The IMS Education Department organizes guided exhibition tours, meetings, and training courses, as well as online educational content, accessibility initiatives, and workshops for children and adults. The department has a long-standing partnership with the São Paulo Municipal Department of Education and carries out projects and initiatives in collaboration with several Ceccos (Community and Cooperative Centers), the Penha Pietra’s Occupation, and the CASA Foundation.
In late 2024, we were commissioned to create the graphic design for the department’s first book, conceived specifically for teachers. The publication explores Brazilian and international artistic works from the IMS collection or those that have been part of exhibitions, with a focus on the human figure. The goal is to foster a diverse dialogue about photography, time, territory, and memory. The book includes enlarged reproductions of the images for use in the classroom, as well as accessibility features such as Braille bookmarks, sign language videos, audio description, and narration.
Drawing inspiration from the Dikenga—a Bakongo cosmogram that symbolically represents the great cycles of the sun, life, the universe, and time—we selected the project’s colors and created gradients that blur the transition between one color and another, with the aim of reinforcing the continuity and simultaneity of the presented content.
The book’s cover features no text, highlighting the publication’s title [What do we do when we come across an image?] and emphasizing the project’s visual nature. The eight enlarged reproductions of the images were printed on separate sheets from the book, making them independent and facilitating their use in the classroom. The set consisting of the book and the image sheets is bound together and protected by a transparent polystyrene sleeve printed with the gradient that forms the project’s visual identity.
