Pablo Picasso, being the first living artist to be featured in the Louvre, influenced the artistic world in a uniquely original way. Throughout history many artists have let others pave the way for greatness and followed in their footprints; not paving the way for greatness themselves, but literally following their footprints – one duplicated step at a time.

 

Our brief revolved around a protest against international design influences within South Africa. The message was to get South African designers to be true to their roots and create traditional executions of authentic designs; thus breaking the mold of the Euro-normative design we too often employ. This was implemented through our ‘Fuck Helvetica’ campaign. The idea was to personify Helvetica (the signifier of European stimulus) as a tourist in South Africa. This lead us to our concept; “Africa is not for sissies.”

 

The concept elicits a call to action, illustrating how these European designs would not be able to 'hack it' in Africa - as they are not exposed to the 'rough' elements that authentic African designers/designs are; such as -the harsh African sun, dangerous wildlife and violent crime. We illustrated this by highlighting what the European typeface, 'Helvetica' would look like after spending some time in South Africa. 

(Having a standoff with a mugger, a close encounter with a wild lion at the Kruger National Park and falling asleep at the beach).

 

Our executions aim to highlight the repetitive 'copy-cat' nature that many designers take on. The manifesto that will be included on all the physical executions embodies the nature of likening these 'copy-cat' designers to sheep - simply following the leader. We therefore have decided to illustrate a series of 'beat-up' 'a's' in the Helvetica typeface - tying in with the manifesto and sheep going 'baaaaaaa'