Wednesday 29 Nov 2006
South America’s history and diverse culture gives the region a unique visual heritage. We investigate South American design culture, and its influence throughout the world.
It’s easy for Europeans to file South America under the ‘Latin’ heading, but the dozen or so nations that make up the southern continent display a diverse collection of cultures.
It would take a book publishing deal and a lengthy jaunt through the region to sum up such diversity. Here, we’ll explore the design scenes in Brazil and Argentina to give you a taster.
It’s still a dizzying task. Many different scenes, styles, and forms exist, but the region is particularly well known for its iconography, street art, and typography.
“We do have a special identity in fonts and calligraphy design,” says Fernando Arendar, designer for Argentinian studio Hangar. “We export a lot of font families that are usually used in wine labels, food packaging, and magazines.”
However, Arendar points out that the first group to forge a graphic design discipline in Argentina were talented architects such as Gonzalez Ruiz, Ruben Fontana, and Ronald Shakespear. “They needed to find solutions to a lot of design problems confronting our society, for example urban signage,” he says.
“Some were also responsible for developing a graphic design degree programme.” Danish designer Morten Linblad is something of a fan of the region. He has collaborated with several Brazilian designers and is heavily influenced by the culture in his work.
“Working with Brazilian designers and advertisers is extremely interesting,” he says. “Brazilians are very creative people and the advertising/design scene here comes up with extremely creative angles and approaches to a project. There’s definitely a ‘Brazilian way’ of doing things.”
Lindblad is in the process of starting up a communications and design company based in Sao Paulo and Copenhagen.
“Our vision is to be the connection between South America and Europe,” he explains. “We aim to give Brazilian companies advice on how to work in the European market and to loosen up the misunderstandings about Brazil and South America held by European companies.
“They seem to fear that they cannot be trusted, but in fact companies in South America can be extremely professional.”
Another European with a big interest in South America is Shane Walter, the man behind the onedotzero digital festival. “There is some really great stuff out here,” he told Digit, speaking from Buenos Aires.
“Argentina has a very international feel with obvious European influences. After the economic crisis of a few years ago there’s a sense of great creative optimism and there’s definitely a strong community of developing creatives that can more than hold their own on the world stage.”
Walter’s organization recently held its first festival in South America, which took place in Buenos Aires. “We had our biggest and most successful onedotzero event in our ten year history here – 20,000 people over three days,” says Walter.
“This is a statement in itself of where Argentina is at.” In Argentina, the economic crisis that hit in the late 90s has had a major part in shaping the design culture.
“After the crisis a lot of artist collectives were formed as a way to express themselves,” says Doma’s Julian Pablo Manzelli. “The stencil art form, fanzines, and other kinds of street art exploded. A lot of people started to work on personal graphic art projects.”
Doma is an Argentinian design collective that emerged from that Buenos Aires street-art scene in 1998. “We studied illustration, film, and graphic design and were doing urban installations, stencils, street projections and absurd campaigns,” says Manzelli.
“Since our beginnings in street-art, we were creating conceptual universes, different worlds and characters. These have evolved and have now come alive with our work in animation, motion graphics, filming, VJ-ing and toy design.”
Manzelli says that groups in Buenos Aires like Doma, Fase and others opened up the graphics playing field. “Before that the graphic scene was just linked to agencies and their work for clients,” he says.
“With our work and the work of these other groups, we showed that there were other possibilities. We were working in a field that’s closer to art than to commercial graphic design, using street art, urban installations, art shows, and other formats such as motion graphics.”
Shane Walter says the street-art element gives much South American design a certain edge. “Both artistically strong and also with political comment, street art certainly adds to the raw fabric of a burgeoning design and artistic community on every level,” he says.
“It influences fashion design, music, graphic design, moving image, and new media.”
Street edge
As with many graffiti and street-art cultures, politics often finds its way into aesthetics. “I see the aesthetics and ideas of activism here,” says Juan Llamosas of Argentinian studio La Vertical. He says stencil art and graffiti in South America is infused with grunge and punk ideas – “the philosophy of going against the rules”.
However, for other designers, these influences are merely evidence of globalization. Llamosas’ creative partner Fransisco Lemos is less positive about the aesthetic and attitudes of the street art influence in South American design.
“Urban art is not new,” he says. “Punk is quite old and rebelliousness is older than Johnny Cash. There could be some ‘graphic activism’ here but it’s just superficial, nothing but a reflection of a global trend.
“The philosophy of ‘going against the rules’ without knowing what those rules are makes those kinds of messages easier to be assimilated by the mainstream. Argentina in the 80s had a much more alternative culture than today.
“Nowadays, there are excellent professionals and high quality in academia but I don’t see any defined identity in local design, for better or for worse.”
However, Manzelli feels that the influence of street art is still really strong in the South American motion-graphic scene.
“Most of the TV channels here today have a look inspired by that scene,” he states. “MTV, VH1, MuchMusic, FOX FX, Sony AXN – you’ll find spray drops in all those channel’s idents.”
Doma collaborated in 2001 on Locomotion, an animation channel in Latin America, Spain, and Portugal. “This was a cult channel for the audiovisual field in those regions,” says Manzelli.
“The look was really important and avant-garde. The channel doesn’t exist any more, but people still use it as a reference.”
The Doma crew are currently immersed in the toys they’ve created from their own designs, creating giant versions for art installations. One such installation made up an impressive part of the recent onedotzero event.
“Today there are many new collectives and artists doing great and interesting things,” says Manzelli. “We are living though a great cultural revolution here and you can feel it when you walk the streets.”
Doma are much admired by other artists. “I think of all the agencies, Doma are the most committed to linking design and culture,” says Argentinian designer Pablo Scaglione.
“They communicate strong ideas with their social conscience and excellent graphic quality. They’ve created a style that still influences graphic design students and design and animation agencies.”
In Brazil, too, the street takes hold of the imagination of native designers. “A walk on the streets of Rio de Janeiro means getting a lot of visual information, which later on will become a reference for the creative process,” says Rio-based art director Claudio Werneck.
“This information can come from anything – traditional arts, music or even the colour of people’s clothes on the street.”
When faced with the homogenizing effects of globalization, Werneck says Brazilian designers manage to keep their work original. “We take the globalization and make a tropicalizaçäo of it – putting on a ‘Brazilian touch’.”
Design identity
The Internet has presented more challenges for the identity of design styles in South America. Pablo Scaglione argues that while the Internet has made cutting-edge ideas available to all, it is the attitude of people within creative communities that keeps local design cultures alive.
“What matters is how honest the process of concept creation is, how real the emotion that propels you to produce a determinate piece,” he says.
“A characteristic of Argentinian designers is that they can take and adapt other aesthetics for their own different ends,” says Martín Bardini, one of the creatives at Argentinian collective Dogo.
“Fashion comes and goes very fast and is not a real influence for us. We try to choose what we like and not the other way around.”
Globalization of pop culture means that South American designers have a far greater range of influences to choose from, and Bardini cites international influences such as Yoshimoto Nara, Maeda, Paul Rand, Fred Tomaselli, David Lynch, The Beatles, and reggae music as having an effect on Dogo’s work.
“Retro culture in particular has been a big influence for us - old TV shows, fashion, objects, and comics. Once it’s part of the past, you can choose if it works for you or not.”
However, in Brazil, there is one unique experience that cannot fail to get creative juices flowing – the Rio Carnival. “Carnival is always a source of inspiration and has also shaped the Brazilian sense of design and art,” says Brazilian Web designer Luka of Amora Design.
She is less sure that there is a ‘Brazilian look’ to graphics however. “It’s hard to say that there is one look, because Brazilian designers come from different places and schools in Brazil, so you have a diversity of styles and concepts. But riding above it all, there is a sense of sensuality that’s usually common in Brazilian design.”
Morten Lindblad
www.mortenlindblad.com
Morten Linblad is a Danish designer with strong links to Brazil. He has offices in Copenhagen, Sao Paulo, and Rio de Janeiro.
Apocalypse Parc
“The first Brazilian inspired project that I did was for a large French client, Compagnie des Alpes, back in 2002/2003,” says Linblad. “They wanted to launch a new snowboard-park and a new corporate snowboard theme. I had gone to Brazil that year to study some branding and design issues and when I returned I came up with the idea of making a snowboard site, with some inspiration from Brazil.
“I ended up with the lime Apocalypse theme and a French inspired logo in blue, white, and red. I combined it all with a mix of graffiti and a strong lime colour. The corporate identity and Web site was an enormous success for the snow-park in France.”
Monta
The Dutch sports company Monta wanted to compete against the Nike Street Football campaign in Denmark with some football events, and Linblad was handed the task.
“We set up a freelance design team in Rio de Janeiro and went out to catch the Brazilian street football feeling,” he says.
“We decided to use strong red and orange colours to grab people’s attention when they walked on the streets and as a call to visit the event site. Our Brazilian art director Alexandre Vidal designed the posters, event site, press kit, flyers and banners.”
Michael Burns
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