The archive · Brand & Identity · Marketing decision · 2021–2022
Raça Magazine marks its 25th with 'The Future is Black', an Afrofuturist design system
For Raça's 25th anniversary FCB Brasil built the magazine's identity around Afrofuturism, making Black Brazil the design's future tense.
Raça Magazine · FCB Brasil
What it had to solve
Raça Magazine, created in 1996 as the leading Afro publication in Latin America, was turning 25. In Brazil, 56% of people are Black, yet the country's media has never properly represented them, and an anniversary identity risked looking backward instead of forward.
How it works
Raça Magazine was created in 1996 as the leading Afro publication in Latin America, and by its 25th anniversary the gap it existed to close was still wide open: 56% of Brazil's people are Black, but the country's media has never properly represented them.
FCB Brasil answered with an anniversary concept that refused nostalgia. Inspired by Afrofuturism — an artistic, cultural and political movement as ahead of its time as Raça itself — the team built a new design system under the banner The Future is Black, drawing on the colours, symbols and wisdom of Africa.
The system reset the magazine for the next 25 years by making Black Brazil the future it was moving toward rather than the audience it was remembering. D&AD carries the work in its awards archive under Branding; the page records no readership figures, so the case rests on the design idea itself.
Why it lands
- An anniversary identity usually celebrates the past; Afrofuturism lets Raça point Black Brazil forward instead.
- Basing the system on African colours, symbols and wisdom gives the redesign a coherent visual language rather than scattered references.
- The contrast between a 56%-Black country and its never-represented media makes the design's argument legible to anyone who sees it.
- It converts a one-off birthday celebration into the platform for the magazine's next 25 years.
What it did
The identity gave Raça a future tense: Blackness became the direction of travel rather than a heritage to commemorate. D&AD carries the work in its awards archive under Branding; the page records no circulation figures, so the documented outcome is the repositioning itself.
What you can take
A milestone anniversary need not be a look back: point the design language at the audience the brand wants to grow into, and the celebration becomes a strategy.
Since then
The identity entered the D&AD awards archive under Branding as an example of an anniversary that repositioned rather than reminisced. The page records no circulation or engagement figures, so what endures is the design decision: a legacy Afro-Brazilian title whose 25th-anniversary language treated Blackness as the future, giving the magazine a visual system built to carry it for another quarter century.
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