Portuguese sport posters: a view through design between 1882-1991

Abstract

Little is known about Portuguese production in the context of graphic design related to sports posters. Very few examples can be found dispersed in books or in the World Wide Web, and the existing material it is normally resumed to a legend. In order to contribute to a deeper knowledge about the sports and the design of the posters, this paper presents a narrative based in a methodological approach using four axes of contents: the historical context; authorship; programme (brief); and technology as a tools to discover more information about the subject. This model permits to achieve the aims of this paper: to understand how different moments in history led to changes of the visual communication in posters; identify and give data about the designers that were involved in the process; reveal what were the constrains of the programme and how designers resolved their graphic proposals; and explain the printing processes and their impact in the graphic design of posters.