Graphic identification of printing offices in the city of São Paulo: 1900-1930

Autor: Fabio Mariano Cruz Pereira

Keywords: visual identity, graphic identity, letterpress printing shops, São Paulo city typography, design history

Teacher: Priscila Lena Farias

Funding agency: FAPESP

Begin: 2018 | End: 2023

Abstract

Printing offices were important for the city of São Paulo and were responsible for much of the printed communication that circulated in the city during the first three decades of the twentieth century ('Primeira República'). There are studies about book history and press in the city of São Paulo, notwithstanding, little is known about the printing offices, in particular about their means of identification and the typefaces they used. From this gap, it is possible to formulate the following central question adopted for this doctoral dissertation: "what graphic aspects characterized the identification of printing offices in the city of São Paulo during the first three decades of the twentieth century?". It is assumed that each office was responsible for their own identification, designing or approving the composition of their names on several artifacts, such as: advertisements, covers, title pages, invoices, tags, labels, façades, newspapers or almanacs. As a preliminary answer to this question, it was hypothesized that printing offices, companies whose practice was related to the configuration of everyday graphic language, repeatedly adopted the same letterforms for the composition of their names, establishing patterns of graphic identity comparable to what is currently understood as logotypes, graphic marks or visual identity. In order to verify this hypothesis, the proposed research intends to identify and describe relevant visual and verbal aspects that characterized different forms of graphic identification from these printing offices. The approach method will be supported by analysis and synthesis, from hypothetical deductive methodology. The methodological procedure will be based on investigative techniques, such as literature review on the history of typography in the city of São Paulo and documentary research through which artifacts printed with the names of printing offices will be selected, catalogued and analyzed, as well as on interviews with designers. As a result, graphic characteristics of printing offices identifications from that period will be compared with current concepts of visual identity.

Site: sites.google.com/usp.br/oficinastipograficas

Notion database: https://www.notion.so/The-graphic-identification-of-the-letterpress-printing-offices-in-S-o-Paulo-1900-1930-3d22a065ba7a4a62b9dba66f20a8354c