This dissertation intends to analyse the production of graphical material proceeding from popular social groups, which is herein named Graphic Vernacular Design. The focus of the work is to analyse this phenomenon through theoretical research, surveys, observation and graphical analyses of the object at issue, observing the social context in which that production arises, what defines it and the use of such objects. The object of study is based on a set of signs featured by three categories of business and services, such as: bars, restaurants and snack-bars; hairdressers and locksmiths registered in the city of Rio de Janeiro. From the observation and analysis of a handmade set of signs made by skilled professionals in that area of production, the so-called letter painters, this piece of work also investigates the existence of a particular language in that kind of production. The research takes as principle the fact that legitimation instances proceeding from different social groups impose values and rules of judgement which affect the production of a field of production of symbolic goods as occurs with the design. The importance of this study is based on the fact that the production of graphic vernacular design, even though characterizing a handmade production in a post- industrial society is still a regular practice in the country. That kind of production lives together with the production of cultured graphic design inside the same society: however, both fields of production are formed to attend the needs of distinct social groups.