Aprender Design

Nov 1, 2024

Alune Stories: Mateo Ferrera

Bia Varanis

Head of Content

Who are the students that make up Aprender Design? In the series Alune Stories, we aim to showcase the journeys and creative influences of the people in our community.

Meet Mateo Ferrera, a Brazilian Art Director and student in our Art Direction 101 course.

1) What’s something that you think defines you well to someone who doesn’t know you? It could be a characteristic, a hobby, or an interest.

A guy who believes a lot in the power of negative thinking. I've always been very uncomfortable with unexplained rules, respect for respect's sake, when people impose themselves without showing themselves first.

From the things that make us uncomfortable, we can occupy new spaces.

When we come from a humble place, people expect everything to be overlooked, for gratitude to fill our journey, but it's important to separate things. I've been through the gratiluz phase, and with a lot of therapy I've been able to express myself more assertively, without having to cover my eyes to the difficulties that have crossed my path so far.

2) Can you tell us a bit about your career in design?

When I was a child, there was a brand of toilet paper that launched different colors of the product, and I always pestered my mother to buy them... She just didn't know that my intention was to wet lots of this paper and throw it from the ceiling to make a kind of cave with colorful stalagmites.

Design has always been with me, and in the less beautiful moments of my life, visual beauty was my refuge, whether it was watching Castelo Rá-Tim-Bum when I got home from school, or illustrating glue posters for Lollapalooza.

3) How would you define design? What does it mean to you?

Everything. From the embroidered cape that covers my mother's handmade clay filter to the tempered glass iPhone case that costs a lot of money.

Design brings comfort, discomfort, solution and mess. If I didn't immerse myself in design, I might drown in life - it's my breath.

4) Is there a project in your portfolio that you particularly enjoyed working on and would like to share with us?

My favorite work didn't make it to the streets, but in a way it did. During a course, I and my partner had to create a fake promotion for the Racionais documentary.

We decided to promote it with those who have always been close to the group, the street vendors, so we made fake “pirate” DVD covers, and I went to the market and to my father's bar to photograph with real people.

I remember fondly the moment when the aunt who sells Yakult in the neighborhood asked me if I needed help spreading the word, and that she would be willing to distribute some posters if necessary.

5) Could you share a reference, an inspiration, or something you really admire in your field?

I'm a fan of creatives who can comfortably exercise their own identities, you know when you look at someone's work and see that they've had to dive deep into themselves to be able to organize their own chaos in a way that makes sense?

A few names that spring to mind: Giulia Fagundes, Haruo Cezar e João Arnaldo.

6) As a former student at the school, could you share a bit about your experience and what you enjoyed most?

I took the Art Direction 101 course with Du Nieto, and I would do it a million times more. The methodology, the contact with people from different corners of the world and the experimentation gave me a breath of creative life that I had needed for a long time, I felt like creating more and exploring more.

I became a fan of Duda, the whole class and the school, and I'm already looking forward to the day when I'll be able to follow other paths of creative study with the school, because it really was a turning point in my career.