In Pursuit of Happiness
Brazilian designer Felipe Taborda expresses his goal for life and work simply as “the unending pursuit of happiness.” He advises those who are unhappy to just “do something else!” Persistently curious and insistently good-natured, Taborda can make friends over a drink, at one of the numerous lectures he gives or during one of his many trips to the U.S., Europe and other Latin American countries. Taborda was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in 1956, and attended the Pontifical Catholic University there before studying film and photography at the London International Film School. He then went on to earn degrees in communications design at the New York Institute of Technology and graphic design at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. Notable beginnings to Taborda’s career include having curated and edited a selection of Brazilian design for a special edition of the magazine Print in 1988 and curating the 30 event posters for the United Nations conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) during the “Earth Summit” in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in 1992.
In 1990 Taborda opened the design studio baring his name and since then has concentrated on creating projects for cultural institutions, publishing houses, music companies and musicians. Taborda’s choice to limit his client base is not accidental. Working with arts organizations and musicians has allowed Taborda to maintain relative freedom in his working life. Purposeful autonomy also informs Taborda’s approach to the design process, and his work is tied to a larger tradition of looseness and a focused lack of stiffness that embodies Latin American graphic design. Following the Latin American tradition of using whatever is at hand and the rejection of specialization Taborda is as comfortable with photography and film as he is with formal elements of design such as type, line and shape.
The bulk of Taborda’s client work is focused on the classic applications of print design including: music packaging, book and magazine design, posters and identities. Narrativas Poéticas from 2013 uses simple cropped letterforms and line to create a book cover that is typographically dominant and relies on deceptively simple choices of spacing and placement whereas the Songbook Taborda designed the same year for Brazilian musician, composer, and writer Vítor Ramil uses imagery and a visual pun made by pairing the shape created by a paperclip with the first letter of the composers name. Taborda’s compositions are often image-based but there is no clear methodology or unifying style to his work. On the contrary, Taborda’s work is characterized by the unexpected. Three CD covers may seem visually related with their focus on a central photographic image only to be followed by a forth that uses illustration or highlights type over the image. For Taborda the process of design is fast and furious. Most of his final work looks exactly like his first sketches and this predictability of process is a boon when it comes to dealing with clients, many of who are thrilled to have a final project look exactly like what they approved as an initial idea.
Opportunities for Better Design
Insatiable curiosity, a keen sense of observation, and the desire to see excellent content paired with good design has provided the impetus for impromptu design critiques to turn into professional assignments. In one instance, Taborda happened to see the gay-orientated magazine SuiGeneris in a doctor’s waiting room. Much more than just a magazine of naked men, SuiGeneris was a serious publication with stories on a variety of subjects including politics, culture, and the arts, only some of which focused on LGBT issues. The high-level content turned out to be the result of the hard work of passionate contributors who were able to write about issues a regular newspaper or magazine wouldn’t accept. While Taborda was impressed by the text and image in the magazine, he was appalled by the design and took it upon himself to call the editor and offer to redesign the entire magazine. For almost 5 years (until the magazine shut down) Taborda designed monthly issues of SuiGeneris and in doing so he was able to work with some of the best Brazilian writers, photographers, and stylists.
Taborda’s design for SuiGeneris brings to mind the work of great editorial designers from generations past. His covers show mastery of form and type that recall modernist master Alexey Brodovitch at Vogue in the 1940’s but the edgy content and thought-provoking images remind one more of George Lois’ Esquire covers or the work of Tibor Kalman at Colors. Though Taborda is well-versed in design history, and regularly gives credit to a earlier generation of Brazilian designers (like Aloísio Magalhāes) whose work remains virtually unknown in the U.S. and Europe, his work never feels indebted to any one style or school of thought. Taborda points to a sense of freedom and freshness in Brazilian design and his own work certainly exemplifies this lack of constraints. While Brazil is considered a place where designers can define themselves without fear, wider social prejudices still exist as Taborda found out when he started showing the SuiGeneris covers at lectures and design meetings. Since he was working on a gay magazine, audience members immediately assumed he must be gay. As Taborda points out, this kind of snap judgment is particularly egregious coming from the design community where it is generally agreed that a designer should be able to work on content for diverse audiences regardless of whether one belongs to the targeted population. Taborda continued to work with SuiGeneris despite fellow-designers presumptions about his sexual orientation and in doing so he created a richly diverse body of work where graphically charged images are supported by rich colors and snippets of type from tantalizing headlines.
Taborda’s propensity for personally wanting to “fix” substandard design isn’t limited to commercial applications. He was troubled by an ineffective identity that he felt was mismatched against the great work being done at this daughters’ school Escola Parque (College Park). Again, Taborda offered to do a redesign. The resulting graphics focused on bringing visual expression to the school’s pedagogical mission melding education, science, sustainability, ethics, creativity and technology. In addition to traditional applications such as letterhead, website and calendars, Taborda’s identity extended to school uniforms and t-shirts. Seeing hundreds of students walking the streets of Rio de Janeiro wearing his t-shirt designs was priceless and for Taborda is the truest mark of success.
Author and Ambassador
With the publication of Graphic Design in Latin America (Taschen, 2008), which he coedited with Julius Wiedemann, Taborda became the unofficial voice of and an active promoter for Latin American graphic design. The book focused on bringing together the work of over 200 designers from more than 20 Latin American countries and with text in English, Spanish and Portuguese, it targeted both native and international audiences. Taborda is conscious of the distinct changes underfoot in the development of many Latin American countries, and in their relationship to each other and to the U.S. and Europe. His introductory essay mourns the barriers that still exist between countries while celebrating cultural, linguistic, gastronomic and environmental distinctions that make each nation unique. As an author Taborda places his own thinking about design within the socio-political context of nationhood and industrialization. He quotes a poem by Joaquín Torres García, “our north is the south. There shouldn’t be a north for us only the opposite of our south,” which challenges the euro-centric practice placing the Terrestrial North Pole at the “top” of maps with Antarctica and the Magnetic South Pole’s located at the bottom. Taborda is an optimist and he believes invigorated pride of culture and better economic opportunities are beginning to supersede “bananas, samba, drugs and mariachis, and other colorful images” associated with Latin American countries in the past.
When asked about the difference between Brazilian and European or U.S. influences on his own work, Taborda is quick to highlight similarity over difference. “We all wear jeans, we all have access to films from all over the world, we read books and comics and eat Thai, Indian, Japanese and Peruvian food.” Borrowing a line from the English poet John Donne, he says ‘No man is an island.’ And while acknowledging that increased global opportunities can sometimes be overshadowed by the homogeneity, Taborda points out that in a flattened world influence is fluid and multi-directional. He easily responds when challenged to define the region, saying if something is done in Latin America, then it becomes Latin American. In his own work Taborda remains open to a constant process of learning and discovery whether he is working for a high-level client or mentoring underprivileged students at Oi Kabum!, an art and technology School in his home city of Rio de Janeiro. If the ability to be influenced by what is around us keeps humans interesting, then one can rest assured that Felipe Taborda will stay curious and continue to be on the lookout for opportunities where design can transform and give visual voice to people and content.
