A cultura da impressão como ato de resistência política no design

Abstract

Printing, far from being a mere technical instrument for the transmission of information, constitutes itself as a space of political resistance in contemporary Brazilian design. This research investigates how designer-printer initiatives mobilize print culture as a form of political resistance through their modes of creating, producing, and distributing printed materials. Grounded in a transdisciplinary approach that articulates design, history, political theory, and critique of political economy, the work is organized around a triad of structural elements: political resistance, print culture, and processes of creation, production, and distribution of printed materials. Through qualitative and exploratory methodology, combining narrative research, participant observation, and oral history as proposed by Clandinin and Connelly (2011), three designer-printer initiatives in Brazil were investigated: Foite (Curitiba, PR), Mordida Gráfica (Belo Horizonte, MG), and Ateliê de Impressos (Fortaleza, CE), selected by criteria of strategic complementarity and researcher familiarity. The findings demonstrate that print culture, when politicized, functions as a resource for class consciousness formation, collective articulation, and formal experimentation that challenges capitalist structures of production in design. Political resistance manifests not only in the thematic content of printed materials but in the material choices, technical decisions, and modes of work organization that sustain its materialization. It is concluded that printing simultaneously represents labor practice, an autonomy strategy, and everyday contestation, revealing the political potency of productive processes as an arena for disputes over autonomy, memory, and possibilities for other ways of making.