Priscila Lena Farias / Anna Calvera Marcos da Costa ... - Blucher

Packaging design in Portugal during the 20 th century as a political
propagandistic device
COELHO, Nuno / Designer / University of Coimbra / Portugal
Graphic Design History / Packaging / 20 th century / Portugal /
Confiança
Portugal underwent an intense period of change during the
last century, experiencing five quite distinct political regimes.
The ideological orientation of the Estado Novo, the longest authoritarian
regime in Western Europe, had long been transmitted
through diverse symbolic and iconographic graphic media developed
at the time. Soap and Perfumes Factory Confiança demonstrates
that the cultural propaganda device of the regime also involved
ephemeral and disposable graphics, including packaging.
1. Introduction
The 20 th century consolidated graphic design as a autonomous
subject, firstly as a result of the progress resulting from the Industrial
Revolution and on the other hand as a result of a series
of political, economic, social, cultural and artistic upheavals. The
exponential growth of private consumption observed at this time
led the industry to place special emphasis on the production of
product packaging.
The term packaging is understood to refer to the container that
contains or involves a particular consumable product throughout
its lifetime and thus serves for the protection, transportation,
storage and handling. However, the contribution of packaging
to our social organization is not limited to its functional and
economic dimension, but also operating at its communicative
dimension level, which contribute many diverse social, cultural
and psychological factors. In his book “The Consumer Society”
Baudrillard states that ‘the relationship between the consumer
and the object has been transformed: it no longer refers to that
object in particular in its usefulness, but on the set of objects in
its full meaning’ (Baudrillard 2007).
However, unlike other manifestations of graphic design like
philately and numismatics, packaging was not subject to a thorough
and continued safeguarding job throughout the 20th century
because of its ephemeral and disposable nature. Therefore,
it was rarely a focus of exclusive and dedicated attention. Given
the vastness of the material universe around us, the existing
literature on the specific case of packaging throughout the 20 th
century in Portugal is still limited and characterized by small
samples accompanying catalogs of collections whose scientific
value is of little significance.
2. “Campanha do Bom Gosto”
Portugal lived the last century intensely; one of the most turbulent
eras in its history, experiencing five political regimes quite
distinct from one another: Constitutional Monarchy (until 1910);
First Republic (1910-1926); Military Dictatorship (1926-1933);
“Estado Novo” (“New State”, 1933-1974) and, finally, the Second
Republic, which finally brought democracy. For decades before
the 1974 revolution that overthrew the dictatorship and joining
the European Union in 1986, Portugal suffered a major international
isolation, self-perpetuated by the longest authoritarian
regime in Western Europe.
During this period António Oliveira Salazar, President of the
Council of Ministers and the head of the Estado Novo, coined the
slogan “proudly alone”; symptomatic of the whole policy of his
corporatist, traditionalist and conservative regime. Isolationist
and protectionist measures were taken in the economy, while in
culture, a ‘lusitanism by replacing the image of the ‘real’ country
by one whose past and future are conceived according to the
patriotic-clerical nationalist mythology of the Estado Novo’ were
defined (Almeida 2009). Iconographic and symbolic devices
found in graphic works developed during this time transmitted
the ideological orientation of the regime.
Despite the late institutionalization of Design in Portugal 1 , the
Estado Novo was properly aware of its importance by including
this discipline, at the time referred to as “applied art”, in the
“Campanha do Bom Gosto” (“Good Taste Campaign”), an initiative
framed in the cultural program of the regime called “Política de
Espírito” (“Politics of the Spirit”), under the direction of António
Ferro and promoted by the SPN – Secretariado de Propaganda
Nacional (Bureau of National Propaganda), later transformed
into SNI – Secretariado Nacional da Informação, Cultura Popular e
Turismo (National Secretariat of Information, Popular Culture and
Tourism). The “Good Taste Campaign” nurtured a special interest
in the arts, decoration, graphic arts and advertising according to
the nationalist ideals, and highly valued the populist traditions
and folklore of the Estado Novo (Santos 2003).
The ‘Politics of the Spirit’ intended, then, to defend and
widely promote the national historical-ethnographic heritage
contribution through cultural contribution of the reinvention of the
national identity and memory during the Estado Novo, embodied
1 Almeida identifies as three the dimensional structural characteristics essential
to the understanding of historical identity and the institutionalization of Design
in Portugal. The author relates the first dimension – institutionalization – with the
creation, by the Estado Novo regime in 1959, of the INII – Instituto Nacional de
Investigação Industrial (National Institute of Industrial Research) in the logic of
‘integrating design as a driver of industrial modernization’. According to the author,
this stage is followed by the professionalization (‘late, slow, diffuse and induced’)
and of the education, which begins with the creation of the first design degree in
Portugal in 1969 (Almeida 2009).
Design Frontiers: Territiories, Concepts, Technologies / Proceedings of the 8th Conference of the International Committee for
Design History & Design Studies - ICDHS 2012 / São Paulo, Brazil / © 2012 Blucher / ISBN 978-85-212-0692-7