I mentioned several times in my coverage of Sao Paulo Fashion Week how impressed I was by the aesthetic sensibility that the show's producers used to convey this year's sustainability theme. Of course, given that fashion is all about aesthetics, it shouldn't have been a surprise, but too often in cases like this, the demonstration of high ideals sometimes gets bogged down by the desire of event production staff to prove their efforts are in earnest. Sometimes displaying environmental responsibility comes across as an obligatory afterthought resulting from some committee member shaking a finger at organizers and telling them it's taboo to ignore the problem.
Not so at SPFW. The creative agency ag407, who designed the graphic identity for this year's SPFW, brought an edgy, playful, high-impact graphic style to a campaign that communicated a number of ways to become more personally sustainable. All around the venue, their series of monotone graphics were printed on pillars, beverage dispensers, walls and waste containers, sending artful messages into visitors' subconscious as they moved around the space.
André Felipe, the Creative Director of ag407, took me on a tour of the building to show me the various ways in which the infrastructure of the event had been retrofitted for sustainability. One of the sponsors of the event was Tetrapak, who I learned are in the process of trying to find a way to make their beverage containers recyclable. In the meantime, they have begun giving their nonrecyclable product a second life as a compressed material that can be used for flooring. The temporary floors that SPFW installed for their sponsor lounges and walkways were made from this post-consumer material, which has a flecked appearance and a soft texture. Ami Kealoha from Coolhunting, who was at the event also, reviewed the Tetrapak flooring here. We both agreed that it's not durable enough to be used for any permanent application, but it was a creative way to use waste material rather than fresh resources in designing the floors for this 5-day experience. There was also an area of the building where a demo had been set up to show visitors how the flooring is made, which included a vibrant series of photographs of people gathering, sorting and reusing trash.
But I digress. The point here is to share with you the graphic series from ag407, which was most compellingly used in this month's issue -- the "green edition"-- of a thick Brazilian glossy called FFW Mag! (Fast Forward Magazine). They inserted six personal sustainability suggestions into the pages of the magazine, spread evenly from start to finish on a heavier, matte stock that makes you take notice even if you are just flipping through. The "tips" were created with the magazine's placement context and the Sao Paulo readership in mind. They were:
1. Use Menos Tinta (Use Less Ink), illustrated through cut-out letters that, obviously, required no ink at all.
2. Vá De Bicicleta (Go by bike), set as a series of little cards that can be pulled out and passed around.
3. Use O Colectivo (Use the Collective), illustrated with an actual subway ticket, inserted with perforated edges so that you can remove and use it for an actual ride on the Sau Paulo mass transit system.
4. Use Luz Natural (Use Natural Light), illustrated with a cut-out which casts a shadow on the following page that looks like a window with sunlight coming through.
5. Use Menos Papel (Use Less Paper), illustrated with an insert designed at about half the trim size of the others.
6. Consuma Consciente (Conscious Consumption), illustrated on a page with a handle cut out like a shopping bag.
Several supplementary graphics were also created to accompany the SPFW tagline:
Cultive, Preserve, Recicle, Neutralize-se.
Movimento SPFW: Participate.
The graphics were also printed on all of the water containers for the show (in Tetrapak), which came out of dispensers plastered with the bicycle logo and the statement: Inicie um Movimento (Start a movement).
