A Design Laboratory Above the Clouds: Black & White and Color Stories of Portugal's Airline (1945–1979)

Abstract

Take-Off Design has always been present in airlines as a way of giving them personality and transforming them. However, scientific studies on the relationship between aviation and design and its different elements—criticism, historiography, and culture—have been scarce around the world, and non-existent in Portugal.1 The study we have carried out allowed us to clarify the nature of the relationship between the profile of a company that represented the country (and helped to spread an image of modernity) and the different areas of design. The pronounced ideological conditioning, which is present visually in design projects produced for Transportes Aereos Portugueses (TAP), from the first years of its existence, emerged as the result of its status as flag carrier. The logos, the crew’s uniforms, the different types of communication media, and the planes’ interior design created a country that only existed “in the air.” In the real country, obliged to remain underdeveloped, poor, and rural, the “one way” ideology did not create job opportunities for designers outside the confines of what the regime understood to be official taste and expression—that is, following the historicist and grandiloquent Portuguese way.2 The political closure of the 1950s—a time which, metaphorically speaking, we paint in black & white—made way for a slow and progressive opening. The transition to the next decade saw the image shown in color, foreshadowing the “Marcelist Spring”3 in 1968 and the “Carnation Revolution” in 1974,4 which brought freedom to the country. In 1976, TAP kept the floral theme, with an image campaign called Spring Service. The close links between the rhetoric of the regime for external use and the TAP corporate image make for an unrivalled case study in the historiography of design in Portugal. 1 See Alexander von Vegesack and Jochen Eisenbrand, Airworld: Design and Architecture for Air Travel, 2 ed. ((Weil am Rhein: Vitra Design Museum, 2006), 6. 2 This is a reference to Jose-Augusto Franca’s strategy to characterize some of the key figures in modern Portuguese art, whose work, to some extent, establishes a dialogue with tradition or modernity. See Almada, o portugues sem mestre [Almada, the Masterless Portuguese Man] (Lisbon: Estudios Cor, 1974); We can also see a seminal study on the promiscuous relationship between art and the political regime by Jose-Augusto Franca, A Arte em Portugal no seculo XX [Art in Portugal in the 20th Century] (Lisbon: Bertrand,1974). 3 On September 27,1968, Marcelo Caetano (1906–1980) was appointed by the President of the Republic to replace Antonio de Oliveira Salazar (1889–1970). Recognizing the complex political and military situation in Portugal and the Overseas Provinces, Caetano attempted to reform and “open up” the regime. The period between September 27,1968 and January 21, 1971 raised hopes of a political renewal and was named the “Marcelist Spring.” 4 The carnation has become a symbol of the military coup on April 25, 1974, which ousted the Estado Novo. The name emerged because of a florist in Lisbon, who shared her joy at the end of the regime by giving her flowers to those around her, and to the soldiers, who placed them in the barrels of their rifles.