Session 69 summary
Introduction to poster and design itself
Design, as in graphic design is not an art, it is communication ‘you have to communicate something’. If one can communicate something in a beautiful way it is even better. But most of the students’ Felipe has seen for the past 30 years, their unique plan is to do something beautiful, astonishing- one doesn’t start by that, they start by thinking what the client wants –if it is a theatre play, if it is a poster for a cultural event or social event or a political event or a healthy event- the designer has to understand what the client want and has to translate it into graphics and the result is great, beautiful, well designed, even better but they have to understand the client and have to understand the public.
Poster design started very early in the history with ads for medicine products, for buses, shoe shine etc. and public workers put their posters on the stall to announce what they did, being a baker or a shoe maker, medicine or dentist, they used posters to advertise their work. So, posters have a long tradition of communication. In the last century, in Europe, Poland started to do things to be renowned by the quality of the posters because Poland at that time was a communist country and they didn’t allow all the movies that came to Poland from abroad and they didn’t allow the regional posters, so the polish designers had to do posters themselves in Poland to advertise a movie and Poland started in the 50s -60s doing amazing design in poster and this has influenced the art of poster everywhere in the world because the polish designers at that time, they had complete freedom to do what they wanted and they were advertising the movie pictures they were working with. Then in Latin America it happened the same, in Cuba there was the same policy of not allowing the regional posters to come to the country so the Cuban designers in the 50s and 60s started doing the same as the polish did and amazingly the posters from Cuba were fantastic because they had very cheap printing, very cheap paper, using very few colours and they did wonderful things in terms of design, in terms of communication and in terms of innovation. Most of these designers, when the revolution came to Cuba they moved to Mexico. So, in Mexico there are many designers that came from Cuba, escaping from the communist situation in Cuba and they brought with them the knowledge of knowing/drawing posters. So, Mexico in Latin America is the second biggest producers of posters. But what is happening to posters these days- the present world is in an internet world and posters are disappearing. The idea of having a poster to publicise a movie, or a theatre play or an exhibition is disappearing because there is no point anymore in printing 1000-2000-3000 copies of a poster and is not much effective. If something is done online and spread the artwork of posters or anything through social media it goes to much more people, it attracts much more publicity. Unfortunately Felipe is from the time where he still loves making posters, testing its materials, buying CDs, booklet and everything, so he is from the printing era. The new generation they don’t care for that anymore.
To show the power of communication through posters, Felipe shares two of his projects. The first project he did was in 1992, in 1992 nobody in the world thought or talked about sustainable world or the environment, the present generation was brought up with the concept of recycling and sustainable world, all the things which were not there in 1992. In 1992 the United Nations hosted the first world conference- first world summit for the environment and sustainable world in Rio de Janeiro, which was the site of the summit and the Brazilian government at that time invited Felipe to create their official posters for the summit. So, in 1992, Felipe invited third party graphic designers from all over the world, at that time some of the best and most important designers at that time and each one of them did a series of posters to celebrate the summit. This exhibition, this poster, this series, this collection of posters were the official gift of the Brazilian government to all the head of states who came to Rio. Everybody got the collection of those posters and the place where the posters were exhibited was everywhere in the world, so it was a huge event. The exhibition opened on the same day in Brazil and other countries, at the same time on the first day of the United Nations summit. The posters were called ‘30 posters on environment and development’. At that time they had the sponsor from one of the biggest paper companies in Brazil who printed new kind of paper for them to book-posters, so it was one of the first ecological papers in Brazil. For everyone the task was to make/do a poster celebrating the environment- a positive poster not a political one. They had to do a poster celebrating it all. Some of the posters were very direct and very simple. In that collection of posters Felipe tried to put- the Latin American designers side by side with some of the most famous designs from Europe and United States and treated them equally. Felipe tried to add Latin graphic design because they are not known everywhere as their counterparts in England, United States or Japan. So, one of his task was to make the Latin American designers- the new ones and the master ones visible in the world because nobody talks about Latin America, it is very diminishing and people seem prejudice with Latin Americans. He also tried to mix women designers and men designers so that it was a mixture of everybody. 20 years later in 2012, the United Nations decided to do another summit in Rio. The Brazilian government invited Felipe again to do the same thing from 20 years ago. Felipe again invited 30 designers from all over the world and they did everything the same, different designers from the first project and the 30 posters from the 2012 work was again an official gift which was exhibited everywhere in the world. Only 28 designers from the original group of 30 designers were there in the re-edition era and it was amazing. This year they are completing 30 years for the summit in 1992 and 10 years since the second summit in 2012. On September (29th Thursday) a big exhibition will be opened of all the 60 sponsors in Bucyrus (city) and they are doing this because Bucyrus will host in October United Nations Summit prior to the summit that will happen on the end of the year in Scotland (?). So, they will do the first one in Bucyrus and they invited Felipe to put out all the posters again and the posters will be called 60 posters celebrating the planet.
The next project Felipe did was for the Russian World Cup. Felipe came up with the idea of inviting one designer from each of the selected countries (for the World Cup). Usually in the World Cup 32 countries are selected, so when the countries were decided for the World Cup, Felipe invited one designer from each of the 32 countries and he did the creatorship together with Susana Machicao from Bolivia, she is the president and director of the biggest design event in Latin America ‘Bolivia poster BNI’ and a big exhibition happens every two years. Felipe did the official poster for the show and again this exhibition opened in every 31 country except Brazil. One of Felipe’s favourite poster shows that anybody can play the football, doesn’t matter what kind of ball- anything can be a football. Apart from the exhibition of the posters in the countries that were selected, there were also exhibition in the countries that were not selected for the world cup like Venezuela, Ecuador, etc.
About the Speaker
Felipe Taborda
Felipe Taborda is a graphic designer, author and curator from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. A graduate of Rio’s Catholic University, he studied cinema and photography at the London International Film School (England), Communication Arts at the New York Institute of Technology and Graphic Design at the School of Visual Arts (USA). Felipe has had his own office since 1990, working mainly in the cultural, publishing and recording areas. In 2008 he launched his book Latin American Graphic Design, published by Taschen (Germany). In 2014 the St John’s University (New York) has organized the exhibition Another Point of View, covering 30 years of his graphic works.
