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MIDWAY THROUGH LAST YEAR, BRASILIANBORN TONY DE MARCO RECEIVED A PHONE CALL
from art director Nina Hirschberg. She wanted to know if she could use photographs taken by him to illustrate a scene in the film Palermo Shooting, by director Wim Wenders, which was still in the production phase. The series of photos that caught the attention of the director of Paris, Texas were taken in São Paulo and showed the city straight after a local law was passed prohibiting the use of advertising in public spaces.

The images captured by Tony are the same as those that Jungle used to illustrate our last cover article. The list of publications after his work, entitled São Paulo No Logo, is extensive, and includes The Independent, Creative Review, Print in the USA and Font.

"I realised that the rest of the world was interested in seeing what was going on in São Paulo. At the time that I took these photos, the sky was ridiculously blue and I really wanted to show this; that São Paulo isn't just grey like everyone likes to say, and that the billboards were covering up the sky.
Before the law was passed, the city was frightening. It wasn't anything like Tokyo or Times Square".

The same series of photos that's circulated throughout the world will be on show at the Design Museum here in London - Six large-scale photos will be on public display.

Despite the photos being responsible for igniting Tony de Marco's international career, the Brasilian has a number of other aces up his sleeve. As well as being a painter - influenced by urban tagging - he's an illustrator, font designer and gives lectures on design. On his Flickr profile, he humorously
describes himself as being a "typographer, photographer, pornographer and VJ. Competent, romantic, ex-shy (we're worse than ex-smokers), a player, dyslexic, generous, selfcentred, cheeky, caring, devil's advocate". And by judging by his parody Guantanamo T-shirt; in his spare time, he's also a political activist. JD

DE MARCO PROFILE
Multi-media artist Tony de Marco, 45, is many things: typographer, photographer, illustrator and VJ.
He's been developing digital typographic designs since 1989, having created over 50 different fonts.
Since 2001, he's been an urban artist, creating works mixing stickers, tags, LEDs and alternative materials.

In 2003, his font Samba, inspired by illustrator J. Carlos' Art Deco letters, won an award at the Linotype International Type Design Contest.

In 2007 he took a series of photos entitled São Paulo No Logo, which portrayed the vast megalopolis
billboard-free. He is the brains behind the magazine Tupigrafia, created together with Cláudio Rocha.

SÃO PAULO NO LOGO
Design Museum
13 Feb - 27 April
DESIGNMUSEUM.ORG