Graphic Design
In the school’s initial project, Graphic Design is the area where Ar.Co concentrates its ambitions for a consistent and lasting training program. This explains why a diversity of heterogeneous course subjects, composing the Basic Training Program, integrates, as early as 1973/74, the Design department. With the profound changes that occur in Portugal’s social situation after April 1974, the school’s own viability is questioned and the training structure is reformulated and altered. The idea of a Design Program being the center of all training is put aside and Graphic/Typographic Design will become one area among others. Still, the term Design constitutes an almost administrative area during the school’s early years. It keeps a theoretical ambition and influence and a variety of training and promotion activities, as well as a wide area of interests, will take place with the Design tag attached to them. Visual Communication, for instance, becomes a sort of second name for Design, even after the latter has been reduced to studio practice. In 1973, Luís Filipe Oliveira orients the course “Graphic Communication” and French publicity posters are exhibited and commented on by Claude Ternat (who himself orients several practical Open Courses dedicated to design in 1974). In 1975/76, Robin Fior is responsible for Typographic Design - a “sequence of practical projects that function as an introduction to graphic design” – and in 1976/77, with the collaboration of Sebastião Rodrigues, António Inverno and the Proença-Cooperativa Operária de Artes Gráficas, he will become the Head of the Typography/Silkscreen Workshop (that will include Alda Rosa in 1977/78). Group work developed under the orientation of Robin Fior produces the exhibition “Vladimir Maiakovsky: Montras/Cartazes ROS.TA 1919/21”, that integrates posters and silkscreen prints produced by the school in a show/installation (opening at Ar.Co on November 1976 and travelling elsewhere after that). In 1980/81 João Melo directs the Graphic Design Workshop, followed by Vítor Simões in 1982/83. Nuno Alves Pereira, Manuel Paula and Jorge Jacinto collaborate. From 1982/83 onwards the Workshop’s name is changed to simply Graphic and Helena Salvador and Ana Filipa Tainha integrate the training staff (constituted, in 1988/89, by Jorge Jacinto, José Mesquita, Maria José Campos, Manuel Paula, Isabel P. Alves, Ana da Silva, Ana Conduto and Vítor Simões himself). Beatriz Alçada will be Head of Department in 1990/91. In the school’s 20th anniversary leaflet, from 1993, the department does not mention Design but the development of “a personal creative process, stimulating (...) reflexion, analysis and the study of a given problem” and “the diversity of solutions and (...) correct use of graphic design as a means and a support of a communication ‘language’.” Maria José Campos directs the department at this point and there are new collaborators, namely Alberto Simões, Margarida Oliveira, Robin Fior and Ulrika d’Orey. The department’s structure and orientation is substantially altered in 1994, when Nuno Vale Cardoso becomes the person in charge. The designation Graphic Design will return and the main objective will be to “promote training in design as a projectual method in general, specifically in the field of communication and having as its basis the graphic arts” (1994/95 advertising leaflet). The training staff incorporates new collaborations throughout the next 19 years: Duarte Bélard da Fonseca, Rui Azevedo, Vera Velez, Henrique Cayatte, Paulo Ramalho, Mónica Mendes, Jorge dos Reis, Ana Valviga, João Brandão, Ruben Dias, Ricardo Azevedo, João Catarino, Ricardo Santos, Nuno Gonçalves, Helga Vieira da Silva, Gonçalo Falcão, Luísa Santos, Conceição Barbosa, Gonçalo Freitas and again Robin Fior and Helena Salvador. New course subjects, especially in the area of the digital technologies, are added to graphic design. At the same time, a permanent typography workshop is created with the collaboration of Jorge dos Reis. In view of the undeveloped level of the market offerings in post-graduation Design courses, the “Advanced Seminar in Communication Design” is created in 1996, with orientation by Henrique Cayatte and Paulo Ramalho. The Design program is further consolidated with the introduction of new course subjects (History of the Graphic Arts, IT, Webdesign, Typography, Calligraphy, Typographic Drawing, Illustration, Design Theory, Graphic Production, among others) and its duration goes from 3 to 4 years. Facing a continuous decrease in the number of enrolments in recent years, the department is extint in 2013, although the typography workshop is kept working at the Quinta de S. Miguel, Almada.
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Exhibition "Vladimir Maiakovksy: Montras/Cartazes ROS.TA 1919-21". Robin Fior and students from Ar.Co's Graphic Workshop, 1976.
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Exhibition "Vladimir Maiakovksy: Montras/Cartazes ROS.TA 1919-21". Robin Fior and students from Ar.Co's Graphic Workshop, 1976.
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Typography workshop with Ruben Dias, Quinta de S. Miguel, Almada, March 2013.
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Typography workshop with Jorge dos Reis, 2001 (information sheet).
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Poster by Robin Fior on Ar.Co's tenth anniversary, 1983, a restyling of a poster he had done in 1981.
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Information sheet for the Advanced Seminar in Design and Communication with Henrique Cayatte and Paulo Vieira Ramalho, 1996.
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Poster by Robin Fior, 1976.
