"Asian Graphics Now", by Julius Wiedeman and Bruno Porto

Taschen editor-in-charge Julius Wiedemann and co-author Bruno Porto showcased the upcoming 430 page book “Asian Graphics NOW!” at the German Consulate General in Shanghai, on September 15th 2010. The Pre-launch talk was attended by 120 local (Chinese and foreigners) designers, artists and journalists, and it was translated to Chinese by Ms Karen Xu.

Both Wiedemann and Porto were born and raised in Rio de Janeiro and respectively attended the Marketing and Design courses of Rio’s Faculdade da Cidade in the early 1990s.

Julius Wiedemann, Karen Xu & Bruno Porto by Mowfak Galy

The book is a collaboration between them, Taschen art editor Daniel Siciliano-Bretas (born in Rio de Janeiro, currently living in Köln, Germany) and Japanese design specialist Marcos Sadao Maekawa (born in São Paulo, currently living in Tokyo, Japan), and presents a wide selection of design projects from China (mainland, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macao), Japan, Korea, India, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam etc, divided in five sections – Advertising, Branding, Editorial, Non-Commercial and Packaging. It also features articles by Huang Li, editor of Package & Design Magazine, and Wang Min, Design Director of the Beijing Olympics 2008.

The first 100 pages of “Asian Graphics NOW!” can be leafed in http://www.taschen.com/lookinside/04440/index.htm

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• 9th Brazilian Graphic Design Biennial in China
• 9th Brazilian Graphic Design Biennial goes to China
• Business Week’s Bruce Nussbaum talk about the “Best Design From Brazil”
• Chinese design magazines will publish over 200 pages of Brazilian graphic arts in 2010
• Brazilian illustration festival in China

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Computer Arts Desktop Wallpaper: Adhemas Batista

Brazil’s creative output is currently under the international spotlight. Books are being written, exciting work is being commissioned and reputations are being made. So what’s going on? Has Brazil just been ‘discovered’, or are Brazilian designers doing something different to the rest of the world?

Brazil is South America’s largest economy. It has borders with every other state on the continent bar Chile and Ecuador, its rainforest still harbours tribes of the last indigenous Indians, and back in 2002 it elected Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva – one-time shoe-shine boy – as its president.

Brazil is an amazing place, yet we still know it best as the home of football, bikinis and Samba – it must seem a bit unfair to the locals. “Well, we do have a lot of football, girls in bikinis and Samba!” says Danilo Oliveira of graphics co-op Base-V.

Oliveira is from São Paulo, so would the answer be different further inland? Hop north-east to Belo Horizonte and you’ll find designer, typographer and illustrator Eduardo Recife. “People see Brazil as a jungle filled with naked girls,” he says, “but we have a very rich culture.” And when the rest of the world wakes up and smells the coffee, Brazilian design will take centre stage.

Nando Costa, the man behind Die Gestalten Verlag’s Brasil Inspired, spent five years working in the US, which has given him perspective. “As long as people recognise that the country has a lot more to offer, it doesn’t really bother us.”

The world is waking up to Brazilian design. “Lately, with all the hype around Brazilian culture, more and more designers have been working as freelancers, both for the local and the overseas markets,” says Costa.

This is healthy, but it’s leading to the creative equivalent of a brain drain. “More and more professionals are leaving the country, which is really sad,” says Costa. But there is a silver lining: “It’s always really great to have the experience and then later, if they want, they can go back to their home town and help take the market a bit further.”

There are many designers doing just that. Base-V recently completed a giant wall installation in São Paulo, Eduardo Recife has just finished a series of stills for HBO’s ‘Assume the position’; and since last December Nando Costa has been busy working on a series of 30 packaging illustrations for software giant Microsoft.

The rise of street art and graffiti is nowhere more prominent than on the streets of Brazil’s cities. “The influence is big – from fashion to animation,” agrees Oliveira. And even the official art market is beginning to open up: “Spaces and galleries with a specific interest in ‘street language’ are opening, particularly in São Paulo.”

“Brazil is a place of high contrast, and that’s very inspiring for an artist,” says Costa. “Chaos has always been inspiring, but it also instigates more thoughts about what one can do to change poverty, violence and other issues.” Art can make a difference, but as Oliveira points out, “It’s a very hard struggle because artists here have to fight for their space in the market.”

Eight Brazilian design talents you should be keeping your eyes on:
Mariana Bukvic
Based in São Paulo, interactive art director Mariana Bukvic is an example of Brazil’s outward facing designers. She has worked for many prestigious clients such as Nike, Coke and Nestlé, and has been honoured with numerous awards from the Cannes Cyber Lions to the D&AD.

Buraco de Bala
This studio has come a long way since its launch back in 1999 – always striving to develop the best solution within its powers, no matter what technique the team uses in order to accomplish its goals. Buraco de Bala works are mostly fuelled, “by craftsmanship and a special taste for the classic techniques and references.”

reismagos
Reismagos is a graphic design studio created by Alline Luz and Daniel Gizo. Since 2004 the pair have worked on commercial and experimental projects for national and international clients. Although this piece is about the 2006 World Cup, “Now we’re into designer toys – something quite unknown in Brazil,” says Gizo.

Flávio de Almeida Hobo
“My approach is analogical plus digital,” says Flávio de Almeida Hobo. Humans are “analogical beings” using digital tools. “The lack of money spent on projects here makes creativity essential. Less business, respect for nature and do the work with sincerity. Design can save the world.”

Yomar Augusto
Graphic artist Yomar Augusto has been published around the globe. From Brazil to China, The Netherlands to Russia, his work is highly respected. In 2004, Yomar was involved in two Rojo Magazine ArtStorm projects, where 18 artists from all over the world brainstormed a huge project based in Barcelona and Berlin.

Rogério Lionzo
Brazilian designer and illustrator Rogério Lionzo is making the world a better place with the gift of colour and form. The young artist is chuffed with his progress so far: “I am lucky enough to have great experiences and opportunities so far in my career.”

Nitrocorpz
The four founders of Nitrocorpz have been working together since graduating in 1998. “We do interactive media, illustration, print and motion work. Most of our work is done through email/IM.” Other projects include www.mixtape.nitrocorpz.com and www.neuralbrand.org.

Andre Matarazzo
Born in São Paulo, Andre Matarazzo travelled extensively throughout the world for 12 years, got upset with the state of online design in Brazil and decided to move back and launch gringo.nu. He is focused on online branding solutions.

via Computer Arts – Viva Brasil.

Read Also:

• International panel debates still and moving images at the 2nd Brazil Film Festival in China
• Discover the Brazilian Cinema
• Chinese design magazines will publish over 200 pages of Brazilian graphic arts in 2010
• Roots: Wollner, Alexandre (1928)
• Brazilian posters for the Green Movement in Iran

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The real Latin America exists below the sensational headlines about Hugo Chávez, shrinking rainforests and cocaine wars. But walk around Rio de Janeiro or Buenos Aires and you are struck not by a sense of crisis but by a mood – you might even, slightly pretentiously, call it a zeitgeist – that these cities are on the move.

Latin America is too diverse to be pigeonholed. Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador are developing and poor, but much of the continent is very different. Santiago’s skyscraper-filled city center feels like Spain, albeit with the Andes as a backdrop. Different parts of the elegant Argentine capital have the vibe of Milan and Paris. Even the teeming cities of Brazil are nothing like Mumbai or Delhi.

A few days in almost any South American capital is enough to make it clear that renewal is in the air. It’s easy, when talking to business leaders and politicians, to see why the region is emerging, once again, as a player in the outsourcing market. As Latin America was the original destination for American firms looking to outsource in the 1980s, but lost out on cost to China and India, the business has almost come full circle.

But Latin America’s new approach to outsourcing is not the same as the ‘Chindia’ model, as it draws on very different specialist skills.

Brazil, for example, is already a world leader in biofuels, and its deserved reputation for innovation is the result of putting public money into research and coming up with incentives to create demand. The country’s central bank chief, Henrique Meirelles, predicts that the Brazilian economy will grow by 4.5% this year – regardless of the US slowdown – and last year its productivity grew faster than that of the US. [...]

via Design Council | Design Council Magazine | Design Council Magazine issue 4 | The Latin American renaissance.

Read Also:

• Luiz Carlos Barreto lifetime achievements highlighted in the New York Times
• Brazilian design featured on Computer Arts Magazine’s “Viva Brasil” article
• 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″
• Brazilian lectures at the Taipei 2011 IDA Congress

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Vicente do Rego Monteiro, "As Religiosas", 1969

Vicente do Rego Monteiro (Recife, Pernambuco, 1899 – idem, 1970). Painter, sculptor, draughtsman, illustrator, graphic artist. Began his artistic studies in 1908, accompanying his sister, Fedora do Rego Monteiro (1889 – 1975) on courses at the National School of Fine Arts (Enba) in Rio de Janeiro.

In 1911, he travelled with his family to France, where he attended the Academies Colarossi, Julian and de La Grande Chaumière. In 1913, he took part in the Salon des Indépendants, of which he became a member. In Paris, he maintained contact with Amedeo Modigliani (1884 – 1920), Fernand Léger (1881 – 1955), Georges Braque (1882 – 1963), Joán Miró (1893 – 1983), Albert Gleizes (1881 – 1953), Jean Metzinger (1883 – 1956) and Louis Marcoussis (1883 – 1941).

At the start of the First World War (1914-1918), he left France with his family, settling in Rio de Janeiro in 1915. In 1918, he held his first individual exhibition at the Santa Isabel Theatre in Recife, showing his work for the first time two years later, in São Paulo, where he met Di Cavalcanti (1897 – 1976), Anita Malfatti (1889 – 1964), Pedro Alexandrino (1856 – 1942) and Victor Brecheret (1894 – 1955). In 1920, he studied the art of the Marajó culture in the collections of the National Museum of Quinta da Boa Vista. Moved by a passion for dance, in 1921 he staged the spectacle, Lendas, Crenças e Talismãs dos Índios do Amazonas [Legends, Beliefs and Talismans of the Amazonian Indians], at the Trianon Theatre in Rio de Janeiro, which was praised by the poet and critic, Ronald de Carvalho (1893 – 1935). He left for France, leaving behind eight oil paintings and watercolours for exhibition during Semana de Arte Moderna [Modern Art Week] of 1922, in São Paulo.

In 1923, he made drawings of masks and costumes for the ballet, Legendes Indiennes de L’Amazonie [Indian Legends of Amazonia]. He joined the group of artists associated with the gallery and magazine, L’Effort Moderne, of Leonce Rosemberg. He also brought the exhibition A Escola de Paris [The School of Paris] to Brazil, with showings in Recife, São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. In 1937, he decorated the Chapel of Brazil in the Vatican Pavilion of the International Exhibition of Paris.

In 1946, he founded the publisher, La Presse à Bras, dedicated to the publication of Brazilian and French poetry. From 1941 onwards, he published his first verses, Poemas de Bolso [Pocket Poems], organising and promoting various poetry salons and congresses in France and Brazil. Returning to Brazil, he gave lectures in painting at the School of Fine Arts of the Federal University of Pernambuco (UFPE), in 1957 and 1966.

In 1960, he received the Guillaume Apollinaire Prize for his sonnets, collected in the book, Broussais – La Charité. From 1966 to 1968, he lectured at the Central Institute of the Arts of the University of Brasília (UnB).

via Monteiro, Vicente do Rego (1899 – 1970).

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• 9th Brazilian Graphic Design Biennial goes to Mexico
• Roots: Duarte, Rogério (1939)

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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. We tend to focus on design coming out of China, Korea, India or Japan these days, as well of Europe of course, but Brazil is booming and so is its design. Brazilians are designing sophisticated medical equipment, autos, clothes and jets. São Paulo is home is some great design consultancies that US, European and Asia companies should be tapping (many already are).

via BusinessWeek

Read Also:

• Brazil highlighted as “Design’s Next Superpower” by Fast Company Magazine
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• Brazil outsourcing industry featured in Design Council Magazine’s “The Latin American renaissance” article
• Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Paraná featured on the “World’s Best Design Programs” list by BusinessWeek magazine
• The launching of Guarana Jesus new can wins the Gold Medal from IDSA IDEA 2010 Awards

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