I have worked in design since 2012, but my story with this profession started a little earlier.
And, looking back, it didn’t follow such an obvious path either.
I went through web design, e-commerce, photography, advertising, marketing, marketing campaigns, events, digital products and launches and many other areas before arriving at the work that takes up most of my time today: building brands and visual identities.
Each of those phases left something in the way I work today.
The beginning
I’m from Laurentino, a small town in the Alto Vale do Itajaí, in Santa Catarina, southern Brazil. Today I live in Rio do Sul.
When I thought about starting to study Graphic Design, I still didn’t quite understand where that choice could take me.
In fact, Graphic Design wasn’t even my only option. At the time, I was torn between that path and studying Engineering.
I knew little about the design profession, but I felt that Graphic Design had more to do with what I liked doing. So that was the path I chose.
I had loved drawing since I was a child and knew I wanted to stay close to something creative. I discovered the rest by working day to day.
My first job in the field was at Área Local, a digital agency that worked mainly on building websites.
I started as a web designer.
Back then, layouts were still made directly in Photoshop. I designed the screens and learned, in practice, how to organize information, think about hierarchy and turn client needs into solutions through design.
Then came bigger problems
Some time later, I went to work at another company in the same field, in Itapema.
The real estate market in that region is very strong, and it put me in contact with larger companies and more demanding projects. Truly high level. That was around 2013 and 2014.
It was also in this phase that I started working with responsive design, right when it was becoming an increasingly important concern in website development, due to the growing demand for mobile design.
Each project raised the complexity a little. And I really enjoyed that, because I love challenges and creating new, creative things with every new project.
A period when I did a bit of everything
When I went back to Rio do Sul, I worked at Bike Plus, a bicycle e-commerce, around 2015.
It was probably one of the most multidisciplinary experiences of my career.
I redesigned the e-commerce screen by screen, photographed products, edited images, created banners, ads and social media content, and also redesigned the brand itself, which they still use today, both in the online store and in the physical store here in town.
In e-commerce, things are very close to each other. The product, the photography, the website, the communication, the campaign and the shopping experience are all part of the same relationship with the client.
Maybe that’s where I began to see more clearly that a logo, a visual identity, never lives in isolation. It needs to work inside a real business. On the website, on Instagram, in the physical store, on the staff’s t-shirts, and so on.
Agency life, marketing and lots of brands
Then I joined an advertising and marketing agency that was opening a branch in Rio do Sul. There, the pace changed a lot. Only those who’ve lived it know.
We worked with many clients, different sectors and very varied needs.
Some companies arrived wanting to improve their social media presence, but had little organized visual material. Sometimes there was a logo, a few colors and little else.
It was in that environment that I started working more often with visual identities and with building systems that helped these companies communicate better in the digital world.
I also worked close to strategy, copywriting and marketing professionals and other designers.
Agency pace taught me a lot about speed. You need to think, produce, review and move on. It’s pretty hectic. Over time, I learned to do that without giving up care in my decisions and attention to detail.
A new chapter at Rocketseat
In 2020, on the recommendation of a former colleague from the first agency I worked at, I took part in a hiring process at Rocketseat.
I started as a graphic designer, working very close to campaigns, ads, launches and events.
Over time, my role changed.
I started creating visual identities for different company initiatives and, in 2023, I developed the redesign of the Rocketseat brand itself.
Then came other challenges.
As new business fronts opened, I took part in building the company’s brand architecture and developed identities for different initiatives related to education, college, artificial intelligence, schools and other areas.
I also worked on identities for events, products and campaigns.
It was an important period because I got to follow a brand growing, branching out and needing to work in many different contexts.
When you work inside a company for a few years, you see things that rarely show up in a one-off project.
You see the identity being used by other people. You see where it works well, where it starts to break, where it needs to gain flexibility. And how decisions made years earlier keep showing up down the road.
In 2026, that cycle came to an end.
The studio
For much of this journey, I kept developing independent projects on the side.
Those projects brought me closer and closer to the world of brands and visual identities. Little by little, I understood that was where I wanted to focus my work and dedication.
Today my focus is the studio and developing brands for companies at different moments.
Some are just starting out. Others have grown and feel they lost their identity.
Some are changing their positioning, opening new fronts or trying to organize a brand that was built bit by bit, provisionally.
I’ve also had the opportunity to work with clients from different countries and collaborate on projects with other professionals, among them my mentor Walter Mattos.
All of this broadened my repertoire and also the way I see each new project.
What I brought with me
When I look back at this journey, I can’t really separate each experience from the work I do today.
Web design taught me to think about hierarchy, interface and usability.
E-commerce brought me closer to the product, to presenting a product well and to the customer experience.
The agency gave me speed, repertoire and contact with many areas of business.
Rocketseat put me in front of bigger systems, campaigns, brand architecture and identities that needed to work and connect with the company’s purpose in the world.
And the studio projects gave me room to go deeper and deeper into the process of building brands. Always evolving my processes, learning more and more how to build unforgettable brands.
Today I research a lot, test a lot and like to build decisions gradually.
I want to understand the business before defining a visual direction. I want to know why a choice is being made. And I want the visual identity to keep working once it leaves my hands.
Maybe that’s the best way to sum up what all these years left behind.
My work today carries a bit of every place I’ve been.
A little beyond work
Design takes up a big part of my days, but obviously it isn’t everything.
I still love drawing and I also like photography. I ride my bike, go to the gym and whenever I can I look for somewhere with nature nearby.
Music is almost always there too. Linkin Park is still my favorite band and alternative metal is probably the genre that plays most while I work and when I’m at the gym. I like thriller movies, anime and, every now and then, I still pick up the acoustic or electric guitar to clear my head.
A few fun facts:
I worked on the farm until I was 16 and then in a print shop. Years later, I decided to build my own house from scratch, which taught me a lot about managing a project, people, budgets, deadlines and so on. Pretty similar to running a business, haha.
I also have some less useful traits: I usually have more tabs open than I can use and, to this day, I never learned to whistle.
Anyway, these are small things that are also part of who is behind the projects you see here.
What now?
I keep working with the same curiosity that brought me to design in the first place.
There are still things I want to study further, ways of working I want to improve and other skills I want to develop that can add to my process of helping companies become unforgettable.
Today I can look back and better understand where many of the decisions I make in my daily work come from.
Web design, e-commerce, the agency, the years at Rocketseat and the projects I developed on the side left different marks on the way I think and work professionally.
And maybe that’s why I like talking about process so much. The final result shows one part of my work.
The path to it explains a lot about how that result was built.
If you want to keep reading
I wrote other articles that go deeper into some of the topics that came up throughout this story:
- How much does a visual identity cost? What makes the price vary so much
- The difference between a logo and a brand: why a logo alone isn’t enough
- Is investing in visual identity worth it? The honest answer
If your company is also going through a change
Today I work mainly on visual identity projects for companies that are growing, changing their positioning, organizing their presence or entering a new phase.
I have worked in design since 2012 and specialized in visual identity and brand building throughout this journey.
If you feel your company’s brand no longer keeps up with the current moment of the business, you can tell me a bit about your project.
I want to talk about my project
