Design on the streets

semiotic analysis of subversive posters from the Brazilian military dictatorship period

Abstract

Throughout history, design has been used as an important resource for social demands and reflections. In the context of the Military Dictatorship in Brazil, countless cultural and artistic productions were created—among them, posters, an important tool of graphic design. Given this, the research aims to analyze, through semiotics, how the language used in posters impacted the political scenario of the Military Dictatorship in Brazil. Therefore, the research is theoretical and exploratory in nature, where it becomes important to scrutinize the different historical contexts in which social design was present, in order to draw a parallel with the central theme being studied. From this point, semiotics is introduced as a way to analyze the language used in three posters from the context of the military regime, focusing mainly on the period of the Amnesty Campaign. In this way, it is possible to verify the impacts and mobilizations of social design within history.