Estudodebom is a new startup in Rio de Janeiro, designed to give students between the ages of 11 and 15 a place to learn (and to choose whatever it is they want to learn) in an environment very different from their normal study space. You can even see it in the design of the space, that everything about Estudodebom is unconventional.

Which is why they needed an unconventional look and feel for their site, and one that would appeal to younger kids and more mature teens. This was probably one of the tougher challenges of this project, designing a visual language that’s both serious and fun, with appeal to kids and teens at both end of the age spectrum.

How I approached the problem was to talk to some of the teenagers, getting to know their online experiences. I was then able to design a look that is young but not childish. But it wasn’t just the kids we had to worry about either, another part of the challenge was that also make it look serious and respectable enough that parents would take it seriously. By keeping the content of the site serious, businesslike and to the point, we maintained a professional dignity that the parents would respect, while still adding a little edge to the look so that the kids would respect it too.

AnyClip is one of the most exciting projects I’ve ever been involved with — a website that lets you search for and relive movie moments. I joined the company as Senior Designer late June 2009. In May 2010 I became Director of Design & User Experience.

AnyClip first launched as a prototype at TechCrunch50 in September 2009. During the next few months, we conducted usability tests, improved the UI and the visual design, and implement exciting new features. In May 2010, we released the Public Beta version of the site at SXSW in Austin, TX.

The feedback we’ve gotten so far, both from movie lovers and from the tech community, has been priceless. It motivates us even more to keep on making it easier and more fun to search for and relive your favorite movie moments.

Caraminhadas is an online magazine about Education, produced and published by Linha Mestra. The word “Caraminhadas” is a combination of the words “caminhada” (walking) and “caraminhola” (ideas in your head).

The project started as a simple idea to create a website where the talented people from Linha Mestra could publish content that would be relevant to school teachers. Over a few months it evolved into an exciting and promising online magazine, with great ideas and immense potential.

Everyone involved participated in all phases of the project, from conceptualization to design and implementation. The feedback from the team was exceptional, and it lead to a beautiful visual design, and a user-friendly interface.

Caraminhadas is a living, ongoing project, and I am proud to continue to be part of the team.

It was an honor and a great pleasure to design a portfolio website for my friend and brilliant jeweler, Thelma Aviani.

I have been following Thelma’s work since I met her in Australia in 2001, and her pieces have never failed to surprise and amaze me. I am especially interested in the contrast between the simple and elegant pieces, and the complex and artistic ones. At first, I tried to express this duality through the website design itself, but as the project unfolded we decided to keep it simple and clean, and just let the beautifully photographed pieces speak for themselves. The result is a website that translates her style and herself.

Update 2: My entry won! Check it out at http://www.carsonified.com/fowd/and-the-winner-is.

Update: my first entry (the “What are you doing?” slide) has made it to the top 10! Voting is now open at Carsonified.

These are my entries for the FOWD 2009 Holding Slide competition. The idea was to design a static graphic that will be displayed on the big screen between sessions of the conference.

For my first entry, I played with all the different things people usually do during conference breaks. I used a series of icons to represent some common and amusing activities. Also, for whoever is bored during the break, this slide might give them a few ideas.

The other three entries make up a three-slide series that uses front-end development languages to convey the idea of break time. With XHTML it was pretty straight forward since all I had to do was to use the “break” tag itself. With Javascript and CSS I had to be a bit more creative and less obvious, but I believe they can make up for a pretty interesting interpretation exercise.

In all of the designs, I choose to use FOWD’s existing visual elements in order to preserve the visual identity of the event.