Forget what you know about Brazil. Unfortunately, for decades the official image the country shows the world is one of samba all the time and barely naked women on every corner. As if that wasn’t enough, there’s also the secular belief – that luckily seems to be fading away – shared by some first world (1) inhabitants, that completes the myth with monkeys walking around old dusty buses full of chickens. With such a mental image, how could one expect a foreigner to believe that we not only have Macintosh computers but also — get this — graphic designers?

For some decades, we even had some design exponents, such as Ulm’s former student Alexandre Wollner, whose work represents a time when design alone was regarded as the ultimate corporate weapon, when highly educated designers were given very important jobs and were actually respected; and the editor of award-winning design/art magazine Gráfica, Oswaldo Miranda, member of the Type Directors Club, the Art Directors Club of New York and the Alliance Graphique Internationale (sponsored by Saul Bass), and whose career is highlighted by some 450 design prizes, most of them international.

Then, the computer age came in and, as it did in most places, changed the scenario in a way we’re all familiar with. Now, we don’t see such exponents anymore. The design scene is generally sad, and the “high sphere” of the practice is pretty much restricted to ad agencies and a few design offices, that really have nothing extraordinary to offer in visual terms. Brazilian advertising is actually highly respected abroad, and its design is, as expected from the wages the art directors are paid, very well done, efficient, financially successful and, well, mostly boring. The big design firms, by their turn, have to bow to the corporate speech of design as a near scientific practice to survive the multi-million-dollar games. Still, the work is good, sometimes even fresh. However, when a Brazilian company decides to invest heavily on identity, they usually turn to American or European design offices. Not so recent examples are the bank Bradesco and Varig airlines.

The structure of design practice in the country is not bad actually, with plenty of graduate programs and some post-graduate ones popping here and there, two of the biggest printers in Latin America, and the most important weekly magazine — Revista Veja — reaching 1.3 million copies print each issue call Brazil home. Graphic design publications exist both on and offline, and some are very good.

But what about the design exponents we were talking about? What about exciting, interesting, alternative design? On the one hand, you have a dozen ad agencies and a handful of design firms handling the huge, the big and the medium jobs. On the other, you have hundreds of small offices struggling to convince potential clients to invest in design — only after, and if, they succeed to explain what it is first, of course. How could exponents arise out of a market that knows no mid term, no relevant cultural or “alternative” production, and that ultimately sees not much value in design?

The answer seems to be somewhere else. The search for Brazilian designers acting outside Brazil can lead to some surprising results: There are many not-well-known-back-home-yet-very-good designers out there. It gets clear that, in most cases, Brazilian designers aiming at developing something like a “personal” style, or at least something minimally independent from the winds of market trendy dogmas, have to either make it in their vacant hours or try to make their way overseas.

Now, that’s interesting — to me, “Brazilian designers trying to make their way through European and/or North American environments” sounds similar to a high school soccer team from Kentucky, that had enough of their society’s misjudgment of the sport, come down to face Brazilian national soccer team in Maracanã stadium. The odds are obviously very remote. For those not familiar with soccer, Brazil is sort of universally considered the best soccer team in the world, today and for some five decades now. Anyway, it’s not that difficult if you stick to the fantasy-fed Brazilian “idiosyncrasies”, to quote Mr. VanderLans — who I respect enormously, by the way. You know, the usual formula: nudity, smiles, natural creativity, beaches, laziness, saturated happy colors, no regard for serious methodologies and pride of nonstop laughing, even if it’s in the shadow of a government that spends more than the yearly budget intended for Culture in illegal ways of electing a protégé to a position in the congress that is able to decide, for instance, if a presidential impeachment can or can’t be taken forward. And here I was, thinking that Fidel and Chavez were big problems, when at least they do their crap in daylight…

But the thing is, I’m not an indian, I don’t dance samba, and Curitiba (where I live) has nothing to do with Carnival or the Amazon forest. It’s not unusual at all to meet people whose last name is Schroden, Maschio, Nakamura, Raad, Gertzenstein or Socachevski. I mean, I’m writing this listening to BeastieBoys, not “Garota de Ipanema”. Not that I’m proud of a culture like this, with an apparent lack of identity, but if that’s a reason for shame (although I’m not sure it is), pretending that we walk around naked, carrying bow-and-arches, and that we were born with the swing in our bloods is just stupid, although highly profitable in the first world — as the sales of Brazilian handmade seeds-and-stones jewelry in Europe shows.

It seems an appropriate moment to state that I do feel, recognize and love true Brazilian idiosyncrasies in my environment, my work and the work of many others. Even some of the listed in the previous paragraphs, to be honest. All I’m saying is that they’re not necessarily the ones most people would “expect” — as if it’s something that must meet certain prior criteria, other than just be real, to be considered valid. Nor are they immaculate, invulnerable to exterior influences, such as design trends and consumption desires. What’s wrong with the picture of someone sitting in a Swedish bus, listening to an American band through &ldquot;assembled in China” head-phones, heading towards a French store to buy a Dutch LCD monitor, after having Argentine meat and Brazilian juice for lunch (2)? Then what’s wrong with a design that reflects those influences? That is not to say that local production shall or can be taken for granted. On the contrary, it must be much more fomented. But it must be real, natural. And natural, today, is to mix and celebrate and understand and show and respect positive influences present in one’s culture. That doesn’t mean the “original” culture will be extinguished. It’s really the opposite — it means that the given culture is evolving, surviving, perhaps even gaining momentum to influence others.

I think you can only do well what makes sense to you somehow, what comes naturally. The harder you work, more natural and developed the work becomes. I guess that’s why even though we may feel certain affinity to a designer’s work, it doesn’t necessarily mean that to do similar work would be natural and/or easy. I like Caravaggio’s paintings very much, but even if I could paint like him, I probably wouldn’t, because it would make no sense to me really, just like it would to pretend I’m some stupid prototype of a third world tropical citizen.

So, to finally get to the point — if you’re a Brazilian designer that stays true to yourself, how can you make it? Because that probably means you won’t be neither a slave of the market trends, nor a mere technician making your clients’ brilliant idea and design conception look professional, nor an artist doing jungle-like stuff to sell in England’s stores; all of which meaning you have chances close to zero of making a living.

It’s not a happy picture, and I can say that from personal experience, as I’m part of a small start-up studio myself. We are currently redirecting our efforts to (not at all original) initiatives of design products, such as Veer, Emigre, House and so on, and so on, and… well, so on. We came to realize that a chance might come out of doing limited edition posters, fonts, t-shirts and all that. But, again, we turn to the quest of making way through very stormy waters, such as Europe and US, since Brazil is not at all a market to consider, unfortunately.

Anyhow, we might get successful. Who knows? As I pointed before, there are good examples of sustainable-yet-somehow-independent-and-not-much-soul-for-sale design down (or from down) here. However, it’s intriguing how we don’t hear about them, although some have been showcased in many countries’ different media. I mean, I came to know of this people by accident. The list ranges from design studios (like ours), to designers’ art, to video-makers; with work ranging from common place to innovative, from traditional to edgy… well, like any other list, I guess. So, here it goes:

Estudio Crop (our studio, Curitiba, PR);
Misprinted Type (Belo Horizonte, MG);
Grafikonstruct (São Paulo, SP);
Nando Costa (NYC);
Colletivo (São Paulo, SP);
Dimaquina (Rio, I guess);
Nakd (NYC);
Lobo (São Paulo, SP);
Nitrocorpz (Goiânia, GO);

A finer, broader and much larger list can be found here.

Thanks to Armin, who was kind enough to pretend he had any interest in the subject; to my wife Fernanda, for her infinite patience and support; and my EstudioCrop partners Beto Janz, for pointing out potentially dangerous parts of the text and Anderson Maschio, for his unbelievable searching skills – the list just wouldn’t exist without him.

Dado Queiroz was born in 1980, in Curitiba, Brazil. His dream, as a teenager, was to become a comic book penciler, but that didn’t work. After one and a half year studying Architecture, he entered Unicenp’s Graphic Design graduation program in 2000. In 2002 he interviewed David Carson in São Paulo, for the 16th issue of the boardsports magazine where he then worked. At that same year, he won the first prize on both Brazilian and Latin American stages of Philips Art Expression for Young Talents. Finnaly, in 2004 he started his own studio, called EstudioCrop and, in 2005, joined forces with fellow designers Anderson Maschio and Beto Janz.