Solisluna Editora

Rico Lins

presents

: annotated graphic design projects

Rico Lins

Solisluna EditoraSão Paulo, 2010

: annotated graphic design projects

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publication

graphic design Rico Lins +Studioart direction Rico Lins e Amanda Dafoelayout Alejandra Adeikalamart assistance Leila Schöntagtexts Rico Linsintroduction text Agnaldo Farias e Adélia Borgespreparation and review Carla Mello Moreiraphotography Julieta Sobral

www.ricolins.com/graficadefronteiracontato@ricolins.com

exhibition

conception Rico Lins +Studio e Zucca Produçõescuratorship Rico Lins e Agnaldo Fariasdesign concept Rico Linsproduction direction Julio Augusto Zuccaexecutive production Julieta Sobralproduction coordination Anna Ladeiraproduction assistance Luiza Carino e Bina Zanettedesign and production Rico Lins +Studiophotos Julieta Sobral

This publication is part of the traveling exhibition Rico Lins: graphic borderlines, winner of the 2009 APCA 2009 graphic design award.

CAIXA Cultural Curitiba Rua Conselheiro Laurindo, 280, Centro Curitiba – PRTel.: (41) 2118-5114 www.caixa.gov.br/caixaculturalE-mail: caixacultural.pr@caixa.gov.br

PRODUCTION: SPONSORSHIP:

Rico Lins – Omnivorous Designer Agnaldo Farias*

The graphic work of Rico Lins shows just how blurred are the limits between art and design, moreover: between art and life. We will start with art, here understood in its broader sense, not restricted to the plastic arts, but with fron-tiers bordering on music, dance, architecture, photography, fashion, poetry… not to mention another, inner borderland that until very recently separated cultured expressions shaped in academia from the popular forms born of intel-ligences so potent they can, as they often do in our country, thrive in even the most inhospitable, parched and violent of terrains.

To engineer such a fusion, this amalgam of sundry visual beams – because Rico’s world was always one of images –, it took a trajectory as singular as his, starting with his grandfather’s vast library, replete with illustrated books, and the visits, led by his uncle’s hand, to the studios of such disparate artists as Volpi, Djanira and João Câmara. The ardent and sensual geometry of the Italian master, with the rhythmical, subtle brushstrokes gently causing a maelstrom among his geometric impulses, the intelligent ingenuity of Djanira, on the knife’s-edge between demotic and erudite expression, Câmara’s penchant for narrative on political life, which, especially at the turn of the 70s, he could renew through a clever dismembering and reassembling of the figures.

How do you gauge the impact of these precocious and diffuse experiences, like the comic books flicked through as a child on rainy afternoons, on someone who was used to drawing everything from a young age, dabbling freely in visual paraphrases, interested as he was in illustration? Later, older, more system-atic, disciplined, because the lessons of Maciej Babinski and, especially, of the master Evandro Carlos Jardim pulled in this direction, came involvement in image production processes and experience in watercolour and engraving workshops. The allure of graphics was the invitation it extended to vent his inner universe, rather than respect for the repertoires of others, as is so often the case in schools of graphic design, this desire for communicability that, if pursued with too much respect, leads to redundancy and therefore to ennui and blindness. After all, wasn’t this the true lesson of the mythic Scheherazade in 1001 Nights, who, holding the interest of the listener by infusing the tale with a dose of surprise and mystery, can assure her own life? Does not the name of this woman deserve a plaque above the door of schools of design?

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Rico Lins joined the Escola Superior de Desenho Industrial – ESDI at seventeen years of age, at a time when the staff included the likes of Aloisio Magalhães, Décio Pignatari, Karl-Heinz Bergmüller and Zuenir Ventura, itself sufficient to indicate the diverse positions of a profession – used here in the extended sense of a way of being in the world – that didn’t even exist in Brazil at the time. It was a craft under construction, which meant it could enjoy the singular and extraordinary status of not being reducible to a unitary under-standing. It is worth recalling that ESDI was known as the spearhead of the Ulm School, the self-styled successor to the Bauhaus. As we should also remem-ber Ulm’s devotion to a rationalism that far surpassed that envisaged by its mother-school, a true exponent of a holistic teaching based on an interchange of languages, just as later, in the United States, at Black Mountain College in North Carolina and at the New Bauhaus in Chicago, respectively, two of its key artists/pedagogues, Josef Albers and Lázló Moholy-Nagy, would continue to propagate its principles.

To think of the Ulm School in Rio de Janeiro was tantamount to accosting Apollo with the most barbarous pounding of drums, blasting him with a dog-day sultriness more diverse than what he – the sun god – was used to. Because if you take the rationalism postulated by the ESDI and add to that the countercul-ture, the “desbunde” (hippieness) – yes, words grow old too – flourishing in the chinks of light that made it through the dictatorship, in a curious association with rock and political resistance, the leftist groups absconded in clandestinity, and the reader will have an idea of what can happen to a young man like Rico Lins coming of age in the middle of such a hail of crossfire.

In terms of design, in 1976, the year Rico Lins enrolled at the ESDI, Brazil had long known the seminal power of the graphics of Rogério Duarte, the author of the poster for Glauber Rocha’s Deus e o diabo na terra do sol (God and Devil in the Land of the Sun), covers for the first LPs of Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil, the cornerstones of Tropicalism, and co-founder of Flor do Mal (Flower of Evil), the magazine edited by Luiz Carlos Maciel. In the whirlwind of a period that had still more to give, from Hélio Oiticica to Zé Celso Martinez, in which the publisher Civilização Brasileira exhumed the sacrosanct cadaver of Oswald de Andrade in editions prefaced by Haroldo de Campos, Duarte had led the way in defence of an anthropophagic aesthetic when, in 1965, he expressed his reser-vations about the direction ESDI was taking, a school he had helped found but had never formally taught at, because, as he says, “I was never allowed to”. 1

1 Chico Homem de Melo (org.). O design gráfico brasileiro. Anos 60. São Paulo: Cosac Naify, 2006, p. 195.

A lot of water had already passed under the bridge in 1976. If that was in Bra-zil, what can we say about his influences from the rest of the world? For exam-ple, of his more detailed studies and consequent “bedazzlement” by Dadaism and certain offshoots of surrealism? To comprehend the work of Rico Lins, this omnivorous designer, we must first understand his voracity for issues, fields of knowledge, diverse times and spaces, we must flicker through these innumer-able references – some directly alluded to, others merely intuited –, allied with the notion borrowed from physics, and which he always contended underlay his entire work, that “friction generates energy”. However, it is one thing to receive information at home; the energy produced by contact with a body shrouded in familiar environments and aromas, and quite another to do what Rico Lins did, opting for nomadism, roaming the wider world on a seventeen-year pilgrimage through France, England, Holland, Germany and the United States, keeping permanently open that mental rift caused by what is not fully understood, by what is not my own.

Despite his young age, by the time Rico Lins realized that design was his business, he was already many things and wanted to be so much more: he had dealt with and ranged through such a diversity of territories, a citizen of the world for whom nationality was not so much a limit as a false question, and for whom the exchange of ideas, the bartering of times and spaces was a condition for surviving in a world – for better or for worse – already definitively intercon-nected. After all, what exactly are the limits of language? Of visuality? Whoever likes images, feels the voluptuousness of the image, to paraphrase Pedro Nava’s defence of the word, is interested in everything, whether the output of the other or the stuff that comes from within, by mistake, from that hidden, uncertain me. An objet trouvé stumbled upon in the most intimate dark.

Aware that design was increasingly becoming a collage, a point of inter-section for technology, the market and culture, and that each is a plethoric concept, Rico Lins always operated through a layering of disparate techniques and languages, from orthodox woodcutting and typography to the latest graphic resources; from the street poster to digitally processed information; from the content one can apply with refinement to the stuff you have to snatch by force. Collage affords the graphic work a result that approaches much more closely to the operational and imagetic processes of contemporary culture than to the controlled visual experience offered by the moderns. A play of juxtaposi-tions between voices and noise; a zone of tension in which forms and figures maintain a precarious, crumpled, ambiguous balance that is, after all, what demands intelligence of those who presume to read it.

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In Rico Lins, design becomes a trespassing of thought structures and pro-ductive techniques, proof that friction generates energy, the same energy that radiates from the life of our cities, from their walls and ragged spaces.

All of this is why “Rico Lins – graphic borderlines” is not an exhibition in the conventional sense; no mere presentation of his magnificent portfolio. More than that, what we have here is an artist willing to reveal the sap of his poetry, the purest possible state of the processes and elements that go into it. Hence the environmental character of this exhibition, a sort of “installation” that elucidates the worldview of Rico Lins, one proper to a graphic designer capable of merging, combining and recycling words, images and rhythms, making them manifest in fabrics, papers and buildings, sounds and projections and even in supports that border on the immaterial.

* Agnaldo Farias is a professor of the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism of the University of São Paulo from 2003 and a consultant of curatorship at the Instituto Tomie Ohtake from 2000. He was the curator of the Brazilian Representation at the 25th São Paulo Inter-national Biennial (2002) and is the main curator of the Museum of Modern Art in Rio de Janeiro (1998-2000).

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Reinvented TerritoriesAdélia Borges*

All of us – people, institutions and companies – are experiencing, in some shape or form, the need to combine an arching understanding of the world with a way of operating that is predicated upon a homegrown view and feeling, born from our own private histories. What is now an attribute of contemporaneity Rico Lins has long been bringing to the field of graphic design.

Moving among different cultures without losing one’s own; infusing graphic art with a heavy dose of personal creation; drinking from the chaos of the streets and the low-brow in order to write the erudite; predicting and encouraging interac-tion with the user of the project; and taking recourse to the manual nature of the Brazilian tradition in order to compose the digital, these are all practices we see seeping into our day, but which have been part of Rico’s repertoire since the very beginning of his journey.

His education and early career unfolded in Rio de Janeiro in the 1970s, a time in which the idea that design ought to be neutral, aseptic and ascetic prevailed; a view imported, unchallenged, from the German and Swiss schools of the graphic arts. From his earliest works, Rico rebelled against this view, incorporating the casualness and richness of street culture in order to attain a result defined by experimentation and, above all, invention.

His time spent studying and working in London, Paris and New York – the so-called “Helena Rubinstein circuit”, which for so long set the trend for the “rest” of the world – was decisive in expanding his horizons, broadening his humanist knowledge and diversifying his repertoire. In these cities, Rico was in the eye of the storm, working in or for important institutions and companies – from the CBS record label to Beaubourg and the George Pompidou; from The New York Times to Random House. However, at no time did he fall into the trap of those who adhere to an internationalist lifestyle and language in pursuit of a passport to international recognition. He used his experience to deepen, on one hand, his understanding of multiculturality as one of the decisive factors at work in the world today, and, on the other, to feed and hone his creative freedom.

Back in Brazil, this time in São Paulo, he remained open to outside influences coming to him from a world in motion and with increasingly more diluted borders, but filtered through his own personal and local eye – a kind of design counterpart

to the satellite dish stuck in the mud of Pernambuco with which Chico Science invented a new musical sonority.

From his São Paulo studio, Rico attends to a diversity of demands across the various design specialities, including books, brochures, posters, packaging, sites, exhibitions, TV programme and film openings, illustrations, etc, etc, etc. The practice of a multiple and consistent blend of design, one capable of dialoguing with other forms of expression, reconciling opposites and, as such, effectively speaking to the audiences to which his works are directed, has attracted a host of entrepreneurs from the cultural area who are in syntony with the demands of contemporaneity. His experience has awarded him a broad spectrum of clients, both Brazilians trying to reach international audiences and foreigners trying to reach deeper into the emerging markets on the new world map.

Since the 1970s, Rico has been at the cutting-edge when it comes to trans-lating notions of identity, belonging, viewer inclusion and shared repertoire-building – the buzzwords of the day in marketing departments worldwide. This exhibition and catalogue will certainly afford a wider-reaching look at a rich career and equip us to set off together down newly-trodden paths.

* Adélia Borges is a journalist and curator specialized in design. She was the director of the Museu da Casa Brasileira (2003-2007) and design editor for the newspaper Gazeta Mercantil (1998-2002).

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Recycling Rico Lins

From the standpoint of creativity, Rico Lins has always been intrigued by the idea of graphic design as “unique work reproduced in series”. This concept points to the central ambiguity of creative graphic design with its ephemerality and an existence limited by its essentially utilitarian condition, reproducible and dispos-able. On the other hand, it also func-tions as a permanent thermometer of its time.

Somehow this has always been present in Lins’ work in his appro-priation of visual clichés, whether icons reclaimed from mass culture, references extracted from works of art or mere re-utilization of industrial printed matter. From the Constructiv-ist photo-montages of Rodchenko to the banana pop of Andy Warhol, from Kurt Schwitters to Walt Disney, the contemporary visual universe is that of mass culture and its products: magazine clippings, tickets, money,

packaging, political fliers, labels, cheap literature, forms, printed medication information, advertising. The huge re-sultant production of waste gives rise to the raw materials from which recycled paper is manufactured.

In 2000, when Suzano paper industry invited Lins to participate in the launch event for Reciclato paper, he took “recycling” as his pivotal point with the concept embracing everything from creation to printing to the end uses of paper. As a starting point, he took examples from his work that used images of his own as well as images created by other artists and which were later re-utilized in a different context. For the event, he created four projects from the combina-tion of others, altering proportions and colors, recompos-ing details, superimposing transparencies and, finally, re-utilizing photolithographs for re-impressions with varied special colors, varnishes and embossing, with a view to their utilization in the preparation of model packaging and other three-dimensional volumes presented at the event.

In addition to the material produced for the Reciclato launch, Lins also sought to use the opportunity to extend the idea of recycling to the creative process itself and to further reflect on copyright issues, digital reproduction, originality and other themes central to contemporary communications which were – and remain – current. Both the images and the paper on which they are printed coex-

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ist in the same industrial waste. Recycling adds, divides, multiplies and subtracts, whether from the viewpoint of social, economic and environmental function, whether from that of marketing strategies. In the midst of these basic arithmetical signs, paper in its raw state can be seen in unprinted surfaces.

Some time later, at the invitation of Nervo Óptico journal, Rico Lins called attention to two other steps in the same process. The first, inward, excavating the more or less accidental authorial genealogy of these images in order to recompose their references and origin. The sec-ond, outward, but no less accidental in that this inventory of references, whether casual or explicit, echoed a way of thinking and doing design.

It is natural, then, that these considerations establish a dialogue between the authorial and the commercial in which the individual and the legal entity discover each other looking in the mirror. It is in this space marked by diversity that singularity is revealed: in the visual identity of Rico Lins +Studio and its quest to integrate the random and the systematic, in an elastic gesture that extends from the predictability of a business card to the random

unpredictability of a site in permanent construction.

The wide range of choices of graphic material which result from this process has permitted the creation of highly renewable and du-rable systems that generate impact, curiosity and empathy in the target audience. At the time it was produced, the re-utilization of graphic materials was innovative both as process and as creative attitude, instigating thought-ful consideration of visual identity and reclamation of resources. All compo-nents were produced from fragments of posters originally created for the launch of the line of paper.

In this way, Rico Lins +Studio proposes, as an alternative to those who believe that nothing more is cre-ated, the certainty that everything is transformed.

Posters on the preceding pair of pages:

Riciclato ProjectClient: Suzano Papel e Celulose

São Paulo, 2000

Envelopes and business cards on this pair of pages:

Visual Identity Rico Lins +StudioClient: Rico Lins +Studio

São Paulo, 2000

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Promo +Studio

Client: Rico Lins +Studio

São Paulo, 1998

This promotional piece for Rico Lins +Studio was conceived and developed entirely from the use of printed sheets left over from the second fashion catalog produced for Zoomp in 1997.

The decision to explore the visual qualities of recycled materials transformed the byproduct of one project into the main piece of +Stu-dio’s relationship material, allying three of Lins’ greatest distinguish-ing features: excellence in graphic design, boldness of creative concepts and low cost. By integrating concept, production system and distribution, Rico Lins points to promotional com-munications solutions that go beyond the presentation of a portfolio. The re-utilization of graphic material for this purpose was innovative as pro-

cess and as creative attitude at the time of its production and merited the ADG award in the 4th Brazilian Biennial of Graphic Design.

The folder was printed in blank areas on the sheets en-suring full utilization of scraps and machine entries and used the same inks and finishing as the source material. The envelope was made 100% from sheets left from color matching and cleaning printing rollers. The production processes for these materials were reduced to cutting, folding and gluing. By taking full advantage of trimmings and finishing, there was no additional consumption of paper and printing.

The high quality printing and the options for editing the material chosen for the folder, along with the large and unusual variety of envelopes that resulted from the process, have created a highly durable system which gen-erates impact, curiosity and empathy in the target public. With exceedingly low environmental impact in production as well as in transportation or distribution, this solution has combined low cost and high reclamation of materials, all perceived as positive differentials by clients.

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Acacia Kit

Client: Ripasa

São Paulo, 2002

In 2002, Ripasa S.A. Pulp and Paper expanded its line of Acacia paper adding new colors, weights and surface textures. Rico Lins was hired to develop a new sample book and propose relationship actions for the product. He soon found that innumerable possibilities of applica-tion of the paper were not clear to users and its use was often limited to commemorative printed matter and certain special products.

Lins proposed action to repo-sition the product with creative professionals, a strategy enhanced by the firm’s extensive network of institutional partners. This action led to a partnership between the printing industry and the Museum of Modern Art (MAM) in São Paulo and the creation of a series of pieces focused on art education. These were developed using works in the museum’s collection and others pro-duced in the workshops and courses offered by the museum. The result was launched in an installation at MAM Ibirapuera.

By building a clear bridge between the creativity and innovation of the museum’s educational activities and the characteristic qualities of the pa-per, the action not only added value

to the Acacia line, but also generated examples of techni-cal excellence for the printing companies involved in the process and benefited MAM, which now had a series of supplementary didactic materials at its disposal.

Among creative professionals, the action opened up the wide potential of the paper for printing four-color images, special colors, and the use of creases, folds and cuts, putting its qualities in evidence and increasing market awareness and consumption.

In addition to the new sample book, the Acacia kit is composed of interactive materials that explore the graphics capabilities of the new line of papers: card deck (with letters), a memory game and packages with artistic content.

On the left, the glass bottle, which was accomodated in the package along with the other elements of the kit, contained small paper strips with phrases and mes-sages oriented toward the target public.

Award: 7th Brazilian Biennial of Graphic Design, ADG, 2004.Creative direction and design: Rico LinsCuratorship and event: Art 3Graphic production: Jairo da Rocha

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multiplicação

comunidade

história

cooperação

sinergia

relacionamento

oresco

essência

valor

música

expresessão

mudança

pertencimento

espectadores

lescenteadole

pais

comunicaação

cessoproc

resusultado

cresciimento

patrococinadores

crianças

açãointegra

educação

qualidade

criatividade

diferenciação

ipaçãoparticipa

ensimage

versatilidades

inclusão

parceiros

idenntidade

a

Guri Project

Client: Projeto GuriSão Paulo, 2006-07

In 2006, Rico Lins was invited to redesign the brand for Guri Project, an organization that promotes the social inclusion of underprivileged children and teena- gers though music education. The brand’s values were repositioned and an institutional communications project developed by +Studio defined the visual iden-tity system and the design of promotional materials, website, uniforms, typographical families, etc. The new system, introduced to the internal public in an alignment workshop, is self-sustainable, flexible and inclusive, and can be adjusted and applied according to the needs and possibilities of each of the more than 400 units in São Paulo state. This flexibility allows users to combine the logo with different illustrations that reference the activi-

ties and actions of the Guri Project in its various publics.

This system and the guidelines for its use were made available to collabo-rators on the Guri Project extra-net and it can be updated online.

In addition to the brand concept, the visual identity manual contains exam-ples of all materials for dissemination, promotion and signage, including clear instructions for use of color along with two families of typographic vignettes that allude to music and the commu-nity and are organized as dingbats.

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Goethe Institutional Communications

Client: Goethe-Institut São Paulo

São Paulo, 2009-10

The Goethe-Institut São Paulo had long felt the need to reformulate its visual communication to increase objectivity, consistency and unity in all of its communi-cation with the public.

+Studio started with the understanding that Goethe-Institut is influential in the dissemination and promotion of German culture in Brazil and proposed to develop a graphical language that would highlight personali-ties representative of German cinema, sports, music, architecture and other areas, ranging from the country’s earliest history to the present day. The vectorization of iconic portraits of these personalities and the use of spot color, transparencies and overlays created a remarkable identity, easily recognized, while supporting a wide variety of uses in diverse media without the idea becoming repetitive. This permitted the same language to be adopted for visual communication within the physi-cal space of the institute, for example, and in the layout of a folder for the cultural agenda.

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Natura Language

Client: Natura

São Paulo, 2003-04

Rico Lins +Studio thinks of design as a tool for identity construction. The Natura Language project, a set of guidelines to define a creative course for the brand’s visual identity, was developed in 2003 and 2004 in con-junction with Thymus Branding and is a good example of this approach. Essence, beliefs and values have become better expressed, bringing ethical attributes and brand awareness closer to diverse publics as well as integrat-ing tools and communication actions.

Workshops were held for training and alignment with suppliers, partners, collaborators and managers of internal and external communication in addition to workshops for photographers, designers, journalists, architects, advertising agencies and strategic brand-language committees.

The foundations laid by the publication Natura Lan-guage are being implemented since 2004 in brand com-

munication, advertising campaigns, institutional materials, events, rela-tionship actions and new products in markets where Natura operates.

An example of these proposals can be seen in the communication materials for points of sale for the Natura Ekos France product line: a series of four posters introduced the product to the French con-sumer, identifying active principles, ingredients the production process, including local social and cultural references. Printed on recycled paper, these posters would be re-utilized in packaging and product presentation.

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Panamericana Graphic Design ‘96

Client: Escola Panamericana de Artes

São Paulo, 1996

In 1996 Rico Lins developed marketing materials for the International Congress of Graphic Design sponsored by the school with the theme “Local vs. Global”. Lins was creative director for the event and for the whole communications campaign which brought together eighteen designers, Brazilians and members of AGI-USA.

The creative concept stressed the plurality of expression in graphic design and included posters, catalogs, programs, folders, adver-tising campaigns for radio, animated TV com-mercials and advertising for magazines and newspapers. Each guest designer created a poster for the event.

In the catalog-invitation (right), the dimen-sions of the modular system allowed for zero paper waste and was the basis of formatting for the entire project. The catalog is com-posed of loose sheets with a portfolio and biographical notes for each participant.

Creative Director: Rico Lins. Design and art direction: Rico Lins. Photography: Fabio Ribeiro. Graphic pro-duction: Ricardo Aiello. Agency: W/Brasil, São Paulo.

H.Stern

Client: H.SternSão Paulo, 2003-04

Rico Lins +Studio was hired by H.Stern to create relationship material for mailing on the birthday of each client. In addition to celebrating the date, the message of this commorative piece should reinforce perception of the brand as exclusive, valuable and durable. The star symbol, already associated with the H.Stern brand, was linked to a celestial zodiacal chart on which the birthday client could locate his or her sign with a magnifying glass that came in a silver-colored case. At the bottom of the cradle which accommodated the magnifier, the word YOU, printed in microscopic letters, was visible through the glass.

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Iguatemi

Client: Shopping IguatemiSão Paulo, 1988

The concept behind Iguatemi Shopping Center’s promotional catalog for the international market was geared to convey an image of the mall’s solidity together with its connection to fashion. The limited edition, made with steel screen, comes in a binder format that permits tailoring to unique publics. Bilingual, the internal plates present the mall, its history, localization, consumer markets, labels, publicity campaigns, etc.

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Alice Zoomp

Client: Zoomp

São Paulo, 1997

The catalog project for Zoomp brought several artists together around the theme of Alice in Won-derland, among them Arnaldo An-tunes, Augusto de Campos and Waly Salomão. By featuring more attitude than fashion, Rico Lins’ first fashion catalog demonstrated the possibil-ity of strengthening the connection between fashion and culture.

With the objective of producing a book/catalog that would outlast sea-

sonal fashion catalogs, content was introduced to gener-ate spontaneous media coverage by culture departments and thus contributing to the repositioning of the brand. This was one of model Gisele Bundchen’s early assign-ments before turning into a runway phenomenon.

This work was exhibited in the 4th Biennial of Design in 1998.

Creative Directors: Rico Lins, Carlos Nader, Paulo Borges, Graça Cabral and Denise Basso. Design: Rico Lins +Studio. Art Director: Rico Lins. Graphic project: Rico Lins, Mariana Bernd. Photogra-phy: Willy Biondani. Graphic production: Jairo da Rocha.

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Zoomp Almanac of the Senses

Client: Zoomp

São Paulo, 1997-98

In the spirit of the previous catalog, the Almanac of the Senses, prepared for the spring-summer collection 1997-98, combines garments from the collection with games, tests, trivia, recipes and the work of artists, photographers and poets, freely associated with the five senses. This kind of exploration of resources and the design solutions pro-posed have become a benchmark in the editorial market.

The project won awards from (for example) the Society of Publication Designers, the Art Directors Club of New York and Brazil Makes Design, and was reproduced in several specialized publications such as Graphis Magazine and First Choice.

This work was exhibited in the 4th Biennial of Design in 1998.

Creative Director: Rico Lins, Carlos Nader, Paulo Borges, Graça Cabral and Denise Basso. Text direction: Carlos Nader. Design: Rico Lins +Studio. Art Director: Rico Lins. Graphic project: Rico Lins, Monique Schenkels. Photography: Willy Biondani, Fernando Laszlo. Graphic production: Jairo da Rocha

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Ponta-de-lança Series

Client: Editora Língua Geral

Rio de Janeiro, 2006-07

Rico Lins +Studio created visual identity for Língua Geral, a publisher specialized in the Portuguese-language literature of Brazil, Portugal and Africa. The identity project includes the publisher’s logo, seals and graphic designs for the collection as well as art direction and design for book covers and promotional materials.

The design of the collection, whose purpose is to re-veal new voices and little-known Portuguese-language authors found inspiration in Moleskine-style travel diaries with an elastic band.

The graphic project aimed to bring these authors closer to the Brazilian public by making use of bright

pure color and unusual cover pho-tos in the “travel diary” format. In addition to literary qualities, one of the project’s goals was to add value to the books as graphic objects; the elastic was eventually eliminated to better adapt the collection to mar-ket conditions. To counterbalance, the collection began to use color photos, working with a portfolio of Brazilian, Portuguese and African photographers.

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Identity and Conflict

Client: Arte Educação/Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil, Brasília

São Paulo, 2004

Work done by +Studio is oriented not only to edito-rial projects but also to curatorships, expographics and exhibition conception in Brazil and abroad, always aim-ing to promote actions that will augment the reach, the visibility and the clarity of content.

An example of this type of work was the creation of visual identity and graphic project for the Identity and Conflict exhibition by Brazilian artist Alex Flemming which took place at the Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil in Brasília. The material included graphic design of printed pieces (catalog, folder, invitation and poster) and of the exhibition hall (banners, texts and captions). The invitation was conceived as the full-size reproduction of a fragment of the artist’s main installation at the exhibit.

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Bravo! magazine

Client: Editora d’Ávila

São Paulo, 1997-2000

Bravo! magazine appeared in 1997 and proposed a combination of essays, articles and services in the field of culture. Rico Lins collaboration began with the first edi-tion, alternating between covers and inside pages.

As in his work for other publications, Lins chose not to rely on a single style but to pursue a graphic solution well-suited to each theme. This allowed him not only to guarantee variety of covers by using from collage to photography to illustration, but to experiment graphi-cally, encouraged by the publication’s innovative graphic project. The covers reproduced on this page are among the best known.

In 1996 one of Lins’ covers for Bravo! won awards in the Brazil Makes Design exhibition and in the 3rd Brazilian Biennial of Graphic Design, ADG.

This work was exhibited in the 4th Biennial of Design in 1998.

Design: Rico Lins. Art Director: Noris Lima

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Big Brazil

Client: Big Magazine

São Paulo, 1999

Rico Lins was invited to assume curatorship, creative direction and design of the first Brazilian edition of Big, an international magazine of style, art and behavior. The deci-sion to portray contemporary urban Brazilian cultural production with the collaboration of guest artists and designers confirmed the creative commitment of Rico Lins’ +Studio to the plurality of expression and diversity that make up Brazilian cultural identity. On the cover, the halved fig is an unusual and provoca-tive synthesis of some of the most recognized and identifiable Brazilian attributes: the exuberance of nature, the explicit sensuality and freedom in the use of color.

The invitation to the magazine’s launch party (left) was packaged and mailed in nylon bags like those commonly used to package fruit. An example of internal pages is the article “Serial Kisser” about the “Kisser”, the folkloric character in Rio de Janeiro who gained notoriety for kiss-ing celebrities.

The project won the Gold Medal of The Art Directors Club, and Merit Award from the Society of Publication Designers (SPD), New York, and the Brazil Makes Design Award, São Paulo/Milan.

Assistant: Dag Rizzolo / Collaborators: Fernando Laszlo, Monique Schenkels, Rafic Farah, Guto Lacaz, Luiz Stein, Gringo Cardia, Marcelo Tas, Fausto Fawcett, Waly Salomão, Carlos Nader, Fernanda Abreu, Braulio Tavares, Carla Caffé, Daniela Thomas, Guto Lins, Adriana Lins, Bebel Franco, Cássio Vasconcellos, Anna Marianni, Mario Cravo Neto, Seu Jorge, Geléia da Rocinha, Edson Meirelles, Antonio Sagesse, Klaus Mitteldorf, Thomas Lorente, Marcelo Serpa, Ale Gama and others.

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Newsweek

Client: Newsweek Magazine

New York, 1993

Newsweek is the second largest weekly news magazine in the United States with worldwide circulation in editions for North America, Latin America, Europe and Asia.

The production of a publication this size requires not only sophis-ticated logistics but the simultane-ous production of editorial material unique to the four markets while complying with deadlines set by the journalistic staff.

This context demands weekly cre-ation of alternative cover options for the different editions whose closing deadlines must be strictly obeyed: the cover themes are defined in Tuesday afternoon and must be cre-

ated, approved, edited and printed by dawn on Saturday to enable worldwide circulation on the weekend. Respond-ing to this agenda, more than twenty different cover may be solicited per week.

Over the years he lived in New York, Rico Lins main-tained a close relationship with Newsweek and Time magazines, working as an illustrator, designer or art director for articles or covers, some of them circulating exclusively in one of the four markets. The cover on the left, published worldwide, celebrates interactivity as the Egg of Columbus in technology. The design and art direc-tion carry Lins’ signature.

The visual solution for the digital egg which reflects only the hand and the magazine logo was elaborated in the finalizing studio to emphasize the editorial nature of the image, situating the content explicitly within the context of the magazine cover.

Below, two covers of Asian editions.

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BusinessWeek

Client: BusinessWeek Magazine

New York, 1993-97

One of the world’s most important business weeklies, BusinessWeek magazine is published by the McGraw-Hill group and maintains an editorial staff composed of editor-art director teams for each of the editorial departments, as do other major American publications.

Rico Lins collaborated frequently with various edito-rial departments and created numerous covers, some resolved under the pressure of breaking news. In the example on the left, the graphic solution was found in the midst of a phone call from the art director at closing deadline.

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KulturRevolution Magazine

Client: Klartext-Verlag Bochum Hattingen

Paris, São Paulo, London, New York, 1982-2008

Rico Lins has collaborated with KulturRevolution magazine since its founding in 1982. Dedicated to discourse theory, this academic publication – created and edited by professors at the University of Bochum in Germany – proposed an attitude that is editorially and graphically consistent with the content. The publication is characterized not only by thematic versatility – from sexuality to statistics, from architecture to neo-Nazis, from exoticism to nuclear threat – but also by graphic freedom (of expression) and the consequent experimentalism of its covers which are developed analogically and printed in three-color offset, A4 format, by a German printing firm.

Opting for this analogical process required much graphic experimentation in order to simulate and explain the color separations to the printer, with the superimposition and dovetailing of three layers, each with visual elements and specifications corresponding to the printing of each color. The success of the end result of these covers which, before print-ing, look like a totally fragmented analog project, depended not only on the designer’s effort to predict the sum total of the colors, but on the printing firm’s comprehension of all the technical indications. This kind of orchestration always runs the risk of the unexpected.

To celebrate the ongoing dialogue of the magazine with current events and issues, the cover commemorating its 20th anniversary uses the image of a traditional black comb over the rebellious and colorful hair of German youth entangled in the magazine’s name.

Highlighted above, the cover story questions the existence of a collectivity in the 21st century, represented by the photo of a soft drink vendor cart on a Rio de Janeiro beach, by Brazilian photographer Edson Meirelles.

At center, “Discourse Makes Hegemony”, based on an im-age by the Russian constructivist Alexander Rodchenko, the hybrid illustration blends Michel Foucault’s bald head, Marx’s beard, Mao Zedong’s star and a Trotsky button to question if discourse does, indeed, make the hegemony of the Left.

Below, the cover “Left/Right” explores the alternation of power and the ascension of social-democracy in pre-unifica-tion Germany, with the diagram of a tango step called “return to the left” superimposed on the colors of the German flag.

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EXPO KR Invitation

Client: Centre Georges Pompidou/Centre de Création Industrielle (CCI)

Paris, 1999

In the early 1990s, the Centre Georges Pompidou had at its disposal Point-de-Mire, a space dedicated to monthly exhibitions of current design projects. The French magazine BàT had published the work Rico Lins was developing for KulturRevolution magazine and he was invited to exhibit the project.

For the show, Lins created an invitation reflecting the creative process used in KulturRevolution, starting from the same basic techniques described in the preceding text. As a surprise element, the invitation mailings for the exhibition included the word E-X-P-O in four sepa-rate parts which would only make sense when linked together by visitors.

The exhibition was subsequently presented at the Museu de Arte Contemporânea (MAC) of São Paulo and the Museu de Arte Moderna (MAM) in Rio de Janeiro, with invitations made from posters that had been cut into six parts, further developing the idea conceived for the Centre Georges Pompidou.

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Human RightsLes Droits de l’Homme et du Citoyen

Client: Artis 89

Paris, 1989

During the bicentennial commemorations of the French Revolution, an international group of 66 design-ers was invited to create posters alluding to the Decla-ration of Human Rights and participate in an interna-tional forum on the social role of graphic design. These posters resulted in an exhibition in Paris, inaugurated at Couvent des Cordeliers where the first version of the Declaration was drafted 200 years earlier.

Offset printing of the set of posters allowed a simul-taneous launch of the exhibition in various cities around the world.

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Brecht

Client: Berliner Ensemble and VGD

Germany, 1998

The Berliner Ensemble theater company celebrated the centenary of its founder, the playwright Bertolt Brecht, with an international Brecht 100 Plakate exhibi-tion. Organized by designer Alex Jourdain, leader of the collective Nous Travaillons Ensemble, and the associa-tion Verband der Grafik-Designer (VGD), one hundred guest designers participated.

Starting from a newspaper photo and the colors of the German flag, Rico Lins’ poster spotlights the vision of the playwright towards which his work and world-view converge.

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Oleanna – A Power Play

Client: Serino CoyneNew York, 1992

David Mamet was one of the first playwrights to address the controversial issue of sexual harassment in a produc-tion launched at the Orpheum Theatre in New York. The ambiguity of the topic and the tenuous line separating the roles of victim and perpetrator suggested the image of a target formed by alternating a male and a female face, as seen in the early collages above. The extreme simplicity of the graphical result ensured that it would stand out among colorful New York theater posters.

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The real thing

Client: Saque Sagaz Promoções

New York, 1991

The poster for the Coca-Cola – 50 Years with Art exhibi-tion has the bottle made famous by Andy Warhol as its starting point and is printed in black on black. The only element in color – the title The Real Thing – transfers the true value of the brand to its communication: the color red and the slogan.

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Poster for the 21st Biennial of São Paulo

Client: Fundação Bienal de São Paulo

São Paulo, 1991

Rico Lins, Neville Brody, Ikko Tanaka and Roberto Sam-bonet were jurors for the international poster award of the 20th Biennial of São Paulo. The winning poster – depicting a banana cut in half and patched together with metal staples – generated such controversy that for the next Biennial the competition was limited to invited designers.

The curatorial emphasis for this 21st Biennial was “Man” and the winning project, created by Rico Lins, was composed of a series of three pieces that propose a new reading of three classic male sculptures. Rodin’s The

Thinker was printed in poster format and the statues of The Discus-Thrower and Mercury on postcards. The pre-production and the photo shoot executed in analog format by Spanish photographer Alejandro Cabrera involved a large dose of technical experimentation and unex-pected results – like the photo used in the winning poster.

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Connexions><Connections

Client: SESC-SP and CulturesFrance

São Paulo, 2009

As part of the celebrations of France-Brazil Year, the exhibi-tion Connexions><Connections was conceived around the idea of authorial graphic design and brought together two dozen new French and Brazilian talents to reflect on the concepts of territoriality, identity and diversity. The event was held at SESC Pompeia and included workshops, lectures and cre-ative sessions to explore the dialogue between the contemporary graphic production of the two countries.

Curated by Rico Lins and Christelle Kirchstetter – former director of Pôle graphisme in Chaumont, France – , the exhibition offered an overview of new Brazilian and French design and went beyond the traditional posters, books and printed matter to dialogue with digi-tal media, public spaces, contemporary art and vernacular manifestations.

Rico Lins +Studio was responsible

for the graphic design and the exhibition project which were conceived to generate low environmental impact by re-utilizing materials from previous exhibitions. The letter “X”, universal sign for interchange and multiplication, served as the project’s central element and was used with multiple meanings, from the letter common to both languages to the Roman numeral X which corresponded to the number of participants from each country.

To reinforce the idea of balanced interchange, the designer established a symmetry that allowed the poster to be fixed in any position, with vivid colors recalling the contemporary landscape of graphic art.

The poster-folder gave continuity to the graphic concept of the poster. To generate production savings (by eliminating folds, staples and other types of finishing at the print shop) the public received a whole sheet of paper (66 x 96 cm) which contained, in seemingly random form, information about the designers who were participating in the exhibition as well as dotted/perforated lines and indications for creasing. Following the instructions for folding and cutting, visitors were able to assemble the catalog for themselves, interacting with object, texts and images. Upon assembly, the seemingly random contents were found to be perfectly organized and legible.

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“Brazil in Posters” Project

Client: Les Silos/Pôle graphisme de Chaumont

Chaumont, France, 2005

In 2005, Pôle graphisme de Chaumont invited Rico Lins to mount an exhibition of Brazilian posters. The show was part of its annual program of international exhibitions and the first dedicated to Brazil. The “Brazil in Posters” project figured as the main graphic design event on the program for Brazil/France Year in 2005, recovering and revaluing the poster art produced in Brazil since the 1950s – from the 1st Biennial of São Paulo in 1951 to recent experiments in street-art and digital production.

Curated by Rico Lins with production coordinated by +Studio, the event was committed to systematizing and reflecting on Brazilian poster production as it introduced a substantial part of Brazilian graphics memory to the contemporary international scene. For the exhibition, which included a conference, workshop and parallel activities, +Studio created a set of communication and relationship materials.

In addition to the catalog of two hundred works with previously unpublished critical texts and essays, there was an exclusive, experimental edition of posters that superim-

posed digital printing, silk-screen and the rustic typography of traditional street posters which, in its final ver-sion, became the promotional poster for the event, printed in polychrome offset and large format silk-screen (right).

The clothespin was adopted as a core element of the project’s visual identity – a reference to a widespread manifestation of Brazilian graphics, the use of a string and pins to exhibit cheap literature in street markets and also to the ephemeral nature of the poster – and was reproduced in a variety of ways.

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My City Is Where I Am

Client: “Better home city, better life” poster project in ShanghaiSão Paulo, 2010

There are places I rememberAll my life though some have changed(Lennon-McCartney)

Rico Lins was invited to participate in the “Better home city, better life” project for the World Expo in Shanghai, China. The posters created were exhibited in the gallery of the School of Fine Arts at Shanghai University. The project included workshops, exhibitions and forums between summer and autumn of 2010.

The parallel between the City and Man becomes evident as the viewer follows the course of the meridians in an anatomical map of the human body used in Chinese acupuncture. From London to Londrina, Crete to Crato, from New York to Nova Iguaçu, Lins created an imaginary journey through the body in which the body itself is simul-taneously the passenger, the vehicle and a road map of urban memories.

Cities and bodies are living organisms that express and share some basic principles: flux, growth, rhythm, mobility, balance, capillary action, expansion, circulation, peripheral systems, etc. “My memory is my home, my heritage, my landscape. My city is where I am.”

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Jazz Orchestra

Client: Jazz SinfônicaSão Paulo, 2006-0740 x 60 cm poster/program, 4 x 94 cm (digital), offset on Reciclato paper

Renowned for its versatility and great empathy on the part of the public, the Symphonic Jazz Orchestra is noted for offering concerts that combine symphonic and jazz orchestra formations with special guests from the world of popular music. When Rico Lins was asked to redesign its visual identity, the consensus that nothing reflected the Orchestra better than the quality of its programming and repertoire served as the starting point. This perception highlighted the need to reposition the Orchestra’s communica-tion so as to reinforce those qualities to the public, including listeners, spon-sors and the Orchestra itself.

Rico Lins +Studio was responsible for all aspects of the Orchestra’s communications project, including branding, visual identity, uniforms, advertisements and other promotional materials for concerts, subscrip-tions, etc. For the series Jazz Orchestra+guests, in addition to a new logo, +Studio developed a concert program which reversed to a poster. The resulting series of posters, developed between 2006 and 2007, was printed digitally in large format and led to exhibi-tions which, at the end of each season, celebrated and consolidated the work of the Orchestra for that year.

The poster project opened at the Museum of Image and Sound (MIS) in São Paulo and then went on tour throughout Brazil, incorporating the posters of new performances as they happened and coming to a close in Havana, Cuba, with all 27 of the posters that had been created.

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João Penca

Client: RCA Discos

Rio de Janeiro, 1985

For the cover of the band’s first album of surf music, “João Penca e seus Miquinhos Amestrados”, Rico Lins appropriated the group’s mocking irreverence in an unusual collage that uses elements of covers typical to the genre.

Art direction: Tadeo Valério and Ronaldo Bastos

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Me, Myself and Eyes

Client: Royal College of Art

London, 1987

Three-dimensional photo-montage created for a series of postcards for the Around Dada proj-ect developed at the Royal College of Art in London, this self-portrait was published again in 2009 in the magazine Inventa, which featured a cover story with Rico Lins (right).

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Sentinel

Client: Royal College of Art

London, 1987

While studying at the Royal Col-lege of Art, Rico Lins developed numerous experiments with collage, photography and film animation. The image of the mousetrap with eyes in this three-dimensional photo-montage was developed into a holograph as part of his final paper, the “Around Dada” project.

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Marilyn Mouse

Client: The New York Times

New York, 1992

Between 1987 and 1997, Rico Lins collaborated frequently with several sections of The New York Times, creating numerous editorial illustrations, vignettes and covers.

Considered the leading daily newspaper in the U.S., its production structure requires the presence of an art director and editor for each section. Most of the work was commissioned weekly by the Op-Ed pages, the liter-ary supplement Book Review and by the regular sections of the paper.

The collage (left), featured on the Sunday Arts & Entertainment section, combines icons of American pop culture in the form of a mask. Mickey Mouse, Coca-Cola, Hollywood blockbusters, Andy Warhol’s Marilyn Monroe and the dollar compose this hybrid figure – a powerful synthesis of the entertainment industry.

Created analogically, the production of these images resulted from combining diverse materials, media and processes. Photos, clippings, photocopies, fax, everyday objects, commercial printed matter and traditional office and design materials coexist in these works.

Art Director: Linda Brewer

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“Rebento”

Client: Imagem do Som Project Gilberto Gil

São Paulo, 2000

As part of the Imagem do Som exhibition dedicated to the music of Gilberto Gil, the song “Rebento” (“Sprout”) was conceived as a three-dimensional collage in large format. Previously unreleased, this image is part of a series formed by superimposing two anonymous faces, originally created by Rico Lins for the Op-Ed page of The New York Times. Like this one, the original illustrations published in black and white make use of faces collected from the daily press in texts regarding racial issues.

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Burocracy

New York, 1992

While living in New York, Rico Lins collaborated as an illustrator for various publications and was represented by Pushpin Studio for several years. To illustrate a story about interpersonal relationships in corporations – cautioning the reader with regard to bureaucracy – only materials present in office were used: spreadsheets, enve-lopes, rubber stamps, staples, etc. The use of everyday materials has been a constant in Lins’ work and is one of the most frequent themes in the creative workshops he holds in Brazil and abroad.

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About Rico Lins

Designer, art director, illustrator and educator, Rico Lins has accumulated an extensive curriculum of professional and didactic activities in expressive institutions and companies both in Brazil and abroad.

He graduated in industrial design from the esdi-Rio in 1976 and received his Diplome d’Études Approfondies in the Arts from Université de Paris viii, in 1981. In 1987, he obtained the title of Master of Arts from the Royal College of Art, London. Over the last 30 years he has worked in Paris, London, New York, Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, on projects for such companies as CBS Records, Time Warner, The New York Times, Newsweek, MTV, Le Monde, The Pompidou Centre, TV Globo, Editora Abril, Zoomp, Natura, SESC, and many others.

A former teacher at the School of Visual Arts in New York, he coordinated and currently teaches on the Master’s Degree course in Graphic Design at the Istituto Europeo de Design, in São Paulo. He has given lectures and work-shops in Brazil and abroad at events that include the Festival de Chaumont, Festival della Creatività Firenze, IED Barcelona, SENAC and SENAI, Escola Panamericana de Artes, Universidade do Livro, RevelaDesignRecife, as well as a touring programme of so-called analogical design workshops at his own studio and numerous institutions. He has had individual exhibitions of his work in Paris, São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Caracas and Chaumont, and has also actively participated as an exhibitor, curator and juror at the main congresses, biennials and collective exhibitions in design in numerous countries.

His articles and portfolio have been published in all the main interna-tional specialist magazines and books and his works feature in the per-manent collections of important institutions, such as the Musée d’Histoire Contemporaine, Musée de l’Affiche et de La Publicité and Bibliothèque Nationale Française, in Paris, the Pôle Graphique de Chaumont, Sttatli-ches Museum für Angewandte Kunst, in Munich, and the Museu de Arte Contemporânea de São Paulo.

Among his various awards are gold medals from the NY Art Directors Club and Society of Publication Designers, the Prêmio Abril, Design by Designers 2001 and the Type Directors Club Merit Award in 2007. He is a member of the Comitê de Notáveis da Escola Panamericana de Artes (Board of Notables of the Escola Panamericana de Artes), São Paulo and has been a member of the AGI – Alliance Graphique Internationalle since 1997.

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