Profile

During my childhood, I attended many schools. For one thing, it gave me the capability to always adapt to new environments. Some highlights were:

- Anglo American School – NY, USA (nowadays, known as Dwight School)
- Anna Schmidt Schule – Frankfurt, GER
- Our Lady of Mercy – “Nossa Senhora da Misericórdia” (America school, in Brazil) – RJ, BRA
- Colégio Veiga de Almeida (Brazilian School) – RJ, BRA

After school graduation, I decided to work for a year in order to help me decide which college I would apply to. At one time, I was uncertain between Computer Science / Data Processing or if I would attend what I had planned until then - Industrial Design. Ended up choosing Industrial Design – "Faculdade da Cidade" (later, had it´s name changed to "UniverCidade") a traditional Industrial Design University, in Brazil. The course was divided into two areas after the fifth period: Product Design, which takes care of 3D objects, ergonomics and other similar tasks and Graphic Design, which focused on graphic solutions of any sort. 

The university experience helped improve my graphical representation techniques, made me come up with a work / creation methodology and stimulated me to persue my knowledge into complementary areas, that influenced my initial training.

After completing the university, I found a great gap in the industry due to the lack of quality on graphic layouts in web projects and decided to invest more time in that kind of study. I started off hiring private teachers on programming / development and managed to learn the base of what was needed to work and search for the remaining resources latter on. A quite common way of continuing studies in this field, also part of professional profile required by programmers. Without mentioning, the great amount of information on this area available on the internet. You only need a study map and a bit of commitment.

Nowadays, I keep myself updated constantly with new techniques or programming languages that I consider interesting. And complement my skills with various training classes from other areas of interest, available through the internet, in video format. Offered by the best universities around world, like Stanford, Berkeley, Yale, MIT, state universities and others.

The information is available to everyone. You just need to be interested in improving yourself.

Emphasis on research before starting any project, including sources that are not from the same field. Often the solution to a project is found another segment. I try to do the work until the client is satisfied, even if I'm not 100% happy with their decisions. Sometimes, the relationship between client and web designer / developer wears out because of the lack of this kind of mindset.

I prefer working on the project directly with the client. Some situations requires that you came up with a solution at that instant, particularly when the project has a short deadline. It's important to see the first reaction when presenting and analyzing my ideas and suggestions.

Normally, I concentrate tasks to avoid noise on the communication and only organize and delegate simple operational functions. It's very important to understand the various stages of the work being done, resulting in a smooth and uniform outcome.

Worked on two trainee Jobs in small sized agencies. Was contracted by one of them, and proposed for a partnership in the middle of the process, which gave us a chance to build our first design agency, called “Efeito Design” (Design Effect). The partnership was made up of me, a great friend from university and a friend of his. Each one had it's own attribute in the company. At the end of my university attendance, I decided to let go of the company, because of the huge workload provided by the classes.

At the end of studies, I decided to work as freelancer, although not having the necessary commercial profile necessary to acquire clients. But the skills on optimizing tasks would make up for it.

After eight years working this way, it was time to build a company - the one I'm dedicated nowadays: Planejamento Visual – Arte e Tecnologia (Visual Planning – Art and Technology). The company handles graphic design, programming / development, web technology and has partners on other fields, like, video production, photo production, journalism, content writing, and others.

Most of my clients come from the intense online marketing work I do through Google Ads. I studied how to build up campaigns and chose to invest in this type of media because of the concept revolution I believed the marketing industry was going through with this new tool.

The biggest demand is for website development. Although, during the process, clients end up needing additional services like corporate identity, system development, and printed graphic design. Others, request specifically for multimedia development, animations, video or photo production. E-commerce projects are also asked for constantly.

Percentage of client's profile:

- 60% - Small and medium sized companies.
- 20% - Individuals with personal projects or startups.
- 20% - Large companies.

There's one type of project that I find very interesting. And normally are individuals that ask for it. Web portal development. In this case, they're entrepreneurs with a great idea and a vast knowledge about the area of interest, and decide to create an informational/directory web tool to ease interactivity between agents of that segment. The biggest challenge on these projects is to understand the concept, organize the information on a commercial level and to create a feasible functioning structure. The greatest difficulty is always to come up with a lucrative financial model. There are many models to work on, for example: charge for spaces with huge visibility, charge for exclusive information access, charge for add posting, among other models. The risk is high and it's not easy to build a successful web portal. As usual with high risk investment, big profit returns come along, in case of success.

Some of the web portal projects development that I found interesting working on:

Guia Oil & Gás (Oil & Gas Guide)
Informative web portal about the oil and gas productive chain. A guide organized by categories. The main income strategy is by ad spaces.

Caça Urbana (Urban Hunt)
Collective sales website, on a specific area in the state of Rio de Janeiro. It worked for approximately 2 years. It's main profit was provided by the commissions on products or services sales offered on the main page.

Menu de Presentes (Gift Menu)
Specialized on gift lists, but with a twist: the client's guests would buy the gifts through the website, but the client would receive the cash equivalent, instead of the physical gift bought. It had an administrative system to control the transaction's cash flow.

Casamento Carioca (Carioca´s Wedding)
Electronic magazine with lots of well written articles and a business guide, organized by categories. High standards of approval for the companies interested in participating.

Conteúdo Saúde (Health Content)
I organized all the operation on this web portal. It has spaces for articles, assays published by the users, information and tips about diseases. Health and well being professionals profile display on many areas. The portal sells ad spaces and a special area for commercial display with complete information on professionals available.

Bazzar da Noiva (Bride's Bazar)
Web portal for ads dedicated to second hand wedding items. It also had a space for tips and other information.

Sistema SEI (KNOW System)
Website and system for handouts download, on many different academic courses.

Economia e Finanças (Finances and Economy)
One of my first web portal projects ordered by clients. Content exclusively about economic issues and bank loans. The goal was to sell subscriptions in order to access restricted content.

Other projects I've developed, on more common areas, include:

- Real Estate, Management and Brokers
(Realty management for display, realty details with photos and videos, apartment reservation, data export for other portals)

- Artists, Bands and Musicians
(Schedule management, art / portfolio display, music track exposure, video display, among other exclusive features)

- Spa and Beauty
(Service and treatment showcase, photo gallery, among other features)

- Gastronomy and Restaurants
(Manageable menu, reservation systems, photo gallery, videos, user registration for e-mail marketing, portals for franchises, order requests, among other features)

- Clinics and Labs
(Content management, appointment scheduling, restricted area for user interaction, like: exams results, files, images, among other information)

- Universities, Academic Area and Courses
(Institutional content management, information display on courses available, online video exposure for restricted area with subscription payment, among other features)

- Online Sales / e-commerce
(Female fashion, children's clothing, carnival accessories and costumes, sex shop, CD/DVD sales, games, beauty, diet supplement, audio-visual equipment, among other areas)

- Energy / Oil Sector
(Institutional information, portals, intranets, extranets, helpdesk systems)

- Building
(Institutional information management, portals, accomplished work showcase with image gallery, among other features)

- Pharmaceutical
(Virtual manageable catalog, institutional information, support channels, among other features)

- Concert Houses / Entertainment
(Image gallery management, calendar management, institutional information, restricted area for e-mail marketing, among other features)

- Financial Sector
(Investment plans information management, financial products, institutional information, PDF document download, among other features)

- Fashion
(Information about collection, virtual catalog, image gallery, among other resources)

- Dentistry
(Institutional information management, treatments, image gallery, videos among other)

- Tourism
(Packages information management, corporate/cultural and social events, trips, bilingual versions, information download, among other features)

- Industrial
(Institutional information, products or services information management, among other features)

- Law / Legal
(Institutional information about law firms or professionals, areas of expertise, article posting spaces, among other resources)

- Sporting / Gym / Athletes
(Institutional information, restricted area access with exclusive content for each user, training information, athlete's curriculum, equipment virtual catalog, among other information)

- Advertising, Marketing and Studios
(Institutional information, portfolio display and management, images, videos, among other features)

- Consulting
(Institutional information management, available services details display, user sign-in for printed mail / e-mail marketing, among other resources)

- Model Agencies/Casting
(Profile register for detailed search management, photos, videos, institutional information, among other features)

- Vehicles Rental
(Fleet display, institutional information, reservation forms, among other resources)

- Photography
(Portfolio display with management, institutional information, professional profile, among other resources)

- Import / Export
(Institutional information management, services details, restricted area access, among other resources)

- Adult Content
(Porn and fetish videos, restricted access with sign-in payment, among other resources)

A great advantage of working in projects in various segments, gives you a broader view in order to apply solutions from one area into another.

In my view, operational systems are just platforms. And programs are working tools. I've already worked with Mac OS, IBM´s OS2 and Windows. I chose to work with PC, since it has great variety of softwares available, especially tools for the web.

In addition to traditional graphic programs like Corel Draw, Illustrator, Photoshop and Figma (experimenting), I also work with softwares for web development as Visual Studio Code, Visual Studio Express, SublimeText and Eclipse. Occasionally, I work on multimedia projects or video post production that require softwares like Premiere, After Effects and Sound Forge.

The dynamic languages for programming and database interactivity that I use the most are PHP, Javascript, ASP.NET (VB.Net), Node.js, React, Vue (experimenting), ASP, Ajax, ActionScript 3, Json, XML, JQuery, HTML5, CSS3, Bootstrap, Java (android app development). For database design, I use MySQL, SQL Server for most of the bigger projects and experimenting with MongoDB. The technological choice is decided based on the type of project, execution deadline, available budget, and technical issues. I have my own framework built in Node.js / React, PHP and ASP.NET (VB.Net), PHP and currently working on Node.js / Vue version, which are the main languages used on the tech industry.

Website projects with content management systems (CMS) are relatively simple to develop. I also like e-commerce, however, I believe that the type of projects that attracts me the most are the web portals with exclusive features and functionalities. Not only do I engage more on the process of feature definition, but I also have an interest on developing my own projects.

I'm quite pleased with creative projects for corporate visual identities design where I'm given total liberty to work on and suggest non conventional ideas and solutions.

Animation requires a good understanding between me and the client, as it's not like layout design for approval. The creative process demands extra work and normally there's not much space for radical changes.

Unfortunately, I have interest in more areas than I'm able to handle. Some of them are: Film, Gastronomy, Journalism, Illustration, Academic Area, TV, Artistic Presentations, Music, among others.

During two moments in my childhood, I had the opportunity to live outside Brazil. The first was in NY – USA, between 1985 e 1989, back and forth it summed up three years of residence. Due to my parent's positive financial condition at that time, I had the experience of living on one of the most interesting places – Manhattan. Besides getting to know the “New Yorker” day-by-day up close, which I still can remember well and can establish many reflections until this day, it also left me with the language knowledge as a great asset that, in my opinion, was one of the most important tools for my improvement, as a whole.

I attended private international schools to smooth out my adaptation. Mastering the English language gave me access to a wide range of information throughout my entire life, that on any other circumstances, wouldn't have. It also made easier for me to absorb programming languages, among other technical knowledge.

I travelled to just a few places during the period I spent in the US. Connecticut, New Jersey, Frorida and Vermont. Later, I had the opportunity to visit California (LA) and Nevada (Las Vegas).

On the South / Central America part of the world, did also only a few trips. Argentina (Buenos Aires) and Mexico (Cancun) were the places I had the opportunity to visit.

Due to my stepfather's German nationality, I ended up living in Frankfurt – Germany, between 1993 and 1995, in a total of 1 year and 8 months. However, I didn't take full advantage of learning the language, for personal reasons, and even less on the social experience because of the difficulty in adaptation, in that particular period of my life. I still have some little understanding about the language and lots of memories about the german social and professional methodology. I'd like to explore this part a bit more, sometime in the near future, to discover what and where to look for valued information.

During the teenage phase that I lived in Germany, we made some trips to Europe's main Countries, like France (Paris), Italy (Venezza, Milano and Lugano), Switzerland (Zurich) and Austria (Vienna).

On a later period in my life, I came back to Europe a few more times. Finally went to Spain (Palma de Mallorca and Barcelona), Netherlands (Amsterdam), and took the time to get to know Berlin, which was completely changed since the time that I had lived in Germany, due to its recent unification, Croatia (Pag Island and Hvar), Poland (Warsaw) and the Ukaine, where the Euro Cup was taking place.

In 2015, I spent almost 3 months in the states, during the summer. Most of the time, I stayed in cities I had already visited – NY and LA. One of the high parts of this trip was the 2 weeks I spent in Silicon Valley – Mountain View and Palo Alto. I rented a space in a start-up house, so I could get the feel up close on how the creative and development process happens in the top tech spot.

Later on, I went back to Germany two more times – 2017 – spent about a month with my stepfather, but working remotely on my on going projects in Brazil, and 2018 – two more weeks with my stepfather and also continuing to work remotely.

Currently, I concentrate my efforts on advancing with programming the frameworks I've developed to other programming languages that I find important. They add amazing development speed on the projects, in addition to provide a great usage quality for the client. Haven't made so many plans for the future. I believe in staying tuned for the opportunities that may appear without necessarily waiting for them.