The several journeys of a designer - 3

Original em português | Versión en castellano

As a child and adolescent, I idealized Brazil as my mother's paradise. I came here for the first time at the age of three. And came back for periods, some somewhat short and others very long, at 10, 14 and 18 years old. In part 2 of these "journeys", I wrote about how Rio de Janeiro abducted me. And I also fell in love, in another way, with the vertigo of São Paulo, beyond my visceral ties with Bahia. But as in any adaptation, there were great and unsuspected cultural, professional and behavioral shocks.

"City that seduces me, by day there is no water, and at night there is no light" (1)

At the age of 23, here again, I settled in the heart of Copacabana, a few floors above a beach bar strangely called “Chuva de Ouro”, frequented by the inexhaustible neighborhood fauna. One of my younger brothers, Paulo, went to university in Curitiba. The other, Gonzalo, a communication student, shared that apartment with me in the epicenter of the Rio hodgepodge.

It was surprising to discover so late that, strictly speaking, the word “design” did not exist in proper Portuguese. There was “visual programming” in vogue, which sounded like Italian “visual communication” to me, but nothing as unmistakable as "diseño" in Spanish. This already reflected a reality, as there were very few design companies in Rio, all relatively small, and some renowned designers, that worked with one, two or three assistants in their studios. A substantial part of the "visual communication" was generated in architecture studios and advertising agencies.

What I knew about Brazilian design at that time came basically from architecture, furniture, popular art, from my childhood Pasquim magazine and the work of multi-artist Millôr Fernandes  and the extensive graphic work of Aloísio Magalhães, nothing else. My Brazilian ID was still in the process of being validated at a snail's pace. In job interviews, it was strange to hear that my meager portfolio was very serious, clean, minimalist or, as one interviewer put it, drawing a North American yearbook full of splashes and huge letters, that my work was simply “too European”. Finally, a friend gave me some pragmatic advice. And without discouraging, already on the brink of poverty, I decided: I take whatever comes.

Modern times?

As a temporary freelancer, I entered the world of a small publishing unit in a public foundation, an openly stratified and contrasting portrait of the country’s glories and shortcomings. People, overqualified or totally unqualified, who were trying their best with questionable material resources, skewed functions and a fragile balance. People highly committed to work, unlike others with endless health or assigned to nebulous sectors in the labyrinth of the system. Of some of them, I saw the IDs on their respective seats every day, but never their presence. And the endless breaks for the “cafezinho” that drove me crazy ... This general panorama had caused that the periodicals were delayed up to two years and, what is worse, made it difficult to develop the new projects that the institution demanded. I was faced with the sudden responsibility of selecting an assistant, another "visual programmer", much older and more experienced than me, like everyone there. I discovered with some perplexity how ingenious tricks were produced, much to the local taste, in photocomposition, photolithography, plates, printing, etc. The state of the art of improvisation and nothing that I had formally studied. It was a winding learning curve that required discipline, patience, and most of all, the elusive treatment I never had and still do not have in interpersonal relationships.

By the end of that year, the publications were all up to date and the flow of new projects had been reestablished, with the moving collaboration of almost all the colleagues and the various chiefs - almost chieftains that abounded in these small tribes. I also learned how to deal with the weather: mold, moths, cockroaches, arachnids, and some humans who would fit well into such categories. I submitted to the titanic task of exhuming art corpses, of the most unusual expired or obsolete products, to later organize, classify and properly archive everything that would serve, from photographic material, to technical cards (ancestor of the style sheets of each project), to finally standardize some processes on the fly. My last audacity was to go beyond the Times and Univers fonts to compose texts, to use the battered single-color offset printer to print in various colors with some passable register, and to try to give a less anachronistic visual language to everything.

Trying, testing and failing, analyzing and prototyping almost intuitively, helped by a brave and supportive team that looked at me with a mixture of benevolence and dread, was perhaps at that moment, my first contact with a kind of antediluvian internal UX. For the record: my eternal gratitude to those reckless professionals, with PHDs or “PHnothings” with only the will to improve.

A country with a great past ahead (2)

When I was a small child , I used to listen to my mother tell stories about Bahia. All of Brazil would be beautifully populated by colossal black heroines and heroes, of equivalent stature and dignity, in my fable, to that of the ancient Incas of the Andes. But just as with the descendants of the Andean civilizations, the naked and raw reality on this side of the continent was quite other.

Despite being white, heterosexual, cisgender and tremendously naive, I obviously noticed then many absurdities, of all kinds, but I only received the first big blow when my girlfriend got home, livid, shaking with anger and crying. I had already felt the pout of some people in the street. On a bus on line 583, I heard the whisper of two women: “Look at that trickster with that young gringuito jerk?” Returning to the subject: the building’s doorman rudely forced my girlfriend to enter through the back door and the service elevator, a discriminatory device still in force. She was black - “black black,” according to the shameless local colorism. I went downstairs in shock to speak to the building's trustee and the doorman, without unraveling the perverse logic of the situation. The trustee was not there, but the doorman was, handsome, very tall, super strong and… as black as the majestic mythical heroes of my childhood. It made me a complete mental mess. The courtship survived and the subsequent friendship took root. But my fiction about the sweetness of Brazil, the opportunities and the supposedly widespread racial democracy, was shattered that afternoon in 1987. And that was only the beginning of several demystifications.

Did anything change substantially in 2020? The current legatee of that doorman now occupies a dismantling and denial government secretariat. Let's take a look at the equivalent of the caveman and militarized trustee who is now ominously enthroned in the Alvorada, the Brazilian White House. From the most abominable Brazil, prejudices, dictatorial and theocratizing nostalgia, and hatred of all kinds reappeared. It's scary to think that there are people insisting that these and other aberrations are not systemic ...

Yuppies in the tropics

In the rapid passage through some ad agencies here and there, I found that, in general,  design seemed patronized. Everyone wanted to create their respective “consecration campaign” at any cost, win Cannes Lions and wear oversized re-readings of men's and women's suits with shoulder pads or worse. It wasn't my thing. I started working in a small corporate communications agency that grew dramatically. And there I met colleagues that I identified as designers, people that I still love, who I longed for when they went to other bands or beyond life, in those crazy final minutes of the 80s.

In that job I was finally able to exercise with youthful impetuousness all that I had accumulated since I was 11 years old. Was it necessary to illustrate with airbrush, gouache, pencil or ink? I was going to do it. Looking for a new typesetting font? Find it . Mix Pantones and CMYKs to taste and apply details in hot stamping or screen printing? Wonderful! Produce photos with special effects? Let's click! Write exotic texts? Very cool! What had begun in a small nine-square-meter room already occupied two entire floors in the center of the city. Directors of this and that. Real graphic producer. A kind of computer for simple things (a Brazilian jurassic PC?). The giant aquarium of the bosses , the meeting room with a table and sweets or sandwiches, a beautiful mezzanine for the studio, the inevitable institution of the cafezinho. Sleepless nights quickly emerged, weekends locked up in urgent special projects for the big shots, big parties on Friday nights celebrating every new account won. The most diverse passions or vices. Parade of egos and superegos.

Finally: one school, that, while producing impressive and effective communication and branding results (an almost unknown word at the time), seemed to me on the brink of collapsing from hype. So it did. Methodically I had saved some money and coincidentally had received an offer to work in another studio, but I thought it would be better to jump out immediately and try my own way in another direction.

• Part of the 1988-89 design department and an undercover: Cida, Fernandinha, Octavio, Roberto (i.m), Mônica, Mauricio, Carlos, Clovis e Nelson

The LANCER is nothing FREE

Without the protection of a steady job and without clients or business contacts, it is intimidating to be alone at age 26. At such times, unexpected fruits are reaped. Friends, acquaintances, former clients of the former agency or simply someone who by chance saw your work in a pre-internet era, without networks, websites, instagrams, behances or so.

I dragged, from company to company, a portfolio that almost resembled a suitcase. Little by little, small clients emerged, others not so small and even some almost large. Brazil lived in the darkness of a “technological market reserve”. Buying a PC computer in 1989 was prohibitive, a Mac then, not even in dreams ... But I had enough for a drawing table, stool, lamp, T-rulers, squares, scale, inks, markers, pens, brushes, glue, mask, airbrush, light box, card stock, papers, letraset boxes, stencils and curvy rules (does anyone still know what that is?) and a second hand typewriter. I no longer lived in Copacabana, but in a suitable space to start thinking bigger. The MMP studio was underway, already with the idea of, in the early nineties, setting up a real structure with my brother Gonzalo, who was still dating the advertising world, and maybe one or two more assistants.

It was a time for other lessons. How to correctly fit the work to the budget. Understand what means to “sell the fish” and that each company behind the client is a particular universe connected to vast market ecosystems. It was also time to discover how to deal with the wheels of loyal and professional competition, or unfair and improvised competition, and thus cement the ethical and practical parameters of the profession that accompany me to this day. And I was able to verify, satisfied, that value is never created in a vacuum or assumption, but by observing individuals, history with its foundations, and always pointing to the future and its possibilities. There was a naive freelance feeling of optimism and freedom.

Up to the day when a not-so-small client did not pay their bills and became ipso facto unreachable. And, on the next day, another client surprised me with an extra, symbolic payment, as a way of recognizing my work and hiring a new project. As in everything, for every unscrupulous person or company, there are many others that are examples of correction. I lived a life on the tip of the pencil, calculating pennies, figuratively and in fact, mentally dollarized and thrifty, trying to capitalize in the midst of the Brazilian hyperinflation.

Learning to play by ear

When we are young, we want to express our ideas and link them with the threads of accumulated knowledge, especially if the environment allows extroversion, as some people say is so characteristic of this country. Unless you are frugal in your words and jealous of your craft. Until about ten years ago, I did not attend clients personally, except very punctually. Some people swore, and convinced me, that I did not have the profile for such a thing, due to a tendency to sincericide, and that my natural environment would only be the studio, but ...

Still very early in my career, the marketing director of a well-known industry to which I was recommended - at that time everything that smelled of design passed painfully through mkt - called me for a project. I spoke for a minute about myself and another minute presenting the portfolio. I asked him what his demand was and the client spoke continuously for about 30 minutes, two thirds of them about amenities that ranged from football to family, from Harley Davidsons to good bars, until finally getting on to the subject.

When he finished, he asked, “You were quiet all this time, man, what happened? Didn't you like it, didn't you come up with an idea? " I kicked back immediately, somewhat insolent: "Because everything you said will be the basis of the ideas that I will certainly have and others that we may develop together." I submitted the business proposal the next day. It was approved on the spot. I actively listened and worked for them for the following 25 years.

Economy Minister Zélia confiscates everything: now what?

I have already written about the plans for 1990. But the country was an insane blender and the folkloric Fernando Collor and his economy minister left me (and the country) financially and morally on the streets, one afternoon in March. White color thieves, chosen by a good part of the voters, confiscated every single coin of all voters.

The way out was to postpone plans and start dancing to the crazy rhythm of the moment. On the drawing board until the wee hours of the morning, flimsy, keeping the dishes of the design and the domestic routine spinning in the air as jugglers do.

It was the time, I evaluate now, to perfection some of the outlined ideas, and to try to prepare the spirit and the body for the unknown adventure of undertaking in an inhospitable, unfavorable and idiosyncratic environment.

Small is beautiful

I had the strength of my work, the weapons of the trade, and a limited portfolio of potential clients. No contacts, almost no capital and, even less, experience as an entrepreneur. The latter was not taught at that time in art and design schools in Europe, except very superficially and in a barren and discouraging way. In the USA it was certainly already fully included in the regular study plans.

Friends with more resources officially joined in society with physical support and the bulk of the capital, three thousand dollars on January 8, 1991, which today would be equivalent to $ 5,800. I put in all the $ 450 I had saved ($ 870 today). We inherited from our parents an Olivetti Praxis 200, a fax machine and a mini fridge. One of the partners even helped with the installation of plugs and lights. Everything by passion. We restored some chairs found in the garbage on the street. We had two drawing tables that we completed with a small meeting room table, second-hand chairs, a drawer to store our work and material, a CD player to feed ourselves with music, and a metal shelf like those in a warehouse. The design books and magazines, which I had sent by sea some time before, finally found their place.

We started with a part-time assistant, a friend from another studio in management and production, and the two of us, Gonzalo and myself, taking care of creation and future clients. In April, a trainee, with no field experience, but who showed interest and great aptitude, joined the team, and a high-level copywriter who had been my creative partner at an agency too, replaced months later by another excellent copywriter. This setup lasted our first two years. We looked for clients and jobs that would allow us the minimum needed survival, and little by little we tried new steps. Sphaera Design e Comunicação was on the move. And some time later, I got married absolutelly happy.

Bia, Gonzalo, Tetê, Mauricio, Marcelão and Vanessa - our first new year's eve.

Numbers, joy and desolation

The only cash books I had ever seen were those of my grandfather, an accountant, a superb calligrapher. My capitalist partner had the patience to try to familiarize me with the peculiarities and rudiments of financial management in Brazil. At first I was a quiet weak learner. But something remained in my head, which I could only implement years later. At the end of 1993, the partners withdrew from the business that, small and still in infancy, was not entirely their core, for the total accumulated value of US $ 11,000 (US $ 19,750.00 or R $ 102,000.00 in values currents). I am grateful for their immense help and the valuable lessons I received from them.

We were still very young, but the team was improving a lot with new hires and acquisitions. The trainees became permanent  employees, the youngest of them decided to enter university. We hired another professional accountant and an excellent inhouse graphic producer. We invested in two Macs and four PCs, expensive software, scanners and printers. Clients were more diverse, from small businesses or liberal professionals to much larger industries or corporations. Throughout 1994 we became bolder and moved forward with brand projects, internal communication, signage and spaces, packaging, some point-of-purchase and, eventually, even ads in the press and video. I lived inside the studio, when I was not at home, my two exclusive occupations. The hindrances were concentrated in the schizophrenic Brazilian labor law, the epidemical bureaucracies of an unethical state and the changing tax traps.

The blissful and meteoric 1995, a year which had begun with the arrival of my first-born son, was suddenly overshadowed in late July by the violent loss of an extreme talented sister in her youth. The team managed to keep the plane on a safe route, but we were inexorably shocked and the work was, repeatedly, a form of shelter.

I was then already interested in prehistoric BBS (google there, if you don't know what I'm talking about), personally bought the first USRobotics 14,400 modem for the office. We were the third corporate user of a pioneer ISP of the  recently launched WWW in Brazil. In October, I roughly wrote the code for the first website for a client, site that was checked on our Powermacs with System 7.5 and Pentiums I with the gleaming superbugged Windows95, browsing through Mozaic and Netscape (yes, google or duckduckgo again if you don't know what I'm talking about).

All this made us mature at once and give even more value to each goal achieved and each person along the way. We ended the year operating as a small, fully structured company, quite battered inside, but already with some experience and the necessary power to start a new stage.

• (1) Lyrics from the carnival march "Vagalume" (Firefly), 1954, by Vitor Simon and Fernando Martins.
• (2) "Brazil has a huge past ahead of it", famous aphorism by Millôr Fernandes, included in the "Bíblia do Caos", L&PM Editores, 1994