TowardaBrazilianDesign:TheVisualIdentityofLight

The 1960s marked the introduction of higher education and the consequent professionalization of design/industrial design and visual communication activities in Brazil. Although São Paulo was an essential part of this process, the first consolidated initiative took place in Rio de Janeiro, where the first school of its kind on the Latin American continent was founded, based on actions originating at the Museu de Arte Moderna. In 1963, ESDI/Escola Superior de Desenho Industrial was founded, on land stretching from Rua Evaristo da Veiga to Rua do Passeio. Strongly influenced by abstract and geometric thinking and based on the teaching model of the Ulm School of Design (Germany), successor to the revolutionary Bauhaus, ESDI counted among its founders former Ulm students and Aloísio Magalhães, a graphic artist and designer from Pernambuco who redesigned the visual identity of many major companies of that period, as well as our currency and the symbol for Rio's four-hundredth anniversary, celebrated in 1964. At that time, many companies were investing in reviewing/updating their visual identity, and Light was one of them, hiring Aloísio Magalhães's studio. To mark the completion and presentation of the work, an event was held at the ESDI exhibition pavilion, which had been built by students in 1964. It was decommissioned at the end of the 1970s. It is worth mentioning that on that same site once stood the Impressão Régia, the first printing establishment authorized to operate in our country, with equipment brought from Portugal in 1808.

Image description: The image is a black-and-white photograph. On the left, there is a large plant with wide leaves and a wooden planter. In the center, there is a sign with the Light logo and the text "LIGHT RIO/SÃO PAULO NOVA IMAGEM." On the right, there is an entrance with two people in silhouette, one of whom appears to be smiling. The roof is made of corrugated metal, and there are lights on the ceiling.

15

Imagem 1 de 5: Identidade Visual da Light. Entrada da exposição realizada no pavilhão da ESDI. Fotógrafo não identificado

Below are memories of the implementation process of Light's then-'new image,' in the 1960s. It serves as a tribute to the architects and designers who created their projects without the digital resources we are so accustomed to today. In this photograph – a study – we see the company's previous logo alongside the proposed application of the new visual identity, on the façade of the Madureira agency. Until then, it was common to use cursive, handwritten-style lettering. The advertisement for the Shopping Center Madureira seen on the left corroborates this observation.

Image description: The image is a black-and-white photograph of a commercial building. On the left side, there is a sign that reads "Temptudo Shopping Center Madureira, Padre Manoel de Lemos." The center of the building displays the Light logo and the inscription "Light Serviços de Eletricidade S.A." The building's facade is simple, with rectangular windows and a flat roof. On the right, there is a light pole and an old car parked on the sidewalk.

In this photograph and the next one, both now kept in the Light historical archive, we have interesting evidence of how images were altered before Photoshop... the new logo was applied over the previous one, and the area to the right of the building, next to the sidewalk, is entirely painted over, in black (simulating a blocked entrance) and in white (a wall crossing the sidewalk).

Image description: The image is a black-and-white photograph of a commercial building. On the left side, there is a facade with open windows and an illuminated sign that reads "LIGHT." On the right, there is a tower with a metal structure and a circular sign with a symbol. At the bottom, there is a sign with text in Portuguese that reads "Illuminated sign in colored acrylic." The upper right corner features a sign with the letter "H." There are people walking on the sidewalk in front of the building.

In the second photograph, an optional study made from the same negative, but with a different application of the logo, they forgot to retouch the white wall crossing the sidewalk, and so we see there a situation that's hard to make sense of... but the fact is that even today, in digital times, these slip-ups still happen!

Image description: This is a black-and-white photograph of a commercial building. On the left side, there is a facade with open windows and the Light logo prominently displayed. On the right, the building features a facade with many glass panels and a sign with the name "LIGHT." In the foreground, people are walking along the sidewalk. At the bottom of the image, there is a caption that reads "Letters and Symbols in polished metal."