Anuário de artes visual do Brasil 1967

A while back, Stephen brought up Brasilia here, and mentioned how this wide mid-century grotesk from France wasn’t only named after Brazil’s then brand new capital city, but might also have taken stylistic clues from its architecture.

In 1967, Brazilian designers appropriated the Brasilia typeface for their purposes. This is the cover of the first annual by the Clube dos Diretores de Arte do Brasil, the Brazilian Art Directors Club. The club’s name is set in all-lowercase letters, with a single lowered B for “Brasil”. Rotated by 90 degrees, the line represents a book spine cutting a swath through a wall of similar annuals from others countries such as the United States, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and France, proudly claiming its place among them.

The cover was designed by Eduardo A. Bretones, with art direction from Sami Mattar and photography by H. Franceschi. The annual was edited by Inaldo G. Carvalho and published by Rio Gráfica. A copy is currently available from Estante Virtual.

Via design_ref, a project aimed at “recovering part of the visual memory of Brazilian graphic design and putting it back into circulation.” Their Flickr stream is sadly laying dormant since a few years, but it still is a great resource.