(Repertório)
Brazil's street design has borogodó, and AI logos don't
In Brazil, the sign on the corner bar and the saying on a truck's bumper are made by people who never opened a brand guide, so no two are alike. The AI logo comes out looking like the one on the store next door.
Mateus CremonDesigner, Cremon Studio · 2 min read
Whoever painted the sign on the corner boteco, the kind of neighborhood bar you find all over Brazil, never opened a brand guidelines document. The letters are full of flourishes, and up close you can see the brushstrokes.
That sign has borogodó. It's a Brazilian word for a kind of charm that's hard to pin down, so I went looking for it in Brazilian street design, the design of people who have never opened Figma.
The brand guidelines
A brand guidelines document is white and tidy. It has the exact color and a page telling you where the logo can and can't go.
Borogodó isn't in any of them, though. It's on every street corner here, in the colorful storefronts, the awnings and the signs.
The bumper
The saying on a truck's bumper was picked by the truck's owner. It's painted with ornaments on both sides, right where the driver behind has to stare at it for the whole trip. Nobody signed off on it but him.
The chalkboard menu
At a lunch counter, the chalkboard menu is written by whoever's cooking. The handwriting on the board is theirs, and so is the little drawing of the day's special. Change the cook and the handwriting changes too.
Nobody wrote a brief
Nobody asked for a brief for any of this. There was no meeting and no round of revisions. Nobody there was trying to look like anybody else, so no two are alike.
I like things with detail, things that are beautiful, a Brazilian house that actually looks like someone's home. The streets here are full of that.
The store next door
The AI logo, on the other hand, had a prompt and everything, and it came out looking just like the one on the store next door.
AI has references from the entire world, and it hands you a logo that would work for any store on the street. You get something smooth, with nothing on it that says whose it is. The sign on the boteco only works for that boteco.
If your logo could go up on the store next door and nobody would notice the swap, it's missing borogodó.
