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

FARKAS, Mónica / STERLA, Mauricio / CESIO, Laura / SPRECHMANN, Magdalena
country. The public expressed itself as an active, enthusiastic,
committed audience. These features were at the basis of the acceptance
of the graphic proposal by Grupo As.
The As printing press, founded by Jorge de Arteaga in the 1950’s,
was unwittingly an ambitious project of Uruguayan graphic design.
Made up of well-known local graphic Designers who straddled
two generations, the ‘45ers or critical generation, and the
rupturist ‘60ers, with their vision of the possibilities of a historic
leap into the future, with its signs of violence. They made incursions
into multiple areas, one of their most significant contributions
being in the area of poster design and work for the record
industry.
None of them was a design graduate; As was neither an advertising
agency nor did it have links to marketing. It was a printing
press which started with the purchase of an offset machine,
which is why it was linked from its inception with the productive
aspect of graphic design. This machine, which made it possible
to draw directly on plates and masters, conferred a swift, spontaneous
way of working. It is not by chance that the first to use
it were the members of the very press workshop, Torres García,
Gurvich, Pezzino, among others, which provided an unmistakable
link with Uruguayan artistic avant-garde.
In a local medium very much tied to typographical conventions,
As offered a design of great liberty, with ample room for experimentation,
to accomplish quality works regardless of cost, which
appropriated Bauhaus elements, Torres García’s, from Concrete
Art, from Pop, from Latin American popular graphic industry,
articulating them into design pieces with a strong local stamp
which constituted a recognizable identity mark. As a result, they
professionalized the Graphics design field in Uruguay. Hermenegildo
Sábat stated: ‘The professional, almost non-commercial,
nature of the press transcended Montevideo (…) Good design
was always favoured, good drawings, the best compositions. A
treat for any society’ (SCLAVO 2007).
As’s “cultural capital” (Julier 2010) lay in teamwork, in the importance
assigned to innovation and creativity, in their capacity as
a group to offer differentiation. These traits were in keeping with
the Uruguayan popular music movement, which created their
own repertoire to be sung in Spanish, strengthening a sense of
identity but also engaging in an exchange with the Latin American
movement. Identity and dialogue manifested themselves
also in the cover art of records and the posters that the AS printing
press developed and which the record industry benefited
from.
The use of visual devices came to be utterly appropriate for a music
which, in spite styling itself popular, it was an intellectuallybased
movement aimed at an elite who shared and understood
its meaning. However, popular music was also appropriated by
young people, who also identified themselves with a colourful,
spontaneous, dynamic graphic style.
It may be said that true network was formed, with design took
centre stage, unheard-of to that day in the local environment for
the products of popular music integrated by many agents –authors,
Designers, producers, intermediaries and consumers–,
and which tallied with the search for alternative projects with an
economic, social and cultural dimension, a search for projects
that could be “a way out” of the crisis, which were a distinguishing
feature of the 1960’s in Uruguay.
This unprecedented relationship for Uruguay between design,
the cultural field, politics, production, the market and
consumption constitutes an episode which, according to ‘De
Fusco’ 8 , gives rise to a veritable design event in the pre-dictatorial
Uruguay.
4. The ‘Uruguay Natural’ Brand
The creation of the Tourism National Commission on May 25,
1933 evinced State intervention in the redefinition of the Uruguayan
territory by installing the East districts of the Uruguayan
seaboard, such as seaside resorts, modelling the imaginaries
that would represent what we may call modern leisure. A not
always pragmatic set of guidebooks, maps, brochures, posters
and other typologies made up a repertoire which set about focusing
on certain spots in the country, which came to be considered
worthy of a visit.
The development of the Uruguay Natural country brand, with the
State as principal 9 again redefined the territory intending to widen
the choice of tourist offers aimed at a national and international
public. Inasmuch as it articulated an identity whose objective was
to capitalize on tangible and intangible assets of the territory under
the State’s initiative represented a change in the policy of intervention
of design in the public agenda, which sought to align itself
with strategic design trends globally.
The celebration of independence bicentennials in many Latin
American countries, Uruguay among them, seemed like fertile
soil too. It made possible and stimulated revision, reinterpretation
and value enhancement of patrimony and traditions with
a view to designing new experiences which may involve the
citizens, their plural organizations, so organizations and institutions
which are not based nor belong to the country can adhere.
(Puig 2009)
Among the actions evidencing a programme intention to commit
different agents with a capacity to have an impact on local
development, we can quote the Joint Programme 2007-2010
‘Building Capacities for Development’ between the Uruguayan
8 To De Fusco, an event in the history of design, unlike those of art and architecture,
where the protagonists are the makers and their Works, is not only based
on the project makers as, at least, a like weight is enjoyed by producers and
salespeople, and the public. Nor can it be based on products alone, since often
technical innovations, institutions, contributed ideas, above all the productionconsumption
logic, have contributed immensely to design culture.
9 The initial project was presented in 2002 by I+D, Gonzalo Silva and Nicolás
Branca (Ortiz de Taranco 2008).
Design Frontiers: Territiories, Concepts, Technologies 535