Gathering the waters of Amazônia

In April, FutureBrand São Paulo and its partners launched the first cohesive brand for the Brazilian Legal Amazon, Amazônia, which quickly picked up three Lions in June. Chief design officer Arnaldo Bastos shared with Lisa Battles what’s next for this “living brand” and the potential it holds for the region’s future.

Remarkable as it is, the Amazônia brand continues to evolve, and that’s been the case since the beginning, Bastos says. Just what one would expect from a brand that flowed from a river system.

With a visual identity built upon the Amazon basin’s bending curves and connections, the brand continues gathering contributors and partners to feed a stronger current over time.

For FutureBrand São Paulo, this project began over a decade ago when the team started working with a series of smaller clients across the region’s nine states. As they created brand identities for local economic accelerators, packaging for coffee producers and branding for chocolate companies, a pattern emerged.

“We noticed that each state communicated itself in a way that sold its own Amazônia but not as a whole,” Bastos says.

Research, design and a bigger brand vision

Seeing the disconnect as an opportunity, the agency brought on a research partner in ASSOBIO (Amazon Socio-Bioeconomy Business Association), which conducted research with stakeholders throughout the region – residents, business owners, tourism entities, governments and more.

Bastos’ team set out to develop a design product that could spark a larger brand that could ultimately benefit the people of the region and country.

“We listened to everyone, and an amazing piece of data we got from this research is that 65% of Brazilians don’t know Amazônia,” Bastos says. “There is a mystery about it, which isn’t bad, but too much mystery can push people apart. From a visitor’s perspective, they shouldn’t think going there is a hard thing to do.”

One resident interviewed during the research phase offered a line that has stayed with him since: “Amazônia is not far away; it runs deep.”

“In terms of strategy for tourism, we want to position Amazônia as experience tourism: you go to Amazônia and come back transformed. That’s not gastronomy tourism or business tourism or religious tourism or fun tourism,” Bastos says. “It is a tourism of transformation. When you go to Amazônia, it changes you. That is the kind of ‘deep’ I am talking about here.”

At the same time, deep transformation points to complexity, and too much can be off-putting to modern travellers. Bastos offered an example of how reaching different parts of the region often requires combining flights, cars and boats – creating a puzzle that makes it hard for visitors to picture where a trip would even begin.

With these things in mind, the team identified a potential client and partner in Integrated Amazon Routes (RAI, Rotas Amazônicas Integradas), a consortium of representatives from the region’s states who promote the region domestically.

Soon enough, word of the project travelled to gather a second client, Embratur, the federal agency that markets Brazil to people abroad. Its leaders saw the value in a cohesive brand to market the region and to increase prosperity for those who live there.

“We are talking about a powerhouse in art, music, gastronomy, culture and the production of hundreds of items for different industries,” says Embratur director of international marketing Bruno Reis. “And it is precisely this richness that the world can now fully experience, revealed through the flavours, sounds, colours and knowledge of the forest – a journey that impacts those who visit but also strengthens those who live and produce in the region, generating pride, value and a future for the Amazon.”

Creative shaped by the river system and its people

Bastos says early creative inputs on his team leaned toward forest imagery, drawing on leaves, trees and indigenous motifs. Eventually, they moved away from these concepts after viewing satellite imagery and seeing how powerfully the river system connected the nine states economically and culturally.

“We had this flash of inspiration to say, ‘Okay, that’s it; it’s the reverse! So let’s make this real but also beautiful because it’s not we who designed it; it’s written by nature already,” Bastos says. “That was the point where everything changed. From the river, it was kind of easy. We decided to do typography based on the rivers and illustrations flowing around the river.”

The logotype, called Igaratype, uses real coordinates along 25,000 kilometres of Amazonian waterways to form letters spelling AMAZONIA. On the brand website, people may write with the font using a suite of tools to manipulate bends, turbulence, current, colours and more.

The brand also incorporates a sans-serif font called Aberta, designed with the Institute of Letters, which preserves the region’s traditional art of boat lettering.

Since the agency is located far south of Amazônia, it was important to the team and partners to source the creative work beyond the logo to artists in the Amazon region.

“We orchestrated this project in terms of letting the creative part of it come from nature and the work be wealth transferred to the Amazon. We designed the logo, and they did everything around it – the colours, the illustrations, the letters and the film production were all done with people from Amazônia,” Bastos says.

Brand extensions for economics and education

Bastos says while the positive reception so far has been validating, it marks a time of transition rather than a conclusion. Momentum is only starting to build.

The agency has brought on a third partner, the Legal Amazon Consortium, to help set a framework for licensing and use of the Amazônia brand and its “Made of Amazônia” seal of origin.

“We have basic guidelines, but what we are doing right now is creating regulations for people to use the brand, taking all of the inputs of the brands interested in working with us and talking to them one-on-one so we can do this as responsibly as possible,” Bastos says. “That is a long process, but we are on it.”

The week he spoke with Transform, Bastos says he was receiving more than 20 enquiries daily from brands who want to use the identity.

While that was exciting, another call he’d just received was even more satisfying.

“A national publisher here in Brazil called to say they decided to use our creation in their schoolbooks. That, for me, was the best result ever – geography classes using the idea of the river connecting states and how to make Amazônia more protected. Our work is going to teach kids about what the real Amazon is, not just a big forest but something vibrant, modern, cool and inspiring,” Bastos says.

"Everyone wants to do the Amazon logo, but the amount of work and the time invested to actually get there, to understand how to approach it, determine who would be the client and what they would need … I guess that was the hard part. We are proud of doing projects that are almost impossible, and this was one that, before starting design, took years of building relationships and understanding to push forward. It wasn’t going to fall in our laps. We had to go and find it and fight for it.”