Diving deep into the minds behind the current creative movement in Brazil, we speak with some of the country’s most brilliant and influential artists and designers today

Latin America’s largest country has fostered an impressive and distinct culture of designers and artists whose styles draw on a striking number of influences. The current creative scene in Brazil, along with the nation’s famously energetic atmosphere, reflect the euphoria of the rapid economic growth that has taken place over the last decade.

Urban Meccas like São Paulo, Belo Horizonte, and Florianopolis, as well as smaller cities such as Jaraguá do Sul, have always possessed extraordinary creative energies, but only recently have they begun to draw attention on the international stage. The creative world of Brazil is a diverse blend of originality and European and American influences from the past twenty years to the present.

São Paulo in particular has developed into a Latin American capital of creativity, attracting and embracing photographers, designers, illustrators, and students from within Brazil and across the world. It has also been the home of a vibrant street art scene that has manifested itself as a dominant mode of artistic expression. Interestingly, the frequent infusion of street art into Brazilian design style serves to disseminate Latin American urban culture through everything from graphic and print design to fashion for an international audience.

There are a number of art collectives ( Base V, Collectivo, Os gemeos) and studios ( Dialogo Estudio) that are very actively putting out books, magazines and exhibitions, and continually looking for new ways to promote. More and more often, this means turning to the web.

“Thinking in creative advertisement we are more in front of computer, thinking in art/ illustration creativity, they are much more offline than online. Of course, each person have his own process but I could see the computer is more used to share the creations than to create on it.”

Confesses graphic artist and illustrator Zansky. This is a different point of view from that of  Dialogo Estudio designer Bruno Siquiera and Fernanda Masini of Kultur Studio and Soma magazine:

“Brazil is one of the countries that has more people that spend too much time on the internet in the world, so it seems to be a really important tool. The promotion here is made basically with its official website, an account on Flickr website and  doing the exhibitions with flyers.  Managing a mailing list we have…In music, art, design, film, almost all ways to express yourself are being invaded for young talented people that grows fast with easy access to culture, good references (and some bad too) and that is very inspiring but also challenging for this new generation. With social networks, blogs, myspace, flickr we can watch every step of some of this and it’s really cool to watch them “live,” growing as artists.”

With the aim of going behind the scenes of the Brazilian creative world, we speak with some today’s most influential figures of the nation’s art, design and fashion scenes.