wetlands of the Pantanal region. The shirts are being featured in Lacoste stores all over the world (pictured here the Nanjing Road store in Shanghai, where a polo shirts costs RMB1,780).

Lacoste Store at Nanjing Road, Shanghai

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• 9th Brazilian Graphic Design Biennial in China
• 9th Brazilian Graphic Design Biennial goes to China
• Brazilian Design at the New York’s MoMA Store
• Premiere Brazil Film Exhibition at MoMA, New York

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Rogério Duarte at The Narrows Gallery

It is impossible to comment on the work of Rogério Duarte from a purely visual perspective. It carries complexities that you can’t begin to grasp until you first understand the environment in which it was created. Duarte was born in Brazil in 1939. He is a graphic designer, poet, songwriter and professor and recognised as an intellectual force of the Tropicália movement of the late 60s, dominated by musicians such as Gilberto Gil and Caetano Veloso.
(…)
This autumn, The Narrows in Melbourne, Australia showed an insightful retrospective of Rogério Duarte’s work with curators Warren Taylor and James Hibbard carefully positioning the collection within this broader context. The exhibition vibrantly brought together iconic works created during the Tropicália movement and included record covers created for resistance musicians Gilberto Gil, Caetano Veloso and Gil Jorge, original posters designed for experimental Cinema Novo films, book covers, poetry and other media.
(…)
Duarte chaotically mixes styles and influences. He cannibalises and re-elaborates popular-culture references. Duarte devours and spits out The Beatles’ Let It Be cover for Veloso’s 1975 album, Qualquer Coisa, and his artwork for Gilberto Gil’s self-titled release is heavily influenced by Peter Blake’s Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (but features Gil in military-style art-school uniform).

Grafik magazine can be purchased here.

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• Rogério Duarte exhibition in Australia
• Roots: Duarte, Rogério (1939)
• Lobo featured on Creative Review’s “The Annual”
• DINGBATS BRASIL goes to Beijing ICOGRADA 2009
• Roots: Wollner, Alexandre (1928)

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Lifetime Achievement Prize to Marcello Serpa (from AdWeek)

Marcello Serpa, partner and general creative director, AlmapBBDO, São Paulo, Brazil, was selected by the international Clio Awards as the recipient of its distinguished Lifetime Achievement Award for 2008.

“Throughout his career, Marcello Serpa has clearly embodied the tradition of creative leadership, integrity and dedication to great ideas that are the cornerstones of the Clio Lifetime Achievement Award,” said Tony Gulisano, managing director, Clio Awards. “It is our honor to present him with this award.”

Serpa, 45, is widely recognized as a driving force in bringing international acclaim to Latin American advertising. He began his career with a seven-year stint in Germany, first studying visual and graphic arts before doing creative work at agencies GGK and R.G. Wiesmeir. Upon returning to Brazil, he worked in the Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo offices of DPZ before joining DM9DDB in 1991. It was there that he made history, becoming the first Latin American to win a Grand Prix at Cannes in the Print and Outdoor category for a 1993 campaign on behalf of Antárctica soft drink.

That same year, Serpa and Jose Luiz Madeira, a senior account manager and strategic planner, both left to become partners at AlmapBBDO. The team helped transform the agency to a new level of creative and strategic excellence, and have since amassed an impressive roster of blue-chip clients including Volkswagen, Pepsi, Inbev, Bayer, Audi Brazil, Mars Brazil, Gatorade, Havaianas, Greenpeace and others.

Serpa is the most awarded creative in the history of the São Paulo Creative Club Yearbook, and been elected as best creative director in Iberian America and Brazil eight times by El Ojo de Iberoamericana. Throughout his 15 years as partner and creative director at AlmapBBDO, the agency was the most awarded agency in the world by the Gunn Report for two years in a row, named agency of the year at Cannes and by Advertising Age, and won 45 Clio statues.

“I was nicely surprised and deeply happy to learn that Clio feels my work and professional life are deserving of such a definitive award,” said Serpa.

He joins a prestigious list of past Clio Lifetime Achievement Award honorees: Bob Isherwood, worldwide creative director, Saatchi & Saatchi; Bob Greenberg, chairman/CEO, chief creative director, R/GA; John Hegarty, chairman/worldwide creative director, Bartle Bogle Hegarty (BBH); Lee Clow, global director of media arts, TBWA\ Worldwide; Neil French, former worldwide creative director, Ogilvy & Mather and WPP; David Abbott, cofounder, Abbott Mead Vickers, and Tony Kaye, the pioneering director and cinematographer.

via Clio Awards.

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• REX Design Awarded by Communication Arts Magazine
• Brazil outsourcing industry featured in Design Council Magazine’s “The Latin American renaissance” article
• Business Week’s Bruce Nussbaum talk about the “Best Design From Brazil”
• Brazilian design featured on Computer Arts Magazine’s “Viva Brasil” article

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Cecilia Consolo during a guided tour to ADG's 9th Brazilian Graphic Design Biennial exhibition in Shanghai

The Brazilian Graphic Designers Association, ADG Brasil – Associação dos Designers Gráficos, founded in 1989, has as its fundamental objectives to promote Brazilian Graphic Design. Acting as a channel between professionals, suppliers, entrepreneurs and the public in general, to affirm the profession’s identity, contributing for the country’s social, cultural and economic development.

At the present moment, ADG Brasil congregates the major offices and the highest regarded graphic designers operating in Brazil, aiming at spreading the profession into the market and developing the design and the professionals.

Under these aspects, ADG Brasil has developed updating events for professionals, displays, contests, and performs a biennial exhibition of graphic design showing the best there was in the Brazilian graphic production during this period of time. The Bienal Brasileira de Design Gráfico is the biggest graphic design event in South America and has been also presented in North America, Europe and Asia.

The Brazilian Graphic Design, due to its qualities, such as having an acknowledged and creative way of communication, local colors and shades, has won ground in the specialized international media, gaining space on the main pages of the German magazine Novum Gebrauschgraphic, the Japanese Idea, the Swiss-American Graphis, Chinese Art and Design and New Graphic magazines, and the American Print, Step by Step, and Communications Arts. And more, it has already been the exclusive subject on Print magazine, number XLI:VI (NY, USA).

From the social performance point of view, ADG Brasil has supported action in favor of divulging and bringing awareness to major social problems, through the organization of contests and the display of posters in support of humanitarian and government institutions, such as Comunidade Solidária (Palácio do Planalto), Incentivo Cultura – Lei de Incentivos Imposto de Renda Pessoa Física, Associação Minha Rua Minha Casa, etc.

via ICOGRADA (revised by BGD)

Read Also:

• 9th Brazilian Graphic Design Biennial goes to China
• Brazil outsourcing industry featured in Design Council Magazine’s “The Latin American renaissance” article
• Roots: Ziraldo (1932)
• DINGBATS BRASIL goes to Beijing ICOGRADA 2009
• 9th Brazilian Graphic Design Biennial in China

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Kiko Farkas and NewGraphic's editor Ge Hong at the exhibition at Nanjing Arts Institute

Two weeks after his presentation at the Icograda World Design Congress in Beijing, Brazilian graphic designer Kiko Farkas gave a talk at the Nanjing Arts Institute at the opening of an exhibition of 50 posters for the São Paulo Symphonic Orchestra.

In the talk to students and guests at November 10th 2009, Kiko was introduced by Ge Hong, editor-in-charge of the Chinese design magazine NewGraphic. The magazine’s latest issue (#22, released in September) featured about one hundred of Farka’s works with his design company Máquina Estúdio.

Read Also:

• 9th Brazilian Graphic Design Biennial goes to China
• 9th Brazilian Graphic Design Biennial in China
• Campana Brothers redesign Lacoste logo
• Roots: ADG Brasil (Associação dos Designers Gráficos)
• Roots: Ziraldo (1932)

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Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Paraná featured on the "World's Best Design Programs" list by BusinessWeek magazine

Companies in every industry have adopted design thinking to offer fresh insight in functions from strategy to finance. BusinessWeek selected 39 master’s and MBA programs from North America, Europe, Asia, South America and Australia that significantly integrate design thinking and business. Students in these programs take classes in art, management and science, for example, and create projects in multi-disciplinary teams with students from other schools. They aim to use design for strategy rather than merely for aesthetics and may find jobs as design managers, researchers or business consultants. BusinessWeek’s Bruce Nussbaum compiled a list of 30 programs have formally established hybrid curricula:

Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Paraná

Paraná, Brazil

Program: MBA* Emotional Design
Business Partnerships: Electrolux Brazil, Volvo Brazil, Whirlpool do Brazil
Why it’s on the list: This Portuguese-language MBA started in 2008 in partnership with Electrolux. The program is offered mainly to employees of partner companies and includes 365 hours of classes. It aims to teach executives about another, softer side of business. Course titles include “Cognition and Emotion in Design.”

via World’s Best Design Programs – BusinessWeek.

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• Business Week’s Bruce Nussbaum talk about the “Best Design From Brazil”
• 4th Information Design International Conference, Rio de Janeiro
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• Brazil outsourcing industry featured in Design Council Magazine’s “The Latin American renaissance” article
• Fabio Sasso featured in the “world’s top 20 web designers” by .net magazine

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REX Design Awarded by Communication Arts Magazine (source: Dexigner)

The design developed for tweens’ books “Leituras Descoladas” collection (“Cool Readings” collection), has rendered another international award for REX Design.

The brazilian design agency has been selected by Communication Arts Magazine among many design agencies around the globe to be on the magazine’s Design Annual 50.

To celebrate their 50th anniversary, Communication Arts Magazine is going to release on November-December of this year, a special edition of their well-known Design Annual and their 2009’s jury awarded REX Design’s project of “Leituras Descoladas” book collection to be a part of it.

The agency has stood out as it brings a whole new point-of-view to the early teen’s literature, creating a contemporary language, much more connected to the youth.

“Our idea was to propose a new paradigm of teen literature and a complementary narrative, more adjusted to the visual repertory of current teenagers,” said Gustavo Piqueira, REX’s partner, that together with Samia Jacintho, has illustrated the books.

via REX Design Awarded by Communication Arts Magazine | Dexigner.

Read Also:

• DDB Brasil wins several awards from Communication Arts “2009 Advertising Annual”
• CLIO honors Marcello Serpa with “Lifetime Achievement” award
• Movements: O Gráfico Amador
• Business Week’s Bruce Nussbaum talk about the “Best Design From Brazil”
• Roots: Ziraldo (1932)

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Ziraldo's poster for "Discover the Brazilian Cinema" exhibition

Ziraldo Alves Pinto (Caratinga, Minas Gerais, 1932 – ). Draughtsman, caricaturist, cartoonist, illustrator, journalist and writer. He presented his first drawing at the age of 7 in the newspaper Folha de Minas, in 1939. In 1949, he moved to Rio de Janeiro, where he contributed to the children’s publications Vida Infantil, Vida Juvenil and Sesinho, and began to publish works in the magazine, A Cigarra. In 1952, he entered the Faculty of Law of the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais [Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG) ] and contributed monthly to the magazine, Era uma Vez.

In 1954, he replaced the caricaturist Borjalo (1925 – 2004) on the daily Folha de Minas and contributed to the magazine Binômio. In 1957, he moved to Rio de Janeiro, and in the following year, began to work on the magazine, O Cruzeiro, where, two years later, he created the character, Pererê. With the success of this character, the company O Cruzeiro began to publish a monthly magazine consisting exclusively of his stories.

In 1963, he began to work for the Jornal do Brasil, and in 1964, for the magazine Pif-Paf, edited by Millôr Fernandes (1923-). In 1967, he edited the Sunday supplement, Cartum JS, of the Jornal dos Sports. In the following year, he gained international recognition and saw his drawings published in foreign magazines. He became a member of the founding team of the magazine, O Pasquim, launched in 1969.

Since then, he has devoted himself to the publication of children’s books, with many titles, most notable among which are Flicts (1969), O Menino Maluquinho [The Crazy Kid] (1980) and O Bichinho da Maçã [The Little Apple Worm] (1982). In 1982, he left the editorial of Pasquim to devote himself mainly to children’s literature. In 1999, he founded the magazines Bundas [Bums] – a parody of the society magazine, Caras and Palavra. In 2002, he began to publish a new magazine called Opasquim21.

via Ziraldo (1932).

Read Also:

• Discover the Brazilian Cinema
• Movements: O Gráfico Amador
• Roots: Câmara, João (1944)
• Roots: Monteiro, Vicente do Rêgo (1899 – 1970)
• Roots: J. Borges (1935)

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Eltono’s piece for Rojo Out Urban Stage

After São Paulo city officials ordered graffiti cleanup crews to leave work by Os Gêmeos and other famous São Paulo street artists alone, art collective and magazine Rojo asked the city’s Urban Development Department to allow them to tap artists like Tofer and MWM Graphics to help spice up drab concrete structures across the city. “It was the first time they’ve allowed it,” says Zagg Guimaraes, Rojo’s associate director in Brazil. “We’re trying to make the city more beautiful.” Dubbing the operation RojoOut, the public art exhibit continues a similar three-year project in Barcelona that they started in 2006.

Sponsored by Smart, the just-completed project commissioned Rojo-affiliated artists to paint 11 concrete structures including air-vent columns and blank walls across São Paulo over a few weeks. Nuria Mora, Tony de Marco, Superblast and Eltono got on scaffolds to paint, while MWM Graphics, Ovni and Tofer scaled and drew their work but handed it off to collaborators to carry out.

Spread across three locations, Avenida Juscelino Kubitschek by the Povo and Ibirapuera parks and near the Ibirapuera Park entrance, the permanent exhibit happily faces no threat of removal.

via RojoOut Urban Stage São Paulo.

Read Also:

• Os Gêmeos Create a World on a New York Wall
• São Paulo’s Modern Art Museum “Brazilian Design Today: Frontiers”
• “Brazil Contemporary” Exhibition opens in Rotterdam, The Netherlands
• Brazilian design featured on Computer Arts Magazine’s “Viva Brasil” article
• London Design Festival’s “Brazil Illustrated”, featuring Bruno Kurru, Wagner Pinto and Eduardo Recife

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9th Brazilian Graphic Design Biennial goes to Mexico

The Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana-Xochimilco, the Franz Mayer Museum, the National Association of Schools of Graphic Design (Frame), the Autonomous University of Aguascalientes and the Mexican Council for Accreditation of Program Design (Comaprod) are bringing ADG’s 9th Brazilian Graphic Design Biennial to Mexico

_Opening
Tuesday November 3, 2009, 19:00
Central courtyard of the Museo Franz Mayer

The Exhibition goes on until 13 December 2009.

_Lectures
The event will also host the lecture “Axes of Brazilian design”, by André Stolarski and Chico Homem de Melo:
Saturday 7 November 2009, 12:00
Franz Mayer Museum Auditorium
Hidalgo 45, Centro Histórico, Ciudad de México,
México, DF 06300

Read Also:

• 9th Brazilian Graphic Design Biennial goes to China
• Alexandre Wollner featured in the “Distinguished Lecture Series” of the School of Art, Design and Media at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
• Roots: Monteiro, Vicente do Rêgo (1899 – 1970)
• Roots: ADG Brasil (Associação dos Designers Gráficos)
• 9th Brazilian Graphic Design Biennial in China

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Alexandre Wollner

Graphic designer Alexandre Wollner will lecture on November 5 at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, during the “Visual Communication” conference. In the lecture — part of the “Distinguished Lecture Series” of the School of Art, Design and Media, Wollner will present his own work and discuss the history of design, its origins, evolution, influences, creative process, practice and principles in the context of Brazilian culture.

Alexandre Wollner is a pioneer of the profession in his country and was a founder of Escola Superior de Desenho Industrial (ESDI).

The School of Art, Design and Media from Nanyang Technological University is located in Nanyang Drive, 81 (Jurong West), Singapore.

via ADM Distinguised Lecture Series

Read Also:

• Roots: Wollner, Alexandre (1928)
• Schools: Escola Superior de Design Industrial (ESDI)
• Roots: Câmara, João (1944)
• Roots: ADG Brasil (Associação dos Designers Gráficos)
• São Paulo’s Modern Art Museum “Brazilian Design Today: Frontiers”

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Fabio Sasso featured in the "world’s top 20 web designers" by .net magazine

A graphic and web designer from Brazil, Fabio is co-founder of design studio, 3YZ and can also be found at www.abduzeedo.com, a blog recording his ventures through the design world.

Abduzeedo is one of the most inspiring design sites on the internet, with stacks of hands-on tutorials from Sasso himself. If we were feeling trite we’d say it’s proof that every cloud has a silver lining, as Sasso started the site “after I had lost all my stuff when my office was robbed”. But we aren’t, so we won’t.

via The world’s top 20 web designers – .net magazine.

Read Also:

• Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Paraná featured on the “World’s Best Design Programs” list by BusinessWeek magazine
• Brazilian design featured on Computer Arts Magazine’s “Viva Brasil” article
• UK’s The Guardian highlights the work of young Brazilian designers in the article “Artistry in the Blood”
• Brazil outsourcing industry featured in Design Council Magazine’s “The Latin American renaissance” article
• Paste Magazine interviews Eduardo Recife

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J. Borges and his "Folhetos de Cordel", by LOST.ART

Artist and poet José Francisco Borges (J. Borges) was born in 1935 in the village of Bezerros, Pernambuco state, in Northeastern Brazil. Today Borges is Brazil’s best-known folk artist working in the woodcut medium, and his work has been exhibited all over the world. But he comes out of a long tradition of folk poet/artists who publish their own work in the form of small (generally about 6″ by 9″) cheap chap-books or pamphlets written in verse, known as folhetos. They are also known as literatura de cordel after the way vendors sell them in the marketplace, hanging over a string. This tradition (including the work of Borges) is described in detail by Candace Slater in her book Stories on a String: The Brazilian ‘Literatura de Cordel’.

Marion Oettinger, director of the Nelson A. Rockefeller Center for Latin American Art at the San Antonio Museum of Art, describes these folhetos in his book The Folk Art of Latin America: Visiones del Pueblo: “Brazilian chap books deal with popular poetry, accounts of local catastrophes, popular legends, famous crimes, and infamous love affairs. The Man who Married a Donkey, The Son Who Murdered His Parents in Order to Get His Hands on Their Retirement Benefit, The Football Game in Hell, and The Overturned Bus Disaster are examples of the alluring titles found in a typical marketplace. The front of these pamplets usually contain wood-block illustrations of the book’s contents, and they, in themselves, form a special type of folk expression…. Frequently, chap book vendors sing the songs in their books or read aloud the contents of their books to market crowds, many of whom are illiterate, and their voices usually draw enormous gatherings.”

José Francisco Borges began writing verse for folhetos in his 20s, and soon also began to operate a printing press to produce woodcut prints for their covers. “When I was a kid, the only leisure activity we had was to read cordel literature,” recalled Borges. “The way people watch telenovelas today, we read cordel booklets.”

While working as a salesman, Borges decided to try his hand at writing a story. He showed it to a veteran “cordelista,” who encouraged him to publish. It took eight years for Borges to save up the cash to self-publish his first edition. With nothing left over to pay an illustrator for the cover, which needed a requisite black-ink woodblock print, he had to produce his own artwork.

Now he has authored over 200 chapbooks and says that he’s lost count of how many he’s illustrated for less graphically-inclined storyteller-poets. His press Borges also prints booklets. “I get lots of orders of cordel booklets,” he said – including some that serve as company training manuals or that teach the basics of things like how to take out a bank loan. “Country hicks don’t like to read magazines, but if you give him a cordel booklet he’ll read it – and enjoy it,” Borges said.

"The Arrival of the Prostitute in Heaven", WoodCut, J. Borges

Working with just a knife and a chunk of wood, Mr. Borges proves that ”low-level technology often yields very powerful, moving and sophisticated results,” said Marion Oettinger, ”Thanks to Borges and others like him, the popular graphics tradition is alive and well in Brazil in a way that you don’t see in other countries.”

In the 1960s his woodcuts came to be recognized in their own right. According to Ariano Suassuna, writer, poet and a leading figure of the Armorial Movement, the Brazilian Cordel could be divided in the following cycles: the heroic, the wonderful, the religious or moral, the satiric and historic. J. Borges says that Ariano once told him “I was the best in the Northeast. Now he says I’m the best in the world,” noted Borges with a smile.

Borges followed the advice of some admirers to produce folio-sized stand-alone prints. Often in color, they depict the same fantastic and folkloric rural characters as the booklets: The Hangover Bar, The Cowboy Mass, The Girl Who Turned into a Snake, and The Macumba Ceremony. These have attracted the attention of museums and collectors. But even in larger formats, his prints reflect the same popular themes, such as The Honeymoon of Matuto (an archetypal back-country bumpkin), The Monster of the Backlands, The Woman who Put the Devil in a Bottle, The Arrival of the Prostitute in Heaven and many tales of the legendary bandit Lampião.

Borges’ work has now been exhibited all over Brazil as well as in Paris, Zurich, Buenos Aires and in Germany and the United States. The Louvre, the Smithsonian and the International Folk Art Market in Santa Fe have exhibited Borges’ work. UNESCO has honored Mr. Borges with awards for his contributions to world culture. They also commissioned him to illustrate the cover of the United Nations 2002 calendar. The United States Library of Congress has preserved a body of Mr. Borges work in its’ permanent collection.

via Indigo Arts Gallery | Brazilian Folk Art | Jose Francisco Borges.

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Rogério Duarte's poster for Glauber Rocha's movie "Deus e o Diabo na Terra do Sol", 1964

Rogério Duarte started his career as a graphic designer in the 1960s. He had begun his formation in this area by taking the experimental course offered by Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro MAM-RJ (‘Rio de Janeiro’s Modern Arte Museum’).

He worked with Aloísio Magalhães between 1961 and 1962. He was the art director of the Maurício Vilela Laboratory (1963), coordinator of the Visual Arts Department of União Nacional dos Estudades – UNE (‘National Students Union’) and director of the Editora Vozes (‘Vozes Publishing House’) from 1966 to 1968, director of DIA Desenho Industrial Audiovisuais –(‘Audiovisual Industrial Design’) (1972-1975), art director of Designio (1976 – 1978), and art director of Salvador’s City Hall (1985 – 1989).

Rogério is a multi-disciplinary artist. He is a poet, a musician and a graphic artist. He is famous for his collaborations with the musicians of the Tropicália movement, especially Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil, his book covers and movie posters. In the latter field, he designed the poster of the movie “Deus e o Diabo na Terra do Sol” (1965) of Glauber Rocha, one of his most famous works.

Holding convictions that went fervently against the dogmatism of the School of Ulm, Rogério Duarte skillfully joined constructive principles acquired during his studies of design with elements of Brazilian popular culture, making a real visual anthropophagy during the period of military dictatorship in Brazil.

Rogério Duarte also holds two titles of Notório Saber em Artes Gráficas e Desenho Industrial (‘Notorious Knowledge in Graphic Arts and Industrial Design’) awarded by the Universidade de Brasília – UNB [ National University of Brasília] and by the Federal Education Council of MEC.

Currently, Duarte teaches in the School of Communications at UFBA (the Federal University in the state of Bahia).

via :: REDE DESIGN BRASIL ::.

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Announcing the 4th Information Design International Conference

The SBDI | Brazilian Society of Information Design, announces the 4th CIDI | International Conference for Information Design, and the 3rd InfoDesign Brazil | Brazilian Conference for Information Design. These biannual scientific events aim at gathering professionals, researchers and students to discuss information design issues.

Also taking place is the 4th Congic | Information Design Student Conference, a scientific event addressed to students and recent graduates who have developed research in this field.

The program also includes the 3rd Seminar on Design Methodology, that aims to promote a forum about methodology on Design and presents experiences developed by the ten post-graduate programs in design of Brazil.

via ICOGRADA | Miscellaneous news.

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• 9th Brazilian Graphic Design Biennial in China

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