Estúdio Lógos

we took part in the competition to select a new visual identity for the centro cultural são paulo.

besides being one of the few public cultural venues in são paulo, the ccsp has a unique urban insertion, architecture and scale and is one of the rare cases of a public building that is genuinely accessible, open and used by the population.

another interesting element that suggested the course taken on this project was the fact that the ccsp has a printing shop which it uses to pursue activities related to graphic design: exhibitions, encounters and workshops.

availing of this printer’s shop, we proposed a visual identity that was conceived of as a printing process. A layer of red paint would be printed in the largest format the machinery would allow—a3—and this would serve as a staple on all of the related pieces.

the entire identity was to use formats derived from this a3 template—cut from these pre-printed sheets.

the design of the red layer was a zigzag that corresponds to all of the formats used, while also recalling the angles on the center’s roof.

monochrome designs would be printed on top of this zigzag in the colors corresponding to the different areas of the program.

the idea was that the red lines, the angles and the grid they suggested would form the grammar of the identity—posing a sort of game to be played by the ccsp team, the workshoppers and course-takers, throwing the graphic production of the pieces wide open.

the entrance to the main building (on vergueiro street) was marked with tall colored flags, and we used a sloping wall (to the right) to create a mural of a0-sized posters advertising the program (these were silkscreen printed).

all internal signage avoided clutter or unnecessary supports by using the building itself to host the information, much of which was silkscreened onto the glass and floor.

a pdf of the full proposal is available here.