We were in the last stretch of 2023 when we started a strategic design project with our friends Fios Jardins Suspensos.

In the first stage of this project, we helped them define a business and e-commerce strategy for the European Market. Then, we created a new brand strategy, which resulted in the total redesign of their identity and the development of a new Shopify Website by our design studio Estúdio Ofício .

Our "Independents" are the best placemakers a city could wish for and should be cherished by all. Since 2014, we have been working with dozens of small food, retail, and creative businesses in Porto. When we look at the city map, we will find a particular area where our spotlight has been beaming more intensely: Bombarda, Porto's Art District, which makes sense. Our "thing" as strategists and designers is culture and creativity in its broader sense.

After difficult times during the pandemic, Bombarda, Porto's Art District community, came together again to favour different projects, fostering innovation and networking in a frankly and continually creative territory.
BOMBARDA is a podcast dedicated to everyday topics in the Miguel Bombarda neighbourhood in Porto. Made by and for residents of this territory - whether residents or entrepreneurs - this space exists to record and amplify reflections and discussions around the local development of the well-known "Art District" in Porto, whether these are cultural issues, social, environmental, urbanistic or economic.

It was late September when I visited CRU Creative Hub's brand-new audio studio. I was very excited about spending that morning with our dear friends and clients (we still owe you a post about our extensive work there). We recorded the first episode of their new Indiworkers podcast, and I had the honour of being the first to be interviewed.

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.

Velo Culture, a business closely linked to Barbot Bernardo and Ofício, was created in October 2011 by people united by the love of bicycles and a more "calm" way of living in the city. They decided to open a store in Matosinhos's then-degraded Matosinhos Municipal Market.

After almost ten years, it is a national reference in everything that respects cycling as a means of transport and a more contemplative way of cycling on road and travel cycling.

Velo Culture is very concerned with more conscious consumption, and its customers are people who buy less but buy better.

Ofício recently finished a commission to Velo Culture, the illustration "Bicicletas Bonitas", which means Beautifull Bicycles in Portuguese, designed by Miguel Moreira. It will be a decade this year since I founded Velo Culture with two friends. The first Velo Culture bicycle shop opened in the early days of 2012 in Matosinhos, in the Fish Market. A few years later, we opened a second shop in Central Porto, which is now shared with the Ofício Studio.