Brazil with S, a good start – 02/22/2023 – Josimar Melo

I was invited, as a journalist, to go to Brasília for the official launch —actually a resumption— of the Marca Brasil com S, which has the intention of synthesizing the new efforts for tourism in the country.

I regretted not being able to go to the event organized by Embratur (Brazilian Agency for the International Promotion of Tourism) and ApexBrasil (Brazilian Agency for the Promotion of Exports and Investments), as the return of the brand caught my attention for several reasons.

Since it was launched in 2005, I have followed its choice with interest. At the time, I didn’t write regularly about tourism, as I do today, but I was already venturing into this field on my gastronomy trips.

Furthermore, my training is an architect, therefore sensitive to artistic and aesthetic issues that also involve the world of logos., even commercial ones. To top it off, it was created by designer Kiko Farkas, whose work I have always followed and with whose family, starting with the patriarch Thomaz (photographer and filmmaker), I have always had a loving relationship.

There are already several reasons (in addition to the political interest in the direction of Brazil at the time) to have followed the bold move that Embratur was carrying out at that time, symbolized in a graphic mark.

But today it is more than that. I believe that the resumption of the previous record represents another step –and not just a symbolic one– to leave behind the years of a criminal government that terrorized Brazil.

Can a simple logo represent so much?

I think so, in the same way as the previous one, implemented in 2019, managed –in a simple drawing with a slogan— to represent a moment of darkness, ignorance and truculence (search and see both, you will understand me at first sight).

The brand that is now being revived (with new updates) was created in 2005, the result of a long effort. It started with a whole conceptualization and planning of what Brazilian tourism should be, in a project that also involved the creation of the visual brand, resulting from a contest in which the country’s top designers participated.

To understand the overwhelming difference between the two brands, just look at them. But I could sum up that the old one, which is being resumed, is the face of a lively, intoxicating, happy Brazil, expressed in curves that enhance its nature, and at the same time modern and sophisticated, as at least we intend to be.

The 2019 mark was made at random by government officials (certainly as disqualified as the government officials). The result was a visually crude logo (which any teenager with good taste, with a little drawing program, would do better); mutts, with its spelling lick-boots (Brazil written with z); and, on top of that, with a motto (“Brazil, visit and love us”) which, in addition to being written in childlike English, by an automatic translator, suggests the country as a destination for sexual exploitation (coherent with what Bolsonaro said, “who want to come here and have sex with a woman, be my guest”).

If a logo can express projects and intentions, it does not mean that it is a guarantee of their realization. The country’s tourist promotion evidently went backwards during the Bolsonarist barbarism (when the government prided itself on having made Brazil a world pariah). But even before, it was stumbling, even more so when compared to several countries in the world (see Spain), including Latin America (see Peru), which managed to identify and feed accurate targets. Maybe now it’s Brazil’s turn.

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