Comédias do Minho was awarded Silver – Editorial Design / Corporate Publication – XXV Festival Clube de Criativos

In the field of graphic design, short-term projects often take precedence, typically lasting from a few weeks to a few months, and featuring clear-cut client-designer relationships with a definite beginning and end. However, Comédias do Minho stands as a remarkable exception to this norm. My involvement with this cultural project began in 2009, and since then, our relationship has evolved, deepened, and matured over time.

Comédias is a distinctive territorial initiative that originated in 2003 through the joint efforts of five municipalities in northern Portugal. The mayors of these regions recognized the essential needs of their communities and sought to fulfill them by bringing theater to small villages, effectively providing a vital public service. While theater remains the core of the project, it is by no means its sole focus. Presently, the project is curated by Magda Henriques, an individual who approaches the territory from various perspectives and acknowledges the significance of graphic design as a catalyst for an artistic vision rooted in a pagan culture with strong Celtic (Galician) influences.

The annual program for 2023 was developed collaboratively with the artistic direction of Comédias do Minho through extensive conversations, thought-provoking questions, and profound reflections. The guiding principles for structuring the program and the working methodology were centered around the concepts of desire, emergency, and joy. Emergency, in terms of urgency and immersion, lies at the core of the program’s thematic focus. The entire program draws inspiration from Almada Negreiros’ profound words, “Joy is the most serious thing in life.” As articulated by Magda Henriques in her editorial, “We create alternative images that defy the imagery of catastrophe because ‘This world is pregnant with other worlds that only need our enthusiasm to be born,’ as Eduardo Galeano once poignantly expressed.”

The design of this program is intended to evoke the concepts of emergency, joy, people, and party. The notion of a party draws inspiration from the insights of French philosopher and sociologist Henri Lefebvre, who believed that revolution arises through encounters, assemblies, and proximity. Each page of the program is crafted to ignite the imagination and invite the viewer on a visual adventure.

The program is divided horizontally into two distinct parts. The lower third is dedicated to the Alto Minho territory, showcasing the people, places, practices, beliefs, and daily life of the region, with a particular emphasis on its deep-rooted local culture. The upper part of the program focuses on the creative outputs, innovations, actions, and cultural movements that emerge from this rich cultural backdrop.

During an immersive two-month period, I embarked on multiple photographic safaris with the intention of capturing visual material. As I reflected upon these captures, I contemplated the most effective approach to challenge the perception of these locations. Understanding how our brains process light and color, which significantly contributes to our memory formation, became pivotal in this endeavor. What if we could subvert this perception? How would our understanding and recollections of these places, people, and cultures be transformed?

With these inquiries in mind, I made the deliberate choice to manipulate the chromatic range and disrupt the conventional order in which colors typically appear in printed images. The traditional CMYK color model was replaced with four direct colors, resulting in fresh, quasi-psychedelic interpretations of the Minho territory. Furthermore, I sought to discover new and unexpected encounters through techniques such as overprinting, experimentation, and improvisation with these four colors. The typographic treatment in this program embraces a celebration amidst chaos, expressing the heterogeneous nature of each event and experience.

Printed at Diário do Porto. Texts were created using various typefaces, including ABC Diatype, ABC Gravity (Thanks to Dinamo and Fabian Harb), Megazoid by DJ Ross, Minion Pro, Söhne by Klim TF, Junicode (opensource), and several typefaces from Velvetyne publisher, including Anthony by Sun Young, Oh Regular, Typefesse by Océane Juvin, PicNic by Marielle Nils, Pilowlava by Anton Moglia+ Jérémy Landes, and FT88 by Oriane Charvieux.

Program photos by Filipe Braga