Before he became one of Latin America’s most prolific filmmakers — with more than 80 movies credited to his production company — Luiz Carlos Barreto was a photographer. For 15 years beginning in the late 1940s, he worked for O Cruzeiro, a Brazilian weekly magazine similar to Life or Look traveling all over Latin America and also working as a correspondent in Europe.

Luiz Carlos Barreto, "Paris", 1953

Mr. Barreto, now 83, was in New York recently for the United States premiere of “Lula, Son of Brazil,” his company’s latest film, directed by his son Fábio. But back home in Brazil, his early photographic work has been getting renewed attention. A book of his photos called “Passagem: A Memória Visual de Luiz Carlos Barreto,” or “Passage: The Visual Memory of Luiz Carlos Barreto,”was published a decade ago.  And his work has been featured in retrospectives at the Museum of Modern Art in Rio de Janeiro, where he has lived since the 1940s, and at the Museum of Art in São Paulo.

His images range from gritty depictions of Brazil’s urban and rural poor, especially from the sertão, or arid backlands of the northeast, Mr. Barreto’s home region, to celebrity portraits: Mr. Barreto covered the first Cannes film festival in 1954 and later shot stars like Marlene Dietrich, Frank Sinatra, Brigitte Bardot, Kim Novak and Sophia Loren. But he also photographed global political figures ranging from Che Guevara and Nikita Khrushchev to Latin American presidents.

via Luiz Carlos Barreto and Tropical Light – NYTimes.com.

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DINGBATS BRASIL in Venezuela

The exhibition DINGBATS BRASIL opened on April 30th at the Galeria Venezolana de Diseño in Caracas, Venezuela, as part of the program of the 4th Latin American Typographic Biennial TIPOS LATINOS 2010.

DINGBATS BRASIL features the first decade (1996-2006) of Brazil’s production of digital pictorial alphabets – the dingbats – through thirty-five projects by 22 prominent contemporary designers like Leonardo Buggy, Tony de Marco, Marina Chaccur, Claudio Rocha, Marcelo Martinez, Guto Lacaz and Rafo Castro, among others.

This is not the first time the exhibition is seen in Venezuela: in October/November of 2008 it was presented within the 4th COIDIGRA – Congreso Internacional de Diseño Gráfico, in the city of Mérida. The exhibition has also traveled Brazil, Colombia and China in local and international design events, and has been seen by over 12,000 people from 50 countries.

Photos by Maga Uzcátegui Rangel & information in Spanish here and in English & Portuguese here.

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• DINGBATS BRASIL

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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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• Brazilian Adman Washington Olivetto’s Life Will Be a Movie
• For the 3rd consecutive time, CasaRex Receives a Communication Arts Award

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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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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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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.

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Interaction | South America '09

The Interaction’09 | South America will happen on 26,27 and 28 November at 9 am to 18 pm, in São Paulo.

The event aims to present and discuss the main lines of research in the design of interaction, promote the network among professionals in the community, presenting and promoting the discipline in many circles of knowledge: design, computer science, architecture, indicating that interdisciplinary and plurality of views are the way we act.

The purpose of the event is to encourage and work with the education of interaction design in Latin America, so has the support of several institutions of higher education, promoting greater visibility for professionals engaged in the development of interactive solutions.

Speakers confirmed:

• Nimish Biloria – Assistant Professor, Faculty of Architecture, TU Delft, The Netherlands
• Simon Biggs – Research Professor at Edinburgh College of Art, UK
• Ken Perlin – Research Professor at New York University, United States
• Juliana Ferreira – Interaction Designer at Nokia Design, UK
• Giselle Beigelman – Professor of the Communication and Semiotics Graduate Program at  Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo (PUC-SP)
• Antonio Carlos Figueira de Mello (Superlimão)

via Interaction South America ’09.

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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.

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