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. These 30 programs have formally established hybrid curricula [...]

Aloísio Magalhães, while still attending law school in Recife (the capital of Pernambuco), had already begun to show his fascination with graphic arts. Coincidentally, a famous cousin of Magalhães, the renowned Brazilian poet João Cabral de Melo Neto, moved to Recife at that time. This cousin strongly encouraged the two young artists to open their own private print shop. Magalhães became excited about the idea of setting up a print shop and they sought other former friends from the university who were also involved in literature and graphic arts. Among the main names of those who founded O Gráfico Amador in 1954, it is worth mentioning Ariano Suassuna, José Laurenio, and Orlando da Costa Ferreira.

Aloísio Magalhães took his first steps in the field of graphic design took place while he was still attending law school in Recife. he set up, together with some friends, a modest print shop called O Gráfico Amador that, during the eight subsequent years that it was operating, published 27 books, 3 sets of fliers, 2 bulletins and a theater program [...]

Think Brazilian design and the first things that spring to mind may well be plastic flip-flops and miniscule beachwear. But there is more to Brazilian style than Carmen Miranda’s fruit basket headgear [...]

In 2008, the Industrial Designers Society of America ran a new contest in Brazil and some of the winners were included in this year’s Top International Design Excellence Awards. Amazing design and innovation is taking place in Brazil and this slideshow of winners (Brazil placed third behind the US and Korea in the number of IDEA awards in 2008) shows the wide range of activity. Bruce Nussbaum highlights some of the work featured the 2008 awards [...]