What's up?
I'm senior art director at tms agency in Chicago. I use my design skills to craft all sorts of graphic pieces and make information sing for McDonald's. I've mastered tools beyond the design staples Photoshop and Illustrator, using Figma + Airtable, and Sketch + Abstract daily to streamline my workflow.
What I'm currently reading
I started A.M. Shine's "The watchers" and I can't put it down. Though I'm glad to know it was adapted to a movie, I still want to finish it before watching it.
I'm learning a lot about US housing market history (particularly during World War II, the Great Depression, and the New Deal era), through "Escaping the housing trap" by C. Marohn Jr. and D. Herriges (authors I discovered on the @StrongTowns Instagram, which I started following in 2021).
I'm also slowly making my way through Walter Isaacson's biography of "Leonardo da Vinci".
Despite Stephen King's "Green mile" being a comfort movie that I watched many times, I actually never read the book. So I'm reading it, comparing their differences in my head.
This spring break (late March 2024) we followed a friend's suggestion and drove down to St.Louis.
A 7 hours stretch with a couple of breaks.
Gateway Arch
Meramec Caverns
City Museum
Since we moved to our new home in 2022, I've been more diligent with meditation.
Still keeping up 🙂
. I wake up at 4:45 am, meditate for 50 minutes. Always using Insight Timer App to track it.
In 2021 I was fascinated by OpenAI's Dall-e. Then Adobe's Firefly came along in April 2023. My mind was blown by its results, its simple, elegant, and powerful interface.
Here are some Dall-e prompts and generated images:
"Gangster squirrel counting his money"
"Nike Air Jordan sneakers imagined by Monet"
"Batman night scene painted in oil by Vincent Van Gogh"
And now Firefly's:
"Backlit glitter explosion"
"Octopus creature with diamond glasses singing in underwater bar stage"
"Fire made of ice"
"Ancient Roman mosaic depicting an astronaut"
In 2020, when we moved to the U.S., I started a Google Photos album titled 'Illinois Skies'. This album serves as a continuation of my 'Mexican Skies' collection, which I began in 2018 upon moving from Brazil to Metepec, a charming town just outside Mexico City.
Geneva, IL
Metepec, Mexico
To recapture the healthy lifestyle we enjoyed in Mexico, we opted to settle an hour outside Chicago, trading the gray high-rises and traffic jams for a quieter pace of life.
Geneva is now our home, and we see ourselves staying here through our daughter's high school years.
My time in Mexico really sparked my interest in unique drinks. I started taking pictures of the bottles before trying them out, and it's become a bit of a habit. Strangely enough, here in the US, I seem to find even more unusual beverages to explore.
Suzu: our cat.
> It's expensive, time consuming, and bureaucratic paperwork filling when moving abroad with a cat.
Besides Portuguese, now she's able to meow in Spanish and English
Thanks for stopping by!
🙂
