From Portugal to the Netherlands
Why interning in Amsterdam was a good idea
By Rita Silvestre
Creative Intern at VBAT
Olá! Hello!
I’m Rita Silvestre, I’m from Porto, Portugal and I’m a new intern at VBAT. I’m really passionate about art, design and travelling! The name Rita, derived from Margherita, and Silvestre which means wild, like forest fruits or wild plants.
Two months ago, I graduated in Communication Design at the Fine Arts Faculty in Oporto University (FBAUP). Porto is the city where I was raised and lived until one month ago. Even though I’ve spent all my life living in Porto, I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of it. From the river side to the beach side, from the little traditional corners of the city centre to the coast, Porto is a heart-warming, welcoming and cosy place. If I were you, I would probably book a flight right now to go there!
Many people ask why I decided to come to the Netherlands and leave such a beautiful country. Portugal is great for sure but not so much when it comes to work opportunities, salaries… design and arts aren’t so much recognized as an important work as here (now it’s starting to get better…I hope…) but yes, our weather and food are amazing.
During my degree, I took part in the Erasmus+ Program and I went to Salford University in Manchester, an amazing experience where I acquired lots of knowledge and experienced a different culture and way of living. During my degree I was involved in many things, highlighting FBAUP Design Inc., a junior company created by students in my university. In this company I could be in touch with the real market, working with clients and developing real projects. I joined this company in my first year and stayed until my fourth year of university. I got the president position and I managed to juggle everything during my Erasmus+ semester in Manchester. Besides that, I was Secretary and Student Representative at Board of Regents in FBAUP, where we could discuss our position as students, our university/infrastructures conditions and what we could change for a better future in FBAUP. I think Porto University gave me the basic design tools but then it didn’t prepare me so well for the outside world. However I am glad I worked at FBAUP Design Inc. and this helped with experience that the university didn’t provide me with, I felt more ready to go out and tackle the world!
Before this internship at VBAT, I did a Summer Internship and a University Internship. I worked for SonaeMC in Porto where I developed all Continente Supermarket’s plastic bags. It was a really good experience being in a huge company, working with different departments and not just within design.
The other internship was in Studio Eduardo Aires, a design studio in Porto that works primarily with editorial, branding and packaging. The studio has a particular design style, really clean, responsive and with a huge importance on detail. I worked in multiple projects, but my main project was developing brochures for the studio, presenting all the projects developed by them, including wine companies like Quinta das Murças, Porto City Identity, Bolhão Market and so on. These brochures functioned as an individual project portfolio to show to their clients.
I always believed design to improve society and following this I have since always tried to develop projects that can have a message that carries forth into the future. All the projects that I choose to show you are the ones that I felt took me out of my comfort zone. The design field that I feel more comfortable to work in is editorial and typographic but the subject that I enjoy developing is illustration. In high school I specialised in textiles and since that time, I’m really passionate about textiles and everything surrounding the subject.
In illustration I found my own personal therapy. When I’m stressed I draw a lot in my sketchbook, mostly people or my routine for example.
Now I’m really interested to improve my skills in motion graphics and illustration. From this experience at VBAT, I want to learn everything possible, try different disciplines of design like packaging design or animation.
As a textile lover, I try sometimes to step away from the computer and work in traditional and analogue methods. This project is born from a reflection that I wrote about society and the way that people are living, with all the standards that often make us lose our personality and our paths. The main goal was to create images from words. These are three images of the whole project. I used colour and monochrome images that represent a bridge between our reality and our dreams/feelings, sewn to connect them. Even if you try to take the thread out, it will be always marked.
I have always been fascinated with Illustration, but I never invested a lot of time because I didn’t have a lot of self-confidence. These illustrations were my first connection with the subject. I developed a zine about how the world could be, when humans were characters of the animal world. How would be our position and how would we interact with them if our worlds were inverted.
The next is a recent illustration, about the universe but in a way in which a person is recognized as a universe, and a unique individual.
This special work was dedicated for all cerebral palsy people in Porto City with the intention of demonstrating the capacity they have to choose and decide everything themselves. Porto doesn’t have a lot of accessibility or acceptation and there is little incentive to make progress to change this, many people don’t wish to dwell on the subject. With two types of software “GRID3” and “PCEYE”, I tracked the eye movements of two cerebral palsy persons during making some decisions on their computer. The movement has been drawn in a lower layout of the software from which I created the sketches and developed them into posters advocating the cause. As an answer to this problem, this posters illustration shows the product of their decisions, proving that it is something they can do.
Slightly closer to my comfort zone, I designed Sunny Sushi. An editorial project design answering to a proposal to make a cookbook according to a design style. I chose Japanese Design and my main goal was to show how sushi can be easy to make, in the same way it’s easy to set an IKEA chair.
Now that you know a little more of me, I present to you Nando, my little desk cactus. He is super kind and gives really good advice. Feel free to say hello to the both of us anytime! Just drop a comment below…
Best, Rita
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written by Rita Silvestre, Creative Intern at VBAT
edited by Connie Fluhme, PR at VBAT
