Book by Casa Rex for Ateliê Editorial

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CLIENT

Ateliê Edi­to­r­i­al, based in in São Paulo, Brazil, is a pub­lish­ing house which pub­lish­es books for a wide range of audi­ences, from kids to adults.

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BRIEF

Devel­op­ment of the book Clichés Brasileiros—a visu­al nar­ra­tive of Brazil’s his­to­ry com­posed exclu­sive­ly of old Brazil­ian let­ter­press clichés.

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APPROACH

Clichés Brasileiros was com­posed using sole­ly images from an old cat­a­log of Brazil­ian let­ter­press clichés. But the rea­son for its title is not only due to the clichés used for the com­po­si­tion of its illus­tra­tions, at each page’s turn, we run into oth­er types of Brazil­ian clichés. His­tor­i­cal ones, like the arrival of the Por­tuguese, the cat­e­chiz­ing of native Indi­ans, cof­fee and gold eco­nom­ic cycles…it even includes con­tem­po­rary Brazil­ian clichés, full of traf­fic jams, debts, closed con­do­mini­ums, and alienation—portraying Brazil’s his­to­ry up to today in an irrev­er­ent con­tem­po­rary visu­al narrative.

Judge’s Com­ments
I would have been pleased enough if the author’s ambi­tion sim­ply was to design and print an off­set book from let­ter­press met­al cuts and wood­blocks con­sis­tent­ly found in Brazil­ian let­ter­press shops, and this alone would have prompt­ed me to give it my “Judges’ pick”. But when I wan­dered through the book on the flight back to Nashville I real­ized there was a sto­ry involved, void of words, told com­plete­ly through, (obvi­ous­ly) images made of met­al and wood, and the sto­ry told was of the intro­duc­tion of the Euro­pean to South Amer­i­ca, and the forced assim­i­la­tion of the native Brazil­ian into Euro­pean cul­ture. And I was hap­py to for­give and over­look the author’s inac­cu­rate note that let­ter­press “today is a sys­tem only found in muse­ums.” — Jim Sher­radenThe Clichés Brasileiros is a mas­ter­ful wink of the eye, with corny col­lages per­fect­ly pro­duced with silkscreen(?) giv­ing trop­i­cal inten­si­ty to this lit­tle book whose cov­er per­fect­ly cap­tures the cus­toms and cos­tumes of this impor­tant nation of achiev­ers. — Stephen DoyleI enjoyed this book for its incred­i­ble tac­til­i­ty through rich lay­ered imagery com­bined with a mix­ture of off­set and silkscreen print­ing — cre­at­ing that amaz­ing “print­ed” aro­ma. — John Ear­lesThis is graph­ic design is at it’s best: when pic­tures are worth a thou­sand words — and gor­geous col­ors, com­bined with sim­ple images tell the sto­ry of Brazil in a way that is any­thing but cliché. — Marc English