I was lucky enough to spend some time in Brazil a few weeks ago, including two days in São Paulo. What a lovely, vibrant city.

Elaine Ramos in It’s Nice That profiles the graphic design scene in the city. One of my favorites from her article:

…the identity created by Sarau for Bar Ovo in 2024 draws directly on lithographic labels – especially cachaça labels – matchboxes and other packaging, and advertising from the first half of the 20th century, with its profusion of frames, shadows, and line gradients. Pedro Almeida, one of Sarau’s partners, tells me about the reference in the original brief – the collection of chickens that inspired the owners to name the bar – and their concern with giving it the feel of a Brazilian boteco, an unpretentious neighbourhood bar (hipsterism by the book…!).

As the largest metro in the Americas, São Paulo is sprawling and constantly building. More business-focused and forward-looking than its older rival, Rio, this city is about progress over preservation.

Ramos again:

This nostalgic wave is neither new nor unique to São Paulo. Much has already been said about hipsterism and its endless pursuit of the genuine, the local, and the organic, only to be quickly absorbed into the mainstream. But in a city averse to any notion of preservation, shaped not only by rampant real estate speculation but also by a deeply rooted culture of constant renovation, where only a handful of bars have survived for decades largely unchanged – the truly authentic ones – this emulation of tradition takes on an ironic edge.

Graphic designers are left with the difficult task of manufacturing the signs of authenticity and symbolically reconstructing the memory erased by this constant transformation, giving each new bar a distinctive character that can attract its audience and restore something of the affective life and sense of belonging the city has swallowed up. Luckily, some designers are finding inventive ways to do that.