enunes

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I was born in 1987 in Covilhã, Portugal, to a middle class factory worker and an administrative assistant.

Actually, I was supposed to be the son of a musician and a police woman, but I soon learned life takes unexpected turns. At the age of six, I was convinced I was meant to be a newspaper reporter. I used to lay for hours in front of the TV during news broadcasts, taking notes of whatever topics I thought were the most important. At the age of nine I was so into it that I decided to start producing my own handwritten newspapers, with help from my mother, who had privileged access to a photocopier. When my parents got a computer, in 1998, I thought I finally had everything I needed to turn my hobby into a full-time franchise. But while I sat there, typing my now-weekly newspapers in Microsoft Word, I found myself obsessing less and less over the content and more over its structure, the typography and rhythm of the text, and the visual narrative those silly little photographs and illustrations told throughout the paper. I didn't call it any of that, obviously, nor was I any good at it, but the passion was there.

I turned to the Web, and taught myself how to design and code websites before the turn of the millenium. That got me going for a while. I ran fansites, photo-sharing communities and message boards. I even started a design company, with a guy I had never met in person, and founded a record label, which somehow managed to land me the only international gig of my short-lived music career, at an electronic music festival in the very remote Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea.

I eventually moved to Coimbra, to study Communication and Multimedia Design—and juggle a long-distance relationship with my lovely highschool sweetheart. I co-founded an art and design collective, suggestively called the Nefasto Collective (nefasto being portuguese for nefarious), which found comfort in directing short, self-funded live-action and animation films. By the time I finished my bachelor's degree I was already living in a defaulting country. I had absolutely no money, and my chances of landing a decent job were slim to none. For some strange reason, though, enduring two more years of extreme financial rationing to obtain a Master's Degree seemed like the sensible thing to do. So I enrolled in the Design & Multimedia program at the University of Coimbra. I loved everything about it. So much, in fact, that I sticked around to teach a few classes after I graduated.

Currently, I'm a cross-media designer, part-time teacher, PhD student, researcher and wannabe entrepreneur, living with my girlfriend (who's now a Psychology major) in the small but beautiful city of Coimbra. Still living in a defaulting country (even more so), but trying not to worry too much about it.