The thing about working with culture, creativity, and independent retail is that typically, there is no big budget involved. It is a lot of fun, though.

Zumbido is, as you guessed, a low-budget project, so we had to assist the client with most of the choices, from furniture and interiors to coffee equipment.

With over 75 years of experience, Comeca is a leading company supplying appliances and technology for the HORECA sector (an acronym for Hotel, Restaurant, and Café/Catering).

We started this project by creating a plan for a complete brand redesign and a new brand strategy considering the significant but exciting challenges that the clients are currently facing and to mark Comeca’s 75 anniversary.

Summer was in full bloom when Estúdio Ofício, Barbot Bernardo’s graphic design studio, kick-started the project to design the new identity for Golden Pilates, a new Portuguese pilates machines manufacturer.

Here is a preview of a set of botanical illustrations that Oficio’s art director, Maria Helena , is currently drawing for Saber Fazer, our education and editorial unit, upcoming book on natural dyeing.

The book, to be published in the next few months, was written by Guida Fonseca and Alice Bernardo.

Finally, here is your free download link for BREAK2023's digital guidebook, the SURVIVAL KIT prepared by the VicNic crew!

All the full masterclasses and roundtables are also freely available in video format on their YouTube playlist.

Our work with Susto began in 2021 with a strategic consultancy process to define the business model for the brand. Subsequently, our studio took on the challenge of creating a new identity.

The creative direction of the graphic project bounced between two possible paths: one inspired by neo-postmodernist currents, closely linked to the creative direction of the brand itself and the client's artistic work, and that of brutalism, in the most literal sense of the word and therefore more linked to the materiality of the objects and the author's experimental process.

The challenge of GatewayCrafts Communication Design is to be itself an alluring gateway for potential students, as well as audiences looking for information and new discourses about creative industries, artisanal work and small-scale manufacturing. The goal is to communicate the project's positioning, what distinguishes it in this universe, demonstrate technical rigour with lightness and fluidity, and, above all, create curiosity.

Our love for all typography's details originated Nova Type Foundry's Type Glossary. A Glossary of typography terminology comprises 32 posts where you can find information on several topics from typeface classifications, glyphs' anatomy, legibility rules, type design tips and much more.

Hugo Branco from Vic - Aveiro Arts House and Navalha, Associação Cultural, challenged us to design the identity of Break In Case of Emergency 2023, a kind of festival dedicated to sharing practical knowledge on themes and trends that affect the music industry.

"BREAK IN CASE OF EMERGENCY is a two-week hybrid boot camp for independent musicians and labels, focused on exchanging practical skills concerning some of the most pressing aspects of today's independent music industry.”

"I love every one of the letters in the word Grampa. They work together in a very harmonic manner, and I explored different designs with great detail. I wanted an organic 'G' with a big, unconventional loop harmonising the other letters. "

Recently we finished the branding and graphic design strategy for a leading Portuguese catering solutions provider.

The challenge with ONEX (Onexperience Group) entailed simplifying how the brand is presented in different markets and developing a new identity and shared visual system for the seven companies composing the conglomerate.

We developed a comprehensive visual system to organize the brand presence in different media. The strategy was to put forward a strong presence, combining typographic elements with an expansible set of symbols and colours representing each of the present and future business areas.

The project took several weeks, and, like all internal projects, creating a new website for Ofício was constantly pressured by the tight schedule of other things.
The need arose in 2021 when we launched the new Ofício identity. The site, which had evolved disorganizedly over the years, was no longer fulfilling its function, not even remotely. It didn't even respect the direction that Miguel Moreira had given our identity.

Ana Paula Almeida, artist and maker, among many other things, came to us with a challenge. To think strategically about the brand, she was creating for a product and, based on that thought, to develop the entire visual identity.
The product in question is a lamp whose most distinctive feature (in addition to the design) is that it is built with wool yarn. These yarns are the leftover stock from the wool factory that now houses the New Hand Lab, a life project by Ana.

Cru was founded in 2012. The original logo was used for almost one decade until the founders asked us to help rebrand this iconic space in the heart of Porto's art district. By then, we had just finished a strategy project that repositioned Cru from a Cowork to a Creative Hub, something we will tell later in a different post.

Typography is a subject we love — kerning, small capitals, punctuation, alignment, baseline grids and optical sizes — we love it all. So Joana, the founder of Nova Type Foundry, asked us for help regarding Nova's social media communication: strategic marketing within a subject we hold dear.

Today we returned to 2020 to tell the story of a project that still needed to be posted here.

The Sust.co identity was a challenge proposed by Sofia Ferreira, who later hired our strategic consultancy services. We can only tell you a few details about the project and the client's plans. Still, we can say that it is linked to one of our central themes, "Craft", which means beautiful things, handmade and/or on a small scale and to last.

After having the first editions sold out, Senzu Coffee Roasters roasted a new and bigger batch for our collaboration, this El Salvador (La Garza). Maria Helena designed the beautiful label.

Within the team, the objective of positioning the work on a multidisciplinary level was clear: we got inspiration from the work's very delicate but very organic and visceral character. We also considered wool's primitive rawness and the dialogue with technology: an invisible but ever-present second layer in many of her artworks. Finally, we took visual clues from music and the early eighties' sombre bohemia.

“In my research, Wassily Kandinsky's "Point and line to plane" informed most of the process: I love this book, a marvellous piece exploring graphic expression, painting and geometry theories with scientific precision, relating them with dance and music.”

After the first two editions' success, the Costa Rica natural (sold out) and the Ethiopia natural (last few bags still available), Senzu Coffee Roasters roasted a new batch for our collaboration. The third chapter is a spectacular Ehtiópia Guji, washed.

In the weeks before starting the first drafts, Ricardo sent us his references, most of which were music-related. The '70s and early '80s rock bands were our starting point (do you remember when all the bands used to have a logo?), something very prevalent in the first drafts on paper.