Explore Brazil, from "Into Brazil" Project

IntoBrazil is a part of a master degree research done by the designer Pedro Brêtas at NCAD/The National College of Art and Design. This website allows users to create a virtual travel experience to Brazil and explore touristic cities.

Apart from the interesting experiment of customizing trips to Brazil, the site create a pretty rich immersion experience by capturing the Brazilian culture through visuals and sounds. Please note the beautiful watercolor illustrations and the amazing background music selection.

Porto de Galinhas, from "Into Brazil" Project

Read Also:

• Brazilian design featured on Computer Arts Magazine’s “Viva Brasil” article
• Premiere Brazil Film Exhibition at MoMA, New York
• DINGBATS BRASIL
• The launching of Guarana Jesus new can wins the Gold Medal from IDSA IDEA 2010 Awards
• DINGBATS BRASIL goes to Venezuela

Tags:

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

Tags:

Leonard Eyer at the Netherlands Photo Museum

Brazil Contemporary is an overview exhibition compiled by the Netherlands Architecture Institute (NAI), Museum Boijmans van Beuningen and the Netherlands Photo Museum. These three institutions have joined forces to introduce to the general public Brazilian artists, architects, photographers and designers.

Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen presents a survey of the contemporary art of Brazil. The work of Hélio Oiticica (1937-1980) occupies pride of place. Oiticica considered that Brazil should not just passively undergo and imitate Western influences, but that artists should transmute these influences into a uniquely Brazilian culture. According to Bregje van Woensel, curator of the exposition at Boijmans, contemporary Brazilian art is characterised by a highly-structured and controlled approach to material and design. The exhibition shows to what extent today’s artists are still under the influence of Oiticica, with works by Ernesto Neto, Rivane Neuenschwander, Cao Guimaraes and Ricardo Bassbaum.

Thanks to the work of Oscar Niemeyer, Lúcio Costa and Roberto Burle Marx, twentieth-century Brazil developed a surprisingly unique urban modernism. It “was sentenced to the future”, as phrased by Paul Meurs, who compiled the exposition on São Paulo in the NAI.

The Netherlands Photo Museum zooms in on the rapidly changing Brazilian visual culture with its mixture of high and low, elitist and populist, artistic and applied. The exhibition shows not only photography, but also other old and new media, television and internet, with an panorama on fashion and graphic design, featuring the work of — among others — Marcelo Martinez and Leonardo Eyer.

via Surprising Brazilian art in Rotterdam | The Power of Culture.

Read Also:

• Roots: Oiticica, Hélio (1937 – 1980)
• Roots: Wollner, Alexandre (1928)
• Brazilian illustration festival in China
• “The Soccer Museum” wins Gold Medal from IDSA’s 2010 IDEA awards
• Brazilian posters for the Green Movement in Iran

Tags:

LiveAd won the first and only Gold Lion for Brazil in the new PR category of Cannes 2009 for its 'One Thousand Casmurros' campaign.

The Brazilian Association of Digital Agencies (ABRADI) just finished its first survey, designed to measure the growth of digital agencies in the country. Brazil owns, by far, the largest digital market in Latin America.

The study revealed there are 2,275 digital agencies in Brazil that today gather up an income of $412 million, not counting media-buying investments. As in the United States, there’s a long tail of small digital agencies. Breaking it down, 63.3% of these agencies’ annual revenue is below $650,000; 25.5% is between $650,000 and $2.7 million, and only 10% surpass $2.7 million. César Paz, president of ABRADI, said it is expected that total revenue will exceed $500 million by 2010.

via Brazil’s Digital Ad Shops to Reach $500M in Revenue by 2010 – Global News – Advertising Age.

Read Also:

• Brazil featured on Advertising Age’s “The Best of Latin American Marketing in 2009″
• Brazilian Adman Washington Olivetto’s Life Will Be a Movie
• Roots: J. Borges (1935)
• Lobo featured on Creative Review’s “The Annual”
• CLIO honors Marcello Serpa with “Lifetime Achievement” award

Tags:

_original logo (2009) designed with Brazilian typefaces Brasilêro (2001_ Crystian Cruz), Cantador (1997_ Daniel Morena), Folk (2009_ Marcelo Magalhães), UnB Pro (2008_ Gustavo Ferreira) + Samba Expert (2003_ Tony de Marco & Caio de Marco)

Authors

Bruno Porto is a graphic designer, educator and consultant from Rio de Janeiro. His work has frequently been awarded and exhibited in the Americas, Europe and Asia, where he had two solo shows of posters he’d designed. He is one the two Brazilian professionals listed in the Atlas of Contemporary Graphic Design by Harper Collins in 2008. He is a member of the Society of Illustrators of Brazil (SIB) – where he currently serves in its Board of Councilors – and the Brazilian Graphic Designers Association (ADG Brasil) – in which he has acted as a member of its National Board of Directors (2004-2006), Rio de Janeiro Board of Coordinators (2002-2004), Ethics Committee (2009-2011) and as its liaison with Icograda. He has also been deeply involved with the Brazilian Graphic Design Biennial, being President of the Jury of its 7th edition, member of the Curatorial Commission of its 8th edition, and coordinator of the 9th edition’s international tour in Beijing and Shanghai. He has curated a dozen graphic arts exhibitions – such as DINGBATS BRASIL, that has been presented in ten cities across South America and Asia. An author of books and articles on graphic design and illustration, he holds a column in www.DesignBrasil.org.br and has contributed articles to a number of design publications in Brazil and China such as abcDesign, Art & Design, Designe, Design 360º, Design Gráfico, ??? NewGraphic, Prodesign, Revista da ADG, Revista Webdesign and Wide. He was a faculty member at the Graphic Design School of Centro Universitário da Cidade (Rio de Janeiro, 1996-2006) and at the Visual Communication department of Raffles Design Institute (Shanghai, 2006-2010), and consistently organizes and takes part in design events, lectures and juries.

Itamar Medeiros currently lives in Shanghai (China), where he works as Senior User Experience Designer at the Architecture, Engineering & Construction Industry Group of Autodesk® — and helps promote Interaction Design as a local coordinator for the Interaction Design Association (IxDA). Working in the Information Technology industry since 1998, Itamar Medeiros has developed several websites and interactive media campaigns, both as art director and, later, as creative director for several new media agencies in Pernambuco, Brazil. As an Information Design specialist, served as board member of the Brazilian Society of Information Design, and held several lecturing positions, including Lecturer of Hypermedia at the Department of Design of Universidade Federal de Pernambuco (UFPE), Assistant Professor of Cognition and Information Technologies at the Information Systems program of Faculdade Santa Maria,  and Assistant Program Director of the Visual Communication Department of Raffles Design Institute at DongHua University, China. He has been awarded with an MA (with distinction) in Design Practice at Northumbria University (Newcastle, UK) for his thesis “Designing the User Experience: Creating Innovative Design Software Solutions within Collaborative/Distributed Design Environments”.

Read Also:

• Roots: Duarte, Rogério (1939)
• Discover the Brazilian Cinema
• 9th Brazilian Graphic Design Biennial in China
• 9th Brazilian Graphic Design Biennial goes to China
• New media & semiotics lecture in Shanghai

Tags: