Book’s graphic project creation, conceptualization and execution of the whole project, including the diagrammation of the entire book, cover, illustrations and graphic monitoring of the printing of the covers and other pages of the book at the end of the year 2017.

 

Simple publication that the articles of the member of the Technical Council¹ of the National Confederation of Commerce of Goods, Services and Tourism (CNC)², Carlos Thadeu de Freitas Gomes, Head of the Economics Department of the CNC, and whose has been a Director of the Central Bank of Brazil. This book follow the rules of the Project of Standardization of the CNC’s Publications³ (a project applied in 2016).

 

This job has been creating together with the author. The book is a collection of articles that have been mostly have been making through of a lecture or a presentation and, then, they have gained the format of articles, some of they have come from magazines and other kinds of media, where the author had had his texts published.

 

 

The work has begun in a meeting with Carlos Thadeu de Freitas Gomes, in his meeting room, where we have agreed the objectives and the possibilities of the book, at the begning its conceptualization, economist, a very easy person to deal with and we together have quickly defined what should to be necessary, we have started from the initial idea that Economics is a study that is the place of the scarcity, making a parallel with Don Quixote, the character of the book that bears his name, of the Spanish author Miguel de Cervantes, with his fights against the windmills, hards equations to transform the reality of the calculations in a more abundant environment, the fight between the physical world and the abstract, where in the economy the fights is against something intangible, invisible, always searching the complex result and that can cause an immense damage in the stability of a company, of a country. I would have liked to have had more space to acclimatize the book on this theme, but I have just had the diagramming of the pages, which is a more metric space and the project (synthetic in terms of graphic freedom) has left me only the cover and the varnish of the cover to compound the thematic.

 

After I have been diagramming all the material, recreating the graphics and sending them for revision, I have been starting the study of the sketches for the cover, I usually study the theme of each work in different ways, going to a bookstore is always an important alternative in this initial phase of research and understanding of the subject to deal, it has been at the bookstore Cultura, at Senador Dantas Street, downtown of the Rio de Janeiro, that a book has caught my attention to be using a different graphic resource, the book has been “American Gods” by Neil Gaiman, it has had a blue background and a texture, this last one has applied through a rough varnish, I have bought the publication and I have sent it to one of the best printers of Brazil, Stilgraf, a printer located in the city of São Paulo, I have asked them to analyse the resource, I have had the idea of the possibility of to be using this graphic resource in the book, it has been the textured varnish, small bubbles have been giving roughness to that cover, it has been taking my intention to give an air of dry, rough and friction to the cover of the project. The step of researching of this project has been happening in a more peculiar way than usual to me, usually I spent much more time on research and in these initial approaches with the author/client, but the very ludic theme and the right direction has been giving by the author, very direct, it has led me to the visual concept in a very clear way.

 

When I have been doing the cover, I have been working with the scarce, and if it has a colour, this colour is the black, the “nothing”, the lack of the light, I have drawn the Don Quixote, I have been using a reddish colour seeking a harmony with the gypsy people who inhabit those regions now and at the past (I have had this reference because my ex-wife has done gypsy dance and black and red are the basic colours of the dresses), kind of wrapped in darkness, I have been trying to give a more tense in the air. And the mill, I have wanted to make a clear notion of inconclusive, of a mill that is in project phase, an unfinished monster, it was staying still on the paper, the fight of the human being against abstract, an economist being, with something intangible, an enemy not very clear. I have tried to bring warm colours in the book’s ears, colours that refer to Cervantes’ Spain, and to be using them in a complementary way to the black of the cover. On the back cover, I have put a simple image of a windmill, very low, just a subtlety.

 

This publication has had no graphic accompaniment, I have sent the book to three presses for quotation and I have suggested to be made with the one that had been already studying the process of making the publication with the textured varnish. The Directors have agreed with my arguments, and where the printer has been in São Paulo, I have just asked for the proofs and versions of the printings and finishings to see if everything has been ending on the best way possible. 

 

1 Technical Council of the CNC – Group where several men and women who they have been standing out on their respective areas presenting lectures and later transform in their articles, they are diplomats, judges, lawyers, economists, philosophers etc., among them is the Coordinator of the Tecnical Council and Economic Councilor of 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 MEMORIAN)), José Bernardo Cabral (Rapporteur of the Brazilian Constituent Assembly of 1988, 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 Brazilian Treasury 1979-1991), Ives Gandra da Silva Martins (Professor Emeritus of the Universities Mackenzie, UNIP, UNIFEO, UNIFMU, of CIEE/ O Estado de São Paulo, of the Army Command and Staff Schools (ECEME), Superior War College (ESG) and of the Magistrature of the Federal Regional Court of the 1st Region; Honorary Professor of the Universities of Austral (Argentina), San Martin de Porres (Peru) and Vasili Goldis (Romania); Doctor Honoris Causa of the Universities of Craiova (Romania) and the PUCs of Paraná and Rio Grande do Sul, and Professor of the University of Minho (Portugal); Chairman of the Superior Council of Law of FECOMÉRCIO-SP; former President of the Academia Paulista de Letras (APL) and of the Instituto dos Advogados de São Paulo (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 Brazilian Republic), João Paulo de Almeida Magalhães (economist and researcher at the Centre for Development Studies of CORECON/RJ), Arnaldo Wald (lawyer and Professor at UERJ), Marcus Faver (Judge, former President of TJRJ), Claudio Contador (economist, Executive Director of SILCON), Mary Del Priore (historian and writer, member of the Academia Paulista de Letras), João Ricardo Moderno (journalist), Roberto Fendt (economist, former Special Secretary of Foreign Trade of the Ministry of Economy of Brazil, Executive Secretary of the Brazil-China Business Council), Maria Beltrão (archeologist, scientist and researcher, former teacher at UERJ, former Director of External Relations of the IHGB), Gilberto Paim (journalist) etc.

 

2 National Confederation of Commerce of Goods, Services and Tourism (CNC – cnc.org. br) – Patronal syndical entity, which groups 34 Federations in the whole Brazilian territory, 27 referring to their respective states in Brazil and 7 of these 34 at national level, there are more than five million companies represented in the commerce that generate around 25.5 million direct and formal jobs, it acts in order that the sector is always present at the formulation of public policies, following the progress of the proposals of interest in the National Congress of Brazil and in the defense of the Constitution of Brazil, always it having in focus the laws that may impact the segment. 

 

The CNC was founded at 4th September of 1945, its current President is José Roberto Tadros, who succeeded Antonio Oliveira Santos, in an election that was held in 2018, and it is responsible for the administration of two institutions of great performances in Brazil and that form one of the largest systems of social development in the world, the institution of Commerce Social Service (Sesc – sesc.com.br) and the institution of National Service of Commercial Learning (Senac – senac.br), the first mentioned, with social projects, such as Mesa Brasil, Ecos Program of sustainability etc. (acts in the following areas: Alimentation, Culture, Education, Health, Leisure, Social Assisntence, Sports, Sustainability etc.) and the second in assisting the training and qualification of employees of the companies in the commerce sector (shopkeepers, waiters, chefs, hoteliers etc.).

 

3 Project of Standardization of the CNC’s Publications – A project in which the head of the Communications Office, Cristina Calmon, journalists from the sector and four designers from the CNC (myself included), together with an external communications office and a graphic design office hired studied all the publications produced in the entity to date, creating a line of reasoning, comparing them with each other, segmenting the various types of content of the entity and creating a harmony in relation to the new visual identity of the CNC (launched in 2012), creating a catalogue, etc. The publications were divided into groups: 1) Technical books; 2) Author’s books; 3) Reports; 4) Manuals; 5) Magazines; 6) Digital newsletters and digital publications.