For the last 25 years, at the head of my studio, I’ve been acting as design leader and digital product manager for clients in the public, private and third sectors, conceiving, building and evolving online systems and content portals.
I’ve been conceiving digital products and coordinating the teams that have them built for almost 30 years.
Coming from a design background of furniture and print, I shifted to interactive design in the early 90’s, creating EIS (executive information system) front-ends for large Brazilian corporations as Vale, Alunorte (a subsidiary of Norsk Hidro) and CST (now ArcelorMittal Tubarão) and for the Rio de Janeiro mayor.
When the internet opened to the public, in the mid 90’s, there I was, designing content portals for mainstream multinational publishers, such as IDG and Time-Life.
For more than 25 years at the head of Calepino, I had the opportunity to fashion award-winning interactive products for the public, private and third sectors.
This is (not) the full story:
In the late 90’s I and my partner gathered an interdisciplinary team of highly talented professionals under Calepino, our interactive studio. The studio was from the beginning a non-hierarchical environment where everyone worked together and the contributions of each team member was equally valued, whether an intern or the design lead.
As at the time we developed mainly corporate intranets, the need arose to create an open product of our own, which could demonstrate our approach to interactive media, allowing us to explore new formulas without the natural constraints of a product developed for a customer.
Thus came Mingau Digital (Digital Porridge), a pioneer content portal aimed at children between 7 and 12, their parents and teachers.
With an peculiar editorial tone that encouraged critical thinking and thought-provoking illustrations, Mingau established itself as the most important digital publication for children in the country, being cited in textbooks and becoming the anchor of America Online’s children’s channel, at the time in which the company operated in Brazil.
The client portfolio has always been very diverse, from reputed research institutes to business associations, from museums to corporations, but the third sector has always had a significant weight. With all of them, we were able to maintain extraordinary long lasting and reliant relationships, some with contracts dating from the company’s inception till today, a confirmation of my obsession to understand the clients business fundamentals and goals.
Among the organizations, companies and public institutions to whom I had the privilege to work throughout my career, I’m proud to highlight:
Oceana is an international organization exclusively focused on the oceans, dedicated to promote measurable changes through strict scientific basis, in four main lines of action: curb illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing; sustainable fisheries; plastic pollution; and habitat protection. With offices in North America, Central America, South America, Europe and Asia, Oceana has won more than 275 victories and protected nearly 4 million square miles of ocean. I created and developed the series of online annual reports of the Brazilian Fishery Audit, and the online platform Alliance for Artisanal Fishing, a joint initiative of Oceana, Conservation International and Rare, endowed by the Humanize Institute.
SDSN Brazil (United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network) is one of the first local sustainability networks and integrates the UN initiative that mobilizes scientific and technical expertise from academia, civil society, and the private sector in support of sustainable development problem solving at local, national, and global scales. The project was funded by GIZ, the German Agency for International Cooperation, under the supervision of the Columbia University. I conceived the platform that supports the interactions between its local members. The project is currently being implemented.
Social Stock Exchange for NISE-Euronext Lisbon is a funding platform for Portuguese Third Sector Institutions that replicates the functioning of a stock exchange, to bring together organizations and investors, promoting funding for their projects. I have systematized the processes and created the online platform for project submission,
assessment and follow-up and donations website.
ADEMI (The Association of Real Estate Market Companies Directors) gathers the most prominent building companies in the most important state capitals. Since 2001, we’ve created several projects for Ademi. Beside some websites, I conceived in 2004, for Ademi, the online Real Estate Market Research platform (a comprehensive real-time analytic system that maps the stocks and commercial performance of the participant companies). It’s the most complete analytical platform for the Brazilian real estate market and is now being evaluated by CBIC (The Brazilian Chamber of Construction Industry) to became the national standard market research.
LegisSupport is a company specialized in the monitoring of the legislative activity in the most important Representative Houses in Brazil, and has some of the major Brazilian and multinational companies among their clients, such as AmBev Anheuser-Busch InBev, Coca-Cola, Osram and Pepsico. For LegisSupport, Calepino developed Monitor Legislativo, an online platform that tracks the progress of federal, state and municipal proposed bills; and Mapa Legislativo, an analytic software that evaluates the impact of those bills in their clients business and market.
The city of Rio de Janeiro is the second largest city in Brazil, with around 6.5 million inhabitants, and represents the second largest GDP in the country, approximately US$ 210 billion. The city has about 875 thousand buildings, both private and public. After two major cases of collapsing buildings, the City Council of Rio de Janeiro established the legal obligation for periodic security and habitability inspection. Calepino was the company chosen to implement the solution and I was the head manager of the project, conceiving and supervising the development and deployment of the online Building Inspection and Supervision (Autovistoria) system, co-coordinating a combined and joint task force of Calepino, the Municipal Secretary of Urbanism, and the Mayor’s Office Municipal Institute of Planning, responsible for the Municipality’s data infrastructure.
IETS (Institute for Labour and Society Studies), from which I am also an associate researcher, is a private, plural, nonprofit organization dedicated to the production and dissemination of knowledge about social issues and the diagnosis, assessment and design of public policies to fight poverty and inequality and improve quality of life. Through Calepino, I created and supervised the development of five different websites, the online Metropolitan Rio Social-Economic database, several online surveys, polls and research hotsites, Rio Além do Petróleo (Rio Beyond Petroleum, a policy thinkers/makers strategic forum) website and Estou Seguro website (micro insurance project for population at risk). Presently, we are starting the development of a research platform for the The Rio de Janeiro State Treasury Office, that surveys prices at the points of sale, to define the Tax Substitution policy of the State.
I’ve been also conceiving and leading projects for the Brazilian Academy of Sciences, FBDS (Brazilian Foundation for Sustainable Development is one of the leading Brazilian players in the Climate Change theme), Abir (Brazilian Beverage Association, that gathers the biggest beverages industries, like Coca-Cola, Pepsico, AmBev, Red Bull, Nestlé),Time Life Brazil, ACRJ - Commercial Association of Rio de Janeiro, AOL - America Online Brazil, Avina Foundation, CNSeg - Brazilian Insurance Confederation, Ferrero Rocher Brazil, Firjan - Federation of Industries of the State of Rio de Janeiro, Funarte - Brazilian National Arts Foundation, Fundação Terra dos Homens - Brazilian Terre des Hommes Foundation, GIFE (Brazilian largest social investors’ network), GVT - Global Village Telecom / Vivendi (Brazilian telecom company), IAB - Brazilian Lawyers Association, IBGE - Brazilian lnstitute of Geography and Statistics, IPEA - Institute for Applied Economic Research, Klabin (biggest paper producer, exporter and recyclers in Brazil), Miguel Faria Jr. (Brazilian film director), Ministry of the Environment, Museu da República (Republic Museum), Odebrecht (Brazilian leading engineering and construction company), Sebrae - Brazilian Micro and Small Business Support Service, Sergio Resende (Brazilian film director), SESC Nacional - Brazilian Commerce Social Service, USP - University of São Paulo, Vinicius de Moraes Publishers (Brazilian poet and singer), Vital Planet - (Dutch sustainable energy company).
Before Calepino, I worked at IDG Brazil (International Data Group, the editor of IT famous magazines PC World, Mac World, Computerworld, Unix World etc.) between 1995 and 1996, as Chief Interactive Designer, being responsible for creating the online versions of IDG’s publications, even before the US headquarter. The design approach I choose for IDG Brazil was able to influence the strategies of IDG US and IDG France, at that time.
Between 1992 and 1995, I worked at Venture, a Brazilian software consultancy, as Chief Information Architect, conceiving and implementing hypertext projects and enterprise information systems (EIS) for Vale (World second biggest mining company), Alunorte (an alumina refining now belonging to Norsk Hydro), Pará Pigmentos (a kaolin mining company now owned by the French company Imerys) and the Municipality of Rio de Janeiro.
My first job in Brazil, in 1990, was as Creative Director at PrintZ (an editorial marketing studio), serving important companies, such as Arco Companhia Atlantic de Petróleo, IBM, Banco Nacional and Companhia de Petróleo Ipiranga. PrintZ was also publisher of magazines PC News, Trade and Velejar (dedicated to sailing boats).
In Portugal, I’ve coordinated the course of desktop publishing and digital design in Vila Praia de Âncora for the European Social Fund, providing out of school / out of work young adults with new competencies for the market. Before that, I had my own design studio in Oporto, designing corporate catalogues and magazines and office furniture.