Book graphic design – Creation, conceptualisation and execution of the entire project, including the layout of the entire book, cover, illustrations and graphic supervision.

 

Creation of the graphic design for the National Confederation of Trade in Goods, Services and Tourism (CNC)¹.

 

Work created in collaboration with the author Arnaldo Niskier, member of the Brazilian Academy of Letters (ABL) and former State Secretary for Education and Culture in Rio de Janeiro, member of the CNC Technical Council², a renowned intellectual in the field of education. The book is a collection of texts, the vast majority of which were originally lectures or presentations that were later transformed into articles. The work came to me with the articles already organised; the author wanted to highlight two articles: one, which was the most recent and bears the publication’s title, “Educating for a Better Future”, and the other, “Gamification – The challenges of new educational technologies”. He wanted the cover illustration to be based on a combination of these two articles, as he could not add the title of the second article to the title of the publication itself, as it would have been far too long.

 

 

Initially, as there were not many requests for changes to the body of the publication, everything was laid out quickly and sent for review to get this stage underway, whilst I worked in parallel on the concept for the cover. I manually illustrated the figure of a man receiving pixels on his head through a jug, as if they were being uploaded into his mental space, but this cover was rejected by the Coordinator of the CNC Technical Council and CNC Economic Adviser, Ernane Galvêas (former Minister of Finance of Brazil (1980–1985) and former President of the Central Bank of Brazil (1968–1974 and 1979–1980) (IN MEMORIAM)), so I moved on to a second alternative, using a woman wearing virtual reality goggles, a composite image with pixels on the side of the cover area and a Super Nintendo joystick at the base; I placed the arrow keys of the video game controller as an allusion to dynamics, directions, and the alternatives of reality that every human being experiences, particularly during the learning process, and the different points of view; on the back cover I created a complementary illustration, an unfolding of planes, as if each plane were an alternative reality. In the varnish, I sought to reference the old Atari space games, where aliens descend from the top of the screen and the ship at the bottom shoots at them, in an effort to highlight ‘Gamification in learning’, a concept the author wished to emphasise, creating, in a way, an interaction with the printed composition (suggesting that the woman in the image was seeing this at that moment).

 

During the graphic production process, I was present when the material went to press, which featured three spot colours plus black (Pantone 317, Pantone 266 and photoluminescent Pantone 803), as can be seen in the images below the text (some of these photos taken at the printer’s) and in featured images 4 and 5 above the text (materials collected during the printing process).

 

1 National Confederation of Trade in Goods, Services and Tourism (CNC – cnc.org.br) – An employers’ trade union organisation, comprising 34 federations across Brazil, 27 representing their respective states and 7 of these 34 operating at national level, representing over five million businesses in the trade sector that generate around 25.5 million direct and formal jobs; through its structure, it works to ensure the sector is always involved in the formulation of public policies, monitoring the progress of relevant proposals in the National Congress and defending the Constitution, always focusing on laws that may impact the sector.

 

The CNC was founded on 4 September 1945; its president is responsible for the administration of two institutions with significant operations in Brazil, which form one of the largest social development systems in the world: the Social Service of Commerce (SESC – sesc.com.br) and the National Commercial Apprenticeship Service (SENAC – senac.br), the former with social projects such as Mesa Brasil, the Ecos Sustainability Programme, etc. (operating in the following areas: Food, Social Assistance, Culture, Education, Sport, Leisure, Health, Sustainability, etc.) and the latter providing support for the training and upskilling of employees in the commerce sector (shopkeepers, waiters, chefs, hospitality staff, etc.).

 

2 CNC Technical Council – A group in which various men and women who have distinguished themselves in their respective fields gave lectures, which were later published as articles; they include diplomats, judges, lawyers, economists, philosophers, etc., among them the Coordinator of the CNC Technical Council and Economic Adviser to the CNC, Ernane Galvêas (former Minister of Finance of Brazil (1980–1985) and former President of the Central Bank of Brazil (1968–1974 and 1979–1980) (IN MEMORIAM)), José Bernardo Cabral (Rapporteur of the 1988 Brazilian Constituent Assembly, former Minister of Justice and former Senator of the Republic), Carlos Tadeu de Freitas Gomes (former Director of the Central Bank), Cid Heraclito de Queiroz (former Attorney-General of the National Treasury from 1979 to 1991), Ives Gandra da Silva Martins (Professor Emeritus at Mackenzie University, UNIP, UNIFEO, UNIFMU, CIEE/O Estado de São Paulo, the Army Command and General Staff Schools (ECEME), the War College (ESG) and the Federal Regional Court of the 1st Region; Honorary Professor at Austral University (Argentina), San Martín de Porres University (Peru) and Vasili Goldis University (Romania); Honorary Doctorate from the Universities of Craiova (Romania) and the PUCs of Paraná and Rio Grande do Sul, and Full Professor at the University of Minho (Portugal); Chairman of the Higher Council of Law at FECOMÉRCIO-SP; Former President of the São Paulo Academy of Letters (APL) and the São Paulo Lawyers’ Institute (IASP), Arnaldo Niskier (Member of the Brazilian Academy of Letters and former President of CIEE/RJ), Vasco Mariz (historian and diplomat, former Brazilian Ambassador to Ecuador, Israel, Cyprus, Peru and Germany), Nelson Mello e Souza (philosopher, former Chancellor of Estácio de Sá University and member of the Brazilian Academy of Philosophy), Samuel Buzaglo (lawyer, former Deputy Attorney General of the Republic), João Paulo de Almeida Magalhães (economist and researcher at the Centre for Development Studies at CORECON/RJ), Arnaldo Wald (lawyer and Full Professor at UERJ), Marcus Faver (Appellate Judge, former President of the Rio de Janeiro Court of Appeal), Claudio Contador (economist, Executive Director of SILCON), Mary Del Priore (historian and writer, member of the São Paulo Academy of Letters), João Ricardo Moderno (journalist), Roberto Fendt (economist, former Special Secretary for Foreign Trade at the Ministry of Economy, Executive Secretary of the Brazil-China Business Council), Maria Beltrão (archaeologist, scientist and researcher, former professor at UERJ, former Director of External Relations at IHGB), Gilberto Paim (journalist) etc.