Bola is a design institute which uses behavioral research as a premise to its projects. We believe that in investigating and understanding what happens in society in order to develop ideas which are in tune with its aspirations. This is the foundation for what we call meaningful design. We work with the same research methodologies used by our sister-company, Box 1824, and with a multidisciplinary structure that includes anthropologists, semioticians, photographers and, naturally, designers.
To celebrate the centenary of the death of one of Brazil’s most famous and respected writers, Machado de Assis, the country’s biggest television network, Rede Globo, created a mini series inspired by the book Dom Casmurro, one of his most brilliant books.
The series, entitled Capitu, targeted an audience that traditionally does not watch television, to promote the show and start a conversation with an younger audience, Rede Globo called LiveAD, a company that focuses in innovation in communication and is part of the Box 1824 group, who then created, developed and produced a very special project called One Thousand Casmurros.
The project is a mixture of collective reading with an online social network. The book was divided in one thousand parts and a website was setup to allow people to choose and record (through the use of a webcam) themselves reading that part of the story. Important figures in brazilian media were them invited to contribute to the project to stimulate internet users to take part in the project.
In about a month the reading was completed, generating one of the first and most incredible collective readings in the internet. The repercussion and spontaneous media attention was worth the equivalent of 6,67 million of US dollars and around 106 million people read about the mini series and the project with the press coverage that followed the initiative. One Thousand Casmurros was considered to be the best tribute to the centenary of Machado de Assis and the action has just won a Gold Lion in Cannes in the new category of Public Relations. To understand better the project, take a look at the video case that was awarded the prize.
Studying trends isn’t the same as studying the future (that’s futurology). Studying trends means analyzing the present in depth to picture more clearly where something is going.
Cosmopolitan Tribalism is a piece by BOX1824 and Bola, compiled over the past year for a behavioral and aesthetic map of global youth, mostly focused on young “Globalists” (better known as Millennials, people born between 1980 and 1995, and who entered the workplace during the 2000’s).
The study, commissioned by a group of technology and style companies, sought to map behaviors and moods common throughout the first truly global generation.
The video, a product of the study, tries to group references for an aesthetic movement highly influential among members of this generation, incredibly widespread during 2008. We see here a little of the “globalist spirit” made tangible.
It does not represent most of mankind and global youth, but rather a niche of globalized young men and women living an interconnected culture in the most economically active capitals of the world. This is an inspiration video, aesthetically organizing how a culture expresses itself.
Since we are reaching the end of the decade, it also works as reference of what the last 10 years looked like, from the indie movement’s rise with the return of rock music early in the decade, through the metamorphosis of hip-hop and the rise of the new rave scene. We are witnessing the convergence of three fundamental worlds of young global pop culture: hip-hop, rock and electronic.
Cosmopolitan Tribalism arises from the democratization of creative, experimental youth culture: a multitasking generation, attuned to the world, armed with freedom and the tools to create and mix references in its own way, maximizing the sense of celebration through visual codes such as vibrant colors, collages, geometric patterns, tribal graphics, psychedelic textures, and elements from street art and facial painting. Of the primary fusions, the fusion of Hip-Hop, Rock and Electronic, the three most influential worlds of various global youth cultures, is the most important at the moment.
The Internet is the great facilitator of new social relationships, making modes of consumption and self-expression change how we make and think about music, fashion, entertainment, design and communication. The urban world, connected and cosmopolitan, opens door for a return to the primitive, where nature worship, spiritual quests and new states of being are again in the discussion. This is how we define a new way of thinking, challenging the border between old and new, primitive and modern, natural and technological, driving the cultural and consumer goods industry towards updating and rejuvenating its direction.
To sum up, the piece tries coalesce the zeitgeist of our decade.
To supply with insights the brazilian branch of the auto company FIAT, about the giant and growing chinese market, we developed a study that crossed the behavioral perceptions of modern China with the movements perceived during AutoChina08, a car salon that occurred in 2008 in Beijing.
To materialize the results, Bola Sociology Design produced a book that points the main chinese cultural and market movements, including the intense culture of luxury and social differentiation, which are closely related to the construction history of modern China. The book also has a etnophotographic study that allows a clearer visualization of the presented concepts.
The concept behind the caleidoscope was developed in order to help Lux in its transition from a soap brand to a more contemporary cosmetic brand in the Indian market. The symbolism behind this element refers to endless possibilities and to constant changes - which reflect India’s current situation, transitioning between the traditional and the modern, under strong influence of the Western world. Indian women tend to reject the ideia of being labeled, and refuse to have to choose between traditional and Western aesthetics. This clash led us to select a colorful pattern, rich in symbolism, yet one that wouldn’t tend to any particular side. The color black was avoided, due to its strong rejection among Indian women. Furthermore, the packages had the challenge of not only being adequate to the aesthetics accepted by Indians, but, at the sime time, had to allow for possible future use in China and in Western countries.
In order to make the feminine shoe brand stand out in the São Paulo Fashion Week (SPFW), we developed the hot site for the action ‘Loucas por Melissa’ (Crazy for Melissa) and the brand blog. We performed a design review, a research of aesthetic references of the brand based on its products, packages, campaigns and also on how consumers dare to match their Melissas and clothes. We then produced a photo essay and used illustrations to make interventions on the photos. The final result turned out contemporary and wildly colorful, like Melissa itself.Comments and full article »
These images were made as an experiment after a study on how design and illustration have been used in the past few years overlapping with photography. We then decided to materialize the perception that the combination of two pure disciplines has created a new prism pf aesthetical opportunities that enchanted the world, especially the world of fashion. While the excessive use of this language has created a graphic milestone in the history of global design, Bola Sociology Design decided to build some images that were at once contemporary and timeless, to better understand the fragmentation between colors, and sobriety, photography and geometry. We will post more experimental projects soon.
To create the visual identity for the classic Brazil Vs. Argentina (which took place last June 18th, at the Mineirão Stadium), we tried to stay clear from the clichés of the sport’s iconography and explore the confontation of colors, with two dashes of paint in the nations’ colors (blue for Argentina and green for Brazil), as a symbol of the conflict and fight. The texture of paint suggests the grace and flow of the soccer movements, and the way the dashes meet resembles the letter “X” in Brazil x Argentina, as a symbol of the rivalry between the two teams.Comments and full article »
The concept of citizen traveller was developed for the new fashion brand of Paramount Textiles. We went for the pillars behind great national and international fashion brands and discovered a universe still unexplored. A world of young urban men and women who mix leisure and work in trips, and are immersed in the trends of mobility and culture trading. Therefore, we named the brand Sky, Land and Sea, an allusion to the three means of traveling. The logo was designed as an emblem synthesizing these three elements, with their corresponding colors, like a flag for global citizens.
To change constantly, but always building a brand image. This proposal settled the design of movie production studio Movie&Art’s new visual identity. We thought of a simple and flexible graphic element which could be reinvented and not discarded at each new phase of the studio’s history. The line was chosen because it symbolizes connection, continuity. Because each story follows a line. The “&”, a symbol of connection which had already been used by the brand, was recovered in its logo. The “&” stands for a sum: a sum of directors and topics, brands and ideas, a concept that is present in all the projects offered by Movie&Art, whether they are commercial shorts or full-lenght films.
To filter the excess of information found in the Internet these days, selecting only what is interesting to each person. This was our goal when developing web application Spix.info, which allows users to access what’s new in his chosen websites and blogs in a single page, from any computer. Spix was conceived in order to offer time saving and practicality in the three main functions of the web: search, access to specialized content and connecting to people. It is a tool to track whatever is important for the user. If you want to be one of our first beta-testers please sign up here. Check back soon for more info on Spix.Comments and full article »
