Motos de Portugal was 2017's biggest exhibition at Casa do Design de Matosinhos, honouring the production of Motorcycles in the country – from its origins in the late 19th century to its prime in the second half of the 20th. Over 80 Motorcycles were selected from several local collectors and exhibited together with related materials – helmets, signs, posters, magazines, instruction guides. Emanuel Barbosa, a long time Motorcycle aficionado and collector, curated the exhibition with the support of esad—idea, and we've designed the exhibition identity.

Having a rich archive of motorcycle photographs, documentation, ads and printed materials, we felt like these images could do most of the job communicating the sense of nostalgia people still have for these vehicles that used to cruise through the Portuguese roads – from working class heroes to rich cool kids, a significant part of the population either owned or rode one of these motorcycles.

Following the principles we've set before for Casa do Design's communication, we've decided to create a variation of the structures previously set, changing the way space and opacity are used in the different materials:  instead of highlighting the different spaces and containers, we've resourced to a transparent information structure that is overlaid to the imagery bleeding out of each support. We also didn't want to pick one iconic image and repeat it throughout the communication, so we've chosen to use different photographs that could populate the city posters and the digital communication platforms with diversity, managing to keep a strong identity while invoking different scenarios.  

Here are some examples of the materials that were produced for this exhibition.

The catalogue was launched at the exhibition's closing event, offering a programme with the book presentation, talks with the curator and selected collectors, and film screenings. We've designed a poster for it, and thought that it would be nice to offer the visitors some RISO prints of them – luckily, esad—idea felt the same way. (Huge thanks to Sofia Meira for printing it!). You can browse through a detailed presentation of the catalogue here.