The new brand was developed by Guillermo Brea, along with Alejandro Luna and Carolina Mikalef.
A highly qualified jury unanimously selected the new brand design between 69 national and international agencies that arrived at the final stage of the competition, organized by the Ministries of Media and Tourism.
Guillermo Brea, specialist in visual identity, is holder of the chair of Institutional Identity at the Faculty of Architecture of the University of Buenos Aires and was one of the authors of the visual identity of the Government of the City of Buenos Aires among other recognized works.
Description
To provide Argentina with a system of visual identity that will graphically synthesize the dif-ferential attributes that emerge from the “Estrategia de Marca País” (EMP), that is to say, Strategy of Country Trademark, jointly worked out by both National Government organisms and numerous private institutions. The implementation of the EMP will mean the Argentine image taking a new position in the world, by standing out its competitive advantages and by seeking ownership and recognition for its inhabitants.
Analysis
Country Trademark is a multipurpose sign system that has an infinitely greater number of re-quests than that of its parallel commercials. It must satisfy ambitions and communication ex-pectations on an institutional, mercantile, political, cultural and tourist basis in unlike, fluctuat-ing and sometimes paradoxical contexts. It must serve with equal effectiveness each of these areas and interests without detriment of the others and it will be an object of ownership of a different and heterogeneous group made up of millions of people to whom representativity is owed, lightly touching aspects as sensitive as the notion of nationality. It must also operate with equal effectiveness in both a local environment and abroad, seeking integration and unity within diversity. It responds to both rational and emotional factors, fluctuating between what is ambitioning and existing.
The Project of Visual Identity Country Trademark was developed trying to synthesize the main attributes that make our identity as a country in harmony with the demands that the trademark must bear. In the first place, the three main operative fields have been redefined as commerce, tourism and knowledge.
The commerce referent surmounts the agroalimentary and also integrates the working world, the tradition and the folklore. Nature and landscape together with the South American stereo-types with both their exotism load and rural primitivism.
The tourism referent may also be associated with culture, art, cosmopolitanism, gastronomic refinement, the urban (opposed to the rural) with more European and sophisticated character. It exceeds the notion of vacation in order to integrate the journey as vital experience. These at-tributes require a positioning that will go beyond the recognition that the tango has already obtained, and articulate themselves around emotional values.
The attribute information society and knowledge also enclose design, innovation, the world of the new global businesses and its virtuality and interconnectivity load. It corresponds to a more Saxon profile, articulated around the digital world, the biotechnology and the technoscience and it is the least installed imaginary component with respect to our country both abroad and in the inland frontiers.
On this basis a multivalent sign was built, capable of giving meaning to any of these referents. For this, the textual burden was lightened to two large fields:
• “a country to work in”: associated to efficiency, globalization, technology, the academic and the professional.
• “a country to live in”: linked to leisure, passion, authenticity, expressiveness, warmth.
That ambiguity load naturally requires a sign with an important degree of introspection, capa-ble of articulating with both the global notion , typical of the first field, and that of generating local emphasis, belonging to the second one. Thus, a brand is outlined under the concept “glo-cal” balanced between both opposed demands.
The creative exploration of visual referents started from a non-essentialist view of identity. This position presumes the non-existence of some a priori representations capable of recount-ing an identity by themselves. On the contrary, it confirms that this identity is built dynami-cally, by means of successive nominations. On the other hand, the isologo has been tackled since its conception as a constituent of a visual system whose totality determines its personal-ity, its nature and its relationship with the context. The brand is the axel of a system of visual signs that suitably combined form an identifiable gestalt.
As central idea of the graphic proposal, and against all reductionist pretensions, it was worked from the particular lack of definition that characterizes the debate on our national identity. The lack of clear agglutinants about the matter–beyond some features, habits or isolated charac-ters–is inefficient for the projection of a solid identification in time. We, therefore, established the notion of Argentine identity as mosaic, as juxtaposition of facts and figures, as a synthetic product of the multiple and the diverse in permanent dialectics. The trademark of a young country, whose identity is in a boiling process of construction and projects itself towards the future.
The concept “waves” mentions elements that as of its own dynamics they intertwine to form a whole different from its parts. The waves in the trademark deserve multiple interpretations and nominations that include from national ribbons to telecommunication waves, going through the social and historical cycles and fluctuations and the sensual dynamics of tango. They transmit energy, strength, happiness, passion, vitality.
The preliminary testing processes show that the sign is apprehensible to any spectator without the need of hard decodifications and it mobilizes emotional identifications. It is simple, which facilitates its settling and remembrance, and balanced between what is commercial and tourist; the global abstraction and its local proximity. It rides between sobriety and joy, between ex-pressiveness and reserve, between what is modern and conservative, temporizing the South American root with the European reproduction. According to the scale of its attributes, the sign avoids all picturesqueness and reductionist stereotypy.
It is considered part of a system under development, dynamic and changing in which the trademark adapts itself to a branding policy that accompanies it.
This type of proposal, regarded as an open system, permeable to situational and planned lee-ways to evolve in time, cannot be described beforehand as an enclosed totality. We consider that the visual system grows and develops in response to daily demands, most of which are impossible to imagine a priori for a project of this scale.
Nevertheless, we have tried to define a basic set of guidelines that make up the focal point of Argentina Country Trademark speech and that may be summed up as follows:
1. A trademark in connection with people.
Created to be protagonist of a communication attitude, a sharer of daily life. That understands communication and accessibility of information as a service. That is proud of its language, re-spects it and considers it more like a bridge than a barrier. Settling builder, bearer of a speech which is accessible, honest, warm, intelligent and affectionate. Similar to the Argentine citi-zens in their best practices: inventive, humour, talent, romantic nature.
2. A trademark linked to quality.
There is no doubt that quality is one of the keys to development and the reduction of asymme-tries. Argentina Trademark confirms this spirit associating itself to the top quality in the con-figuration of its messages. High demand in design and photography, rigorousness in the use and care of the language.Quality in the environments, media and supports where it will regis-ter.
Of course the country image cannot sustain itself exclusively from a logo, and reciprocally are the products, services, environments and actions it will accompany the ones that must promote the brand in quality and international acceptance.
3. An authentic and honest trademark.
The account of the MPA (Argentina Country Trademark) must fully assume the scale and par-ticularities of the transmitter it represents. The trademark communications will not deny the typical contradictions of an emerging nation. On the contrary, they will emphasize the strength of the person who fully assumes his identity conscious of his limitations and virtues, being the will of self-improvement one of these.
These guidelines, together with the development of their respective visual codes, configure a conceptual whole, a design that exceeds the messages to become the design of the trademark experience.
Source:
Guillermo Brea
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