Fundamentos do Design de Aloísio Magalhães: Design BR 1970.

Abstract

Aloísio Magalhães was one of the founders of Brazilian design, in different levels concerning the implementation of this discipline: the professional practice, the academic training, the institutionalization of the activity and the definition of its technical and social role. The project for Petrobras, developeded by his office between 1970 and 72, when he was at the top of his career as a designer, is the main evidence of his action in this field, due to the importance of this company to Brazil, to the scope of the project (from visiting cards to oil refinery tanks), to its implementation throughout the country, and to the many different levels of its innovative character formal, technical, methodological and even linguistic, if we extend this term to Visual Communication.I occupy a particular position to do this research, because I worked in Aloisio s office for a long period of my professional life, and although having collaborated intensively with the Petrobras project, I didn t participate of its initial conception. Furthermore, since then I have been involved, as a designer, in the field of oil distribution, gathering information on this market along 3 decades, what has offered me extensive analysis material. Therefore, although my focus is in the project developed by Aloisio and his team in 1970, in order to understand it properly, it s important to observe what came before, what remained from the project, and what changed afterwards.From this study I can take 2 basic conclusions:1) The development of products and graphic systems can help the designer to solve the paradox between opposite needs of the Design process, like the diversity of the visual communication objects natural to a large corporation and the need of a visual unity.2) Aloísio Magalhães working process of can offer us a rich material for the analysis of the Design process.