Estúdio Ofício has a new social home at @_estudiooficio and a new portfolio page at ooficio.com, where you can find our latest designs (some of them are yet to be launched).

This post is a visual tale about how we helped Tiago rethink his Hakko House, a small cafe and restaurant in the heart of Bombarda, Porto’s Art District.

Last week, we spent a few days in pretty Oslo for another communitycloth meeting with our partners from Smuss Studio (Norway) and Alternative Brains Rule (Cyprus).

After the meeting, we strolled to the excellent Kafeteria August a local favourite.

A big thank you to Jørgen and William for hosting us and for the private tour on our way to the restaurant!

Today, we share the first of a series of posts about our extensive (and ever-growing) book library. We will recommend those we consider to be essential books that inform our practice as strategists, educators, and designers. The list includes a mix of more technical suggestions and easy-to-read editions.

We hope you enjoy the readings (and buy the books).

We purchased all three books in this first post from our friends at Matéria Prima, a local favourite.

By the end of June we were at STPLN in Malmö for another Bautopia, an European Creative Hubs Network Meetup. I

A highlight of the programme was also the Feral Walk, of which we've left some images here. Organised by Feral Malmö,

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.

We had the pleasure of hosting our first ECHN P2P Programme in April.

This P2P was an initiative of our friends at the Textile Prototyping Lab from Germany. We met Karina Wirth at last year's ECHN conference in Vienna and decided to explore joint opportunities, share experiences, and get to know each other's hubs and communities. The ECHN P2P is the perfect tool for these interchanges, and we will explore future opportunities within the programme.

We prepared this short video to present Nova Type Foundry as a sponsor of the Typographics 2024 Conference, a fantastic event gathering leading type designers happening this week in New York.

Nova Type Foundry and Joana Correia have been close partners and one of our dearest friends since the foundation of Ofício, our design studio, and we couldn't be prouder of what she has achieved in the type design world!

Attention to all urban cyclists!

We're working on a project that could be a part of the (very urgent) cycling revolution in Porto, together with an essential contribution to the housing problem we're currently experiencing.

This project supports a new housing co-operative planned for a high-density area of Porto, which will focus on cycling and the comfort of future residents who prioritise cycling and other soft modes of transport.

Jazzego, an independent jazz label, kickstarted our new free mentorship programme for not-for-profits and social businesses in the Porto region (Portugal).

This project will provide strategic support focusing on fund-raising and revenue stream optimization to expand the catalogue and support artists, fund research and creative processes, launch education and capacity-building projects and expand the label’s distribution internationally.

Earlier this year, Alice and Miguel had the pleasure of being at the Fundação GDA podcast "Isto não é mais um podcast" to talk about our experience of EU funding for art, culture and creativity. 

In this episode, they explain how we use EU funding to combine the production and publishing of technical content that is commercially viable but is of significant importance to our audience and to society with the research of innovative learning methodologies.

We are delighted to show you the poster we designed to celebrate Joana Correia and Nova Type Foundry participation as a sponsor of the 2024 Typographics Festival in New York!

The poster showcases a few of the Nova Type Foundry Type Glossary, an essential part of the copywriting and graphic design he wave been doing for one of our dearest friends.

Barbot Bernardo and the Textile Prototyping Lab (Berlin, Germany) are organising a meeting of Creative Hubs on 26 April (16:00-19:00) at Saber Fazer in Porto.

This meeting will take place as part of a working week shared by our two hubs as part of a peer-to-peer exchange organised by the ECHN - European Creative Hubs Network, of which we are both members.

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This post is the second part of the interview with our good friend and partner Joana Correia from Nova Type Foundry (you can read the first part here).

For this second part of the interview, we packed great insights about the creative process of designing a new typeface, the specifics of independent foundries, being a woman in design, the business of typedesign, Joana's inspirations and a few reading recommendations for those starting a career.

“Being full-time in Saber Fazer/Ofício happened quite naturally: working side-by-side with my wife provides a sort of dream situation where all the professional and personal objectives are perfectly aligned. ”

In January 2023, the GatewayCrafts project was launched, coordinated by Barbot Bernardo (Saber Fazer / Ofício).  We already had the opportunity to meet Alice Bernardo, co-founder of Saber Fazer/Ofício and the GatewayCrafts project. It is now time to get to know another face of this project, Miguel Barbot.

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.

At the first weekend of the year, Barbot Bernardo, Cru Creative Hub and RDI, Rede de Inovação, brought together a group of old and new friends in our space for an afternoon of conversation and networking.

We planned to bring together our local networks linked to consultancy, project management and international cooperation with people we have worked with over the last few years. It was. It was a collision between the worlds of cultural and creative industries, innovation and education, and we promise to organize more editions in the next few months.

Porto-based Joana Correia, founder of Nova Type Foundry, has been a great inspiration. Joana has helped us grow as a design studio since we first sat down here on Rua da Aliança just over two years ago.

With her support, we have worked on ideas for new projects, learned so much about Type Design and the Type Foundries business, and met and maintained contact with many of the great talents of this international community.

All our design projects start with a deep dive into our studio's ever-expanding library; today, it wasn't different.

We are in the early stages of a project for a hotel chain, starting a rebranding and strategic repositioning process.

We are exploring five possible paths in the creative direction and selected titles in art, craft, food culture, urban living, hospitality and interior design for our first brainstorming with the client.

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.