Interviews with Tipz

The focus was to create packaging worthy of the coffee it contains. Guardião Excelência is a cooperative-origin product, produced by family farmers, with quality that deserved to be communicated in a noble and distinctive way. We wanted the consumer to feel, even before opening, that they were holding something special. And for the act of opening to confirm that promise.

The project has already delivered concrete results: revenue doubled. Café Guardião Excelência is now ready to take flight across Brazil and beyond.

The full process, from initial immersion at the cooperative through final production approval, took several months. The concept phase was the most intensive, where the system of meaning around the archangel consolidated and the structural decision of the wing-shaped opening was developed and tested. Once the central idea was established, the visual development, material selection, and finishing tests followed in a more linear way.

The project was commissioned by Cooabriel to create a premium line within the Guardião brand. From that brief, the immersion process revealed the direction: if the regular line already carried the guardian archangel concept, the Excelência line should take it to its fullest expression. The idea of transforming the opening of the package into a structural gesture came from the question: what would be the archangel's ultimate act of protection? Opening its wings. That answer became the packaging.

The packaging is in production and being sold by Cooabriel itself, through Indústria Café Guardião. The product has been expanding its presence in retail chains and food service accounts in the Greater Vitória region and across the north and northwest of Espírito Santo.

The combination of the conceptual challenge and the human weight behind the product. When a brief carries that meaning, design stops being aesthetic and becomes an argument. The Excelência line represented the opportunity to take that argument to its highest level: packaging that not only communicates quality, but demonstrates it in every structural and sensory detail.

More than direct packaging design references, what influences our work is a repertoire accumulated over time. The tradition of engraving-style illustration and the power of expressive typography were present in the process. Nothing too specific or academic; it is more about absorbing a great deal and letting that show naturally in the decisions.

The Excelência line consumer is someone who seeks a coffee of distinctive origin and quality, willing to pay a premium price for a product that carries traceability, cooperative identity, and sensory experience from the packaging itself. It is also a product with strong potential for the food service channel and the export market, where the narrative of Brazilian cooperative origin carries growing value.

The wing-shaped opening. Most premium coffee packaging invests in noble materials and elaborate illustrations, but the structure remains conventional. In Guardião Excelência, the guardian archangel concept was not limited to the visual: it determined the structure of the packaging. The front panel is die-cut in the shape of a wing and opens like a flap, transforming an everyday gesture into a moment loaded with meaning. Concept and structure are the same thing.

The name Guardião already existed within the brand. This was the creation of the Excelência line within the Guardião universe. The challenge was to honor and elevate what the name carried: the idea of the archangel Saint Gabriel as protector of the beans, the farmers, and the consumer, and to translate that into packaging worthy of both the concept and the product.

The process began in an analog way: brainstorming sessions, field research on supermarket shelves, and immersion at the cooperative. From there, the visual development was led by designer Mateus Montenegro using the Adobe suite. There were multiple rounds of physical material and finishing samples, including dry embossing on the wing, gold hot stamping, soft touch matte lamination, and the development of the structural die-cut that defines the opening.

The front panel die-cut in the shape of the archangel's wing, which opens to provide access to the product. It is not a decorative element on the packaging: it is the packaging. The wing literally protects what is inside, and opening it is the guardian's gesture of revealing what it has kept safe. It is the point where concept, structure, and user experience become one thing.

O projeto foi desenvolvido pela Tipz com uma equipe multidisciplinar. A imersão e o planejamento estratégico contaram com Mariana Kawase e Lygia Bellotti. A direção de criação foi conduzida por mim, Ricardo Pessanha, e a execução visual pelo designer Mateus Montenegro, parceiro criativo de longa data com vasto portfólio em design de embalagem. A produção gráfica envolveu fornecedores especializados em acabamentos premium, com quem trabalhamos em conjunto para validar as amostras de material.

Technology played a central role in execution, but never as a starting point. The dry embossing on the wing, the gold hot stamping, and the soft touch matte lamination were chosen not just for aesthetic result, but because each reinforced the concept: tactile nobility, visual presence, and texture contrast that invites touch. The structural die-cut of the opening required specific technical development with the supplier to ensure precision and integrity of the flap after multiple openings.

: Yes. We conducted market research and competitor analysis directly on supermarket shelves. That contact with the real purchase environment was decisive in understanding what needed to happen at the point of sale and how the packaging should behave alongside competitors.

The central challenge was repositioning a coffee variety historically associated with low quality into something premium. Made harder by the fact that two previous launches had not achieved the desired results, leaving negative brand memory in the market. The redesign needed to make a complete visual break from that history without losing the authenticity of the cooperative origin. Competitive shelf pressure demanded bold differentiation, and the development of the structural wing-shaped die-cut opening required multiple testing rounds with the supplier to ensure precision and functionality within viable costs.

The decision came from the conviction that the work had relevance beyond the local market. Guardião Excelência is not just a well-executed package; it is a design case with measurable impact on business results and real social impact for a cooperative that sustains thousands of families. Submitting to the A' Design Award was a way of placing that work in dialogue with the best projects in the world and of positioning Tipz, and Brazilian design outside the main axis, on an international stage.

I learned that the strongest concept is one that does not fit only in the visual: it spills into the structure, the touch, the gesture. The decision to make the wing the opening of the packaging was not obvious at first; it emerged from asking how far the concept could go. This project reinforced for me that the right question, taken all the way, always generates the most original answer.

I would like to reinforce the role of design as a tool for economic and social development. Guardião Excelência doubled its revenue after the relaunch, without any supporting advertising campaign. That result was generated exclusively by the strength of design at the point of sale. For a cooperative that represents the livelihood of thousands of farming families in Espírito Santo, that number carries a weight that goes far beyond any award.

The main focus was repositioning. The Guardião line already existed but carried negative brand memory from a prior launch that had not worked. We needed a complete visual break from that history while remaining authentic to the cooperative origin. We wanted the packaging to open doors to retail chains that had previously been closed to the brand, and to communicate premium quality convincingly at the point of sale, alongside competitors with far greater communication investment.

The project has already delivered concrete results: revenue doubled. Café Guardião is now ready to take flight across Brazil and beyond.

The full process, from the initial immersion at the cooperative through final production approval, took several months. The concept phase, where the system of meaning around the archangel consolidated, was the most intensive. Once the central idea was established, the visual development and material and finishing tests followed in a more linear way.

The project was commissioned by Cooabriel, the world's largest conilon coffee cooperative, based in São Gabriel da Palha, Espírito Santo. The cooperative needed a redesign capable of reversing a negative track record and enabling entry into larger retail chains. From that brief, the immersion process revealed the direction: the name of the city contained the whole idea. Saint Gabriel, the guardian archangel, became the central concept not by creative imposition, but because it was the most truthful and coherent response to the product's origin.

The packaging is in production and being sold by Cooabriel itself, through Indústria Café Guardião. The product is available in the Tradicional and Extra Forte lines, in 250g and 500g formats, and has been expanding its presence in retail chains and food service accounts in the Greater Vitória region and across the north and northwest of Espírito Santo.

The combination of the strategic challenge and the human potential behind the product. This was not just about redesigning a package; it was about repositioning a historically undervalued coffee variety while strengthening the livelihoods of thousands of farming families. When a brief carries that weight, design stops being aesthetic and becomes an argument. That is exactly the kind of work that drives us most at Tipz.

More than direct packaging design references, what influences our work is a repertoire accumulated over time. The tradition of engraving-style illustration and the power of expressive typography were present in the process. Nothing too specific or academic; it is more about absorbing a great deal and letting that show naturally in the decisions.

The end consumer is the coffee buyer in supermarkets across Espírito Santo and neighboring states, with a profile that values origin, quality, and authenticity. But the project also had an equally critical intermediary target: the retail chain buyers who had previously refused to stock the product on their shelves. The packaging needed to convince both audiences simultaneously, and the results proved it did.

Most coffee packaging works with generic elements of origin and quality: beans, mountains, seals. Guardião took the opposite path: it started from a specific and truthful cultural element, the archangel Saint Gabriel as guardian of the city and the cooperative, and built a coherent visual system where every decision carries meaning. The engraving-style illustration of the archangel with open wings is not ornament; it is the entire concept translated into image. The result is packaging that stands out on the shelf not by shouting, but by having a distinct identity.

The name Guardião already existed. This was a packaging redesign.

The process began in an analog way: brainstorming sessions, field research on supermarket shelves, and immersion at the cooperative. From there, the visual development was led by designer Mateus Montenegro using the Adobe suite.

The central engraving-style illustration of the archangel with open wings. It is not decoration applied over a functional package; it is the concept itself. The guardian watching over the beans, the farmers, and the consumer is literally present on the main face of the packaging, creating an immediate emotional connection before any text is read. On a shelf dominated by visual commodities, that symbolic presence is what sets the product apart at first glance.

The project was developed by Tipz with a multidisciplinary team. The immersion and strategic planning involved Mariana Kawase and Lygia Bellotti. Creative direction was led by myself, Ricardo Pessanha, and visual execution by designer Mateus Montenegro, a long-time creative partner with an extensive portfolio in packaging design. Graphic production involved specialized suppliers in premium finishing, with whom we worked closely to validate material samples.

Yes. We conducted market research and competitor analysis directly on supermarket shelves. That contact with the real purchase environment was decisive in understanding what needed to happen at the point of sale and how the packaging should behave alongside competitors.

The central challenge was repositioning a coffee variety historically associated with low quality into something premium. Made harder by the fact that two previous launches had not achieved the desired results. The redesign needed to make a complete visual break from that history without losing the authenticity of the cooperative origin. Competitive shelf pressure demanded bold differentiation, and the selection of matte lamination and substrate required sampling rounds to ensure print fidelity within viable costs.

The decision came from the conviction that the work had relevance beyond the local market. Guardião is not just a well-executed package; it is a design case with measurable impact on business results and real social impact for a cooperative that sustains thousands of families. Submitting to the A' Design Award was a way of placing that work in dialogue with the best projects in the world and of positioning Tipz, and Brazilian design outside the main axis, on an international stage.

What motivates me is the moment a business problem becomes visible and solvable. A brand arrives with a pain, sometimes in the name, sometimes on the shelf, sometimes in the fact that nobody understands what it sells. Design is where that pain gets resolved in a way people can see in two seconds, before reading a single word.

I did not become a designer. I became someone who leads design because writing alone stopped being enough to make the argument. A line can be brilliant and still lose to a package that looks cheap. At some point you understand that the whole thing has to work together or none of it works.

I chose advertising very early, as a child, and design came as a consequence of that choice. Once you are responsible for a brand from end to end, you cannot stop at the words. You have to have an opinion about the mark, the colour, the material, the shelf. Nobody forced me. The work simply expanded until it included design, and I was glad to follow it there.

I do not have a category I want more of. Drink, food, service, industry, it makes no difference to me. What attracts me is any challenging project with a real communication pain, whether that pain sits in the brand itself or in the packaging.

Café Guardião is a good example. The product was excellent and the packaging was not saying so. We redesigned it and the brand doubled its sales. That is the kind of problem I want, regardless of the sector: something genuinely good that has no vocabulary to explain itself.

I would not use that word about myself, so take this cheaply. But if I had to say something useful: build a process and build repertoire, in that order and then permanently.

Most young designers collect references. That is not repertoire, it is a mood board. Repertoire is what you accumulate by consuming everything, architecture, film, advertising, furniture, the design of a chair, and then being able to reach for the right thing at the right moment without copying it. The market is full of people who can reproduce what already won last year. It is short on people who can look at a business in trouble and see the shape of the answer.

A good designer has a well defined creative process and real repertoire. Those two things are not talent, they are construction, and they are what separate someone who delivers consistently from someone who occasionally gets lucky.

Beyond that, the great ones notice when the brief is asking the wrong question and say so before starting. That takes a kind of courage that has nothing to do with craft.

Two tests. First, could this belong to any other brand? If yes, it is decoration. Second, did anything change because of it, in sales, in perception, in the way the market treats the company?

In my field, design has to be good and beautiful at the same time, because it has to convert. There is no point in something impeccable that nobody wants to pick up, and no point in something attractive that says nothing about the product. Both conditions or it failed.

At first it can look expensive. That is the objection every client has, spoken or not. But design is the cheapest tool a company has, and the price on the proposal is the least relevant number in the conversation.

With Café Guardião, we redesigned the packaging and the brand doubled its sales. No new factory, no discount, no additional media investment. Just a better argument on the shelf.

Most companies spend enormous sums buying attention and very little making the thing worth the attention they bought. That is backwards. The package is working every second the product is on the shelf, and it costs a fraction of a campaign. When you put what design brings in sales next to what it costs, the investment stops being a relevant part of the discussion.

I would design for people who need to push their business forward and cannot afford it. Small businesses whose owners know their product is good and have no way to make anyone else see it.

I did something close to this during the pandemic, almost as a pilot, helping businesses that were in real trouble. It worked, and it stayed with me. What I never had was the time or the structure to make it recurring. If I could scale that into something continuous rather than occasional, that is where I would put my free time, because design applied to someone who genuinely needs it produces a change out of all proportion to the cost. For a large company, good design is an advantage. For a small one, it can be the difference between staying open and closing.

I do not think there is such a thing as a dream project. There are projects that sustain dreams, whether that is my own dream as a company or the result our work produces for someone else's business. That distinction matters to me, because chasing a dream project is a good way to undervalue the ones actually in front of you.

That said, one thing came to mind just now. In Brazil, I would love to build a football club from nothing. The name, the crest, the shirt, the whole visual identity. Football in Brazil is not a category, it is an emotional inheritance, and designing something people would tattoo on themselves and pass down to their children is a completely different responsibility from designing something they buy. That would be a genuinely different experience, and it would mark me.

There is no secret. There is process, repertoire and hard work.

A good concept comes from process: briefing, immersion, understanding the business before anyone draws anything. Quality is the consequence of that, not the starting point. People look for a trick because a trick would be faster. There is no faster.

I do not have specific masters. I prefer to drink from every source I can reach.

Design is in everything: in architecture, in a chair, in advertising, in absolutely everything a human being can make. If you only look at design made by designers, you end up in a closed loop, producing variations of each other. Wide references build wide repertoire, and repertoire is what you actually use when the problem arrives.

The timeless ones. The pieces that need nothing added to be what they are, only exactly what they must be. Nothing decorative, nothing there to impress a jury.

And they still have to be attractive to the eye. In my field you never forget that design has to be good and beautiful in order to convert. Timelessness without appeal is an exercise. Appeal without substance is packaging in the worst sense of the word.

I would rather not name a single project. The world of coffee has given me the most relevant design work of my career, so I would say coffee as a whole is my best project.

It is a category with a real problem in Brazil, a product of genuine quality that the market had been trained to treat as ordinary. Working there repeatedly, across brands and lines, taught me more than any single piece. And it produced results, including the packaging work that doubled a brand's sales.

Work. Everything came to me naturally once I believed in what I was doing and kept looking for ways to learn, whether in courses or on the job itself.

I would add one thing: consume outside your field. I have lived in Rio de Janeiro, Salvador, Switzerland, São Paulo and Vitória, and each place left something. Moving through different worlds gives you more usable material than any tutorial.

I have no idea. I decided to work in advertising as a child, around ten years old, and I never had a second plan. Leading design projects came later as a natural extension of that. If you take both away, I honestly do not know what would be left.

Design is everything we see. In my business, it is turning products and brands into desire.

My family. My father, my wife, my grandmother. I would not have made it even halfway without them. Everything else, the agencies, the partnerships, the awards, came after and rests on that.

Having moved through very different worlds. I was born in Rio de Janeiro, raised in Salvador from the age of five, went back to Rio for a year as a child, lived briefly in Switzerland at sixteen, returned to Salvador, worked in São Paulo from 2010, and moved to Vitória in 2015. Each of those places has a different rhythm, a different visual culture, a different idea of what is normal.

That gave me repertoire, and it did so while I already knew I wanted to work in creative. I was consuming everything with a purpose from very early on, which is different from consuming a lot by accident.

The other thing was partnership. Working alongside Mateus Montenegro since 2010 taught me how design thinking actually happens, in the argument between two people who want the same result and disagree about the route.

The hardest one was consolidating my own agency, with my principles and my philosophy of work intact.

Start with the problem, not the mood board. Show the business situation, show the decision that was made, then show the design as the consequence of that decision.

Clients do not buy aesthetics. They buy the confidence that you understood their trouble. A presentation that opens with references is telling the client you started from taste, and taste is the easiest thing in the world to disagree with.

Whatever comes next. I do not select projects by how attractive they look; every one of them matters and every one of them is a different challenge.

In business terms, the answer is clearer: the international expansion of TiPZ is what will occupy the coming years. We already work with clients in the United States, Canada and Mexico, and we are opening a base in Italy. Doing consistently high level work across those markets, from a Brazilian agency, is the hardest thing on my list.

To do relevant, high level work anywhere in the world, whether the project is local or global. The scale does not change the standard. The work has to be the best, always, regardless of the size of the client or the size of the city it comes from.

Honesty, I hope. The most valuable thing I can offer a client is telling them when the thing they asked for will not work, and why. Everything else they can buy somewhere else, often cheaper.

Design can change a lot of lives. It carries self esteem, first of all: when a product is presented with real care, the people who make it start to see themselves differently.

And it can change a business completely. When it changes a business, it changes lives, whether that is one life or thousands. That is not an abstraction, it is what happens when sales double and a company has to hire, expand, produce more. Design is one of the few disciplines where an aesthetic decision shows up in someone's income.

Always several things at once: campaigns, the day to day clients of the agency, design projects at different stages. Every day and every week is a different challenge, and that variety is the part I would not trade.

Café Guardião doubled the brand's sales and moved it to another level, so that one is easy to point at.

But if I am honest, the projects that satisfy me most are all the ones that kept me creatively relevant across all these years. Doing one very good piece of work and reaching a Cannes shortlist is extremely hard. Staying relevant, creating work that matters year after year, is a thousand times harder. Nobody gives you a trophy for that and it is the thing I am actually proud of.

Less referencing, more thinking. Our industry has built an efficient machine for recycling what already won last year. It produces competent work and almost no surprise.

I would like to see the assumption die that serious work only comes from a handful of cities. Talent is already distributed everywhere. What is not distributed is the belief that it counts.

Toward a split. Execution is becoming abundant and cheap, so the value migrates to judgement, to knowing which of a thousand possible answers is the right one for this specific business.

Designers who compete on production will struggle. Designers who compete on decisions will not. That is why process and repertoire matter more now than they did ten years ago, not less.

A packaging project, from first contact to the shelf, can take months or more than a year. The design itself is a small part of that. Most of the time goes into understanding the business, aligning the decision with the client, and the reality of production, what the printer can actually deliver within cost.

With the briefing and the immersion. Where will this be seen, next to what, and what does the company need to happen commercially. Only after that, the concept.

Starting from aesthetics is how you end up with something beautiful that solves nothing. I write the idea in one sentence before anyone draws anything. If the sentence is weak, no amount of craft will save it.

Be creative with what you have, from wherever you are.

Trends set most designs, which is exactly the problem. Following a trend is a way of outsourcing the decision, and it always feels safe at the moment you do it.

The few projects that set anything are made by people who were not paying much attention to what everyone else was doing. That is also why the timeless work survives: it was never trying to belong to a year.

It removes the excuses. Anything can be visualized now, quickly and cheaply, which means the only remaining scarcity is knowing what is worth visualizing.

Technology has made craft abundant and judgement expensive. We use it early, to explore directions fast, and then the hard part starts, which is the same hard part as always: deciding.

The usual Adobe tools for production, generative AI for exploring directions quickly in the early phase, and a notebook for the sentence that has to exist before all of it.

In packaging they are the argument, not the finish. Material is where a promise becomes physically credible or falls apart. You can write premium on a package all you like; if it feels cheap in the hand, the buyer has already decided.

Colour and material are also where budget lives. A large part of the craft in this work is achieving perceived quality within a real production constraint, and that is a decision, not a taste.

What changed for the client. Almost nobody asks. They ask about the typeface.

Two questions in sequence. What did they manage to get approved, and who had to be convinced to let them. The best work almost always survived an argument that it could easily have lost.

I believe in it because I depend on it. My best work has always come from two people arguing until neither is entirely comfortable. Mateus Montenegro has been that partner since 2010, from our first days as a creative duo in São Paulo through the packaging we brought to this award.

The people I have worked with, and the people who have nothing to do with design at all. That is the beauty of it. Some of the most useful things I know about how a product should look came from someone who had never opened a design program in their life and simply told me what they saw.

I read constantly and I resist naming a single canon, for the same reason I do not have single masters. But the ones that shaped how I think about the commercial side are Ogilvy on Advertising for discipline, How Brands Grow by Byron Sharp for demolishing comfortable assumptions, Thinking, Fast and Slow by Kahneman and Descartes' Error by Damásio for explaining the second in which a decision is actually made, Cialdini for persuasion and Lindstrom for the senses.

Almost none of them are design books. That is deliberate.

By working. Everything comes naturally if you believe in what you do and keep looking to learn, whether in courses or in the job itself. There was no shortcut and no single moment where it clicked. It was years of projects, and the partnership with Mateus, and paying attention.

My grandmother. And all the people I love and cannot meet anymore.

I am not famous, which spares me the difficulty. Awards matter to me for one specific reason: they change which conversations you get invited into.

A Cannes shortlist in 2017, the A' Design Awards this year, and every meaningful award before them did the same thing. They let you show yourself as relevant to the world from wherever you happen to be. For an agency that is not based in one of the cities the industry pays attention to, that is not a vanity, it is access.

I should confess something before answering: I am terrible at this kind of question. I am not a person of one favourite anything. Ask me my favourite film and I freeze. I have no favourite colour and no favourite brand, and I do not think that is modesty, I think it is how I am built. Wide taste is the same instinct that makes me useful at work.

What I can give you: food, four answers rather than one, feijoada, churrasco, Japanese and Italian. Season, summer.

The work itself motivates me. It always has. I have never needed a technique for that.

The real problem is everything around it that demotivates: the meetings that go nowhere, the good idea killed for the wrong reason, the client who asked for courage and then bought safety. Protecting the work from all of that is most of the job.

It was obvious it would be something to do with creativity. By around ten years old I was already talking about working in advertising. Design specifically was not obvious at all; that came later, through the work.

About the near future, I have an opinion. Execution is becoming abundant and almost free, which means the scarce thing is no longer the ability to make something, it is knowing what deserves to be made. I think that applies well beyond design. We are heading into a period with an enormous volume of competent, indistinguishable output, and the people who can decide, edit and take responsibility for a point of view will matter more than the people who can produce.

As for a thousand years from now, the way things are going, a hundred is already hard to predict, including whether the world will still be standing.

Two things.

The first is about how I work. I am not the person who draws. I am the person who decides what the drawing has to accomplish. My part happens before and around the design: the briefing, the immersion, the concept, the argument that has to hold before anyone opens a file. Then I work alongside people who are far better than me at making it real, and I stay in the room while they do it. I say this because young people often think there is only one way into this work. There is not. Mine was through advertising, through writing, through learning to ask what a brand is actually trying to solve.

The second is more personal. I am more than the work. My design is not what I am, it is what has to be well made. I take the craft extremely seriously and I do not confuse it with my identity. That is the reason I can look at something I made and ask honestly whether it is doing its job, which is much harder when you believe the work is you.

The Café Guardião packaging recognised here came out of exactly that: a decision about what the brand needed, made long before anything was drawn.

Design is the art of making anything unforgettable. That is a definition I developed over years of practice, and it captures something I genuinely believe: that good design is not primarily about aesthetics. It is about anchoring meaning. It is the transformation of an idea into something that can be felt, touched, seen, experienced, without the need for explanation. In packaging design specifically, I see design as the last argument a brand makes before a consumer decides. It is communication compressed into form, material, and gesture.

Packaging with conceptual depth. There is something uniquely satisfying about designing an object that communicates before it is opened, where every surface decision, every material choice, every structural detail serves the narrative. Beyond packaging, I also find great meaning in work that carries cultural or social weight: a campaign film that travels the world, a brand identity built for a cooperative that sustains thousands of families. The work I love most is the kind where concept and execution are inseparable.

It is difficult to choose a single piece, but if I were to point to a trajectory, it begins with Café Tunico. That was the first major packaging project I directed, and it established a way of thinking that extended naturally into Café Soul, from the same company, with an even more refined and awarded visual language. Then came Guardião Excelência, for Cooabriel, which represents a different level of structure and intent. It was a project built in a more linear way. The result was packaging that grew in revenue without any campaign behind it, driven purely by the strength of the design. These three projects form, for me, a clear line of evolution about what packaging design can do when it is taken seriously as a strategic tool.

In the packaging space, the first major work I directed was for Café Tunico, a project that itself went on to win recognition at the A' Design Award. That project was followed by the Café Soul packaging, for the same company, which became one of our most awarded pieces. These early packaging projects established the way I approach the category: concept first, execution as a consequence of the idea.

When infinite possibilities meet responsibility. The most creative moments are not when I have total freedom. They are when the brief has purpose. That is why all the work done beforehand, as we do at Tipz, matters so much. A specific cultural context is already half the answer. Creativity flows more naturally when the repertoire about the product is deep enough: after immersion, after research, after understanding what is truly at stake for the client and their audience.

Conceptual coherence above all. I need to be able to explain why every visual decision was made, not just what it looks like, but what it means and what it does. From there, the hierarchy of attention: what does the eye land on first, and does that serve the brand's most important message? And finally, sensory integrity: the way the object feels, sounds when handled, and presents itself in context.

A restlessness. An inexhaustible search for references and techniques. There is always a sense of dissatisfaction driving the process, the feeling that the idea is not yet right, that the current version is a bridge toward something better. The pursuit of the visual insight that will make everything click, the change of direction even when everything seems finished. And then comes the moment when it all falls perfectly into place: when the set of ideas becomes ideal, as if it could not have been any other way.

Validation and responsibility simultaneously. When the Guardião Excelência packaging launched and the cooperative's revenue grew, without any advertising investment, that felt like real proof. Not just that the design was beautiful, but that it worked. That it communicated something to the person standing in front of a shelf that made them choose this product. That feeling of design doing its actual job is the most satisfying thing I know professionally.

Results. I have seen beautiful packaging that did not sell and modest-looking packaging that dominated its category. Success is when the design does what it was supposed to do: whether that is increasing revenue, changing perception, justifying a premium price, or making a brand feel like it belongs somewhere it never belonged before. The Guardião Excelência project is a clear example: a packaging redesign that drove revenue growth for a cooperative sustaining thousands of families, without a single campaign behind it.

Whether it has an idea. A design without a concept behind it may be competent, even beautiful, but it is decorative. I look for the decision that could only have been made for this specific brief, the thing that is not interchangeable with a hundred other designs in the same category. After that, I look at whether it is coherent: does every element reinforce the same intent, or are there contradictions that dilute the message?

To not be neutral. Every design decision, choice of material, scale of production, cultural reference, has consequences beyond the object itself. In our work with Cooabriel, the packaging was not just about aesthetics; it was about family production. The design had a direct impact on the brand that wraps that entire concept. That is a responsibility I take seriously, and I think it should be present in every brief, not just the ones with explicit social purpose.

Design is becoming less of a service and more of a strategic argument. Brands are beginning to understand that design is not the final step of a process: it is a way of thinking that should be present from the beginning. At the same time, the tools are democratizing rapidly, which raises the bar for those who work with concept. If anyone can produce something that looks good, the differentiator becomes creating something extraordinary, something that stands out on the shelf in a market as competitive as Brazil and the world.

My work does not live primarily in exhibition spaces: it lives on shelves, in stores, in the hands of consumers. The A' Design Award recognition represents the most recent moment of formal presentation, and that context feels appropriate for work that is ultimately meant to function in the world rather than be observed within it.

Repertoire is the raw material of creativity, everything you live through matters. That is something I believe deeply. I actively seek diverse sources, regardless of my personal taste. Having lived in different cities and even outside Brazil helps, but what you consume and how you consume it, whether music, television, film, books, or even the history of design and advertising, makes all the difference. From Alexey Brodovitch, who transformed layout into sensory experience, to Paul Rand, who proved that simplicity and concept are the same thing, to David Ogilvy, who understood that a great idea must be sellable before it can be admirable. Distinct universes, but ones that together form a more complete vision of what design can be. For the Guardião Excelência project, the spark was a name: São Gabriel da Palha, the city where the cooperative is based. Saint Gabriel is an archangel, a guardian. From that single observation, a whole system of meaning unfolded: the brand name, the wing motif, the die-cut that turns opening the package into a gesture of protection. That is the kind of inspiration I look for: the detail that already contains the whole idea.

It is important to make clear that I do not execute design myself; I lead diverse projects in the field. That said, I believe strongly in conceptually driven minimalism. I am drawn to work where the idea does the visual work, where a single well-chosen form or gesture communicates more than an accumulation of elements. I tend toward work with a strong typographic sensibility, controlled material contrast, and structure that carries meaning. The Guardião Excelência packaging is a good example: the most distinctive feature is a die-cut in the shape of a wing. One decision, one concept, one coherent system. That restraint is deliberate.

I currently live in Vitória, Espírito Santo. Although I was born in Rio de Janeiro, I grew up in Salvador, Bahia, and developed professionally in São Paulo. Through that path, I was able to see up close something that is widely acknowledged: Brazil's cultural diversity is immense. We are a continental country with genuine creative resources. The indigenous, African, and European references, the way Brazilian music, food, and ritual carry strong and plural meanings, are an extraordinary foundation. The challenge lies precisely in that contradiction. Despite such a rich culture, there is a historical erasure of these origins and a visual overvaluation of what comes from outside. But I believe we are moving in the right direction to change that. There is still a long way to go, but things have already improved considerably.

We begin with immersion. Before any creative decision is made, we invest in understanding the business, the product, the territory, and the people involved. The Guardião Excelência project required deep research into the cooperative's history, the conilon coffee category, and the cultural and geographic identity of São Gabriel da Palha. Only from that accumulated understanding does the creative direction become possible. After immersion and planning, the creative team, in this case myself and designer Mateus Montenegro, develops concepts that go through rounds of testing and refinement until we reach something that is both strong in idea and viable in execution.

It starts with a proper briefing, followed by immersion and extensive research. We map the brand, the category, the competitor landscape, and the cultural references that are relevant to the project. That research is broad and goes deep: it includes design references, exploration of material and finishing possibilities, and in-person market research, with visits to supermarket shelves to understand how the product behaves in the real purchase environment, side by side with its competitors. Then the creative process begins: intense brainstorming, concept development, rounds of exploration and testing. On packaging projects, my collaboration with Mateus Montenegro is close and constant. We develop concepts together, test them against the brief, and challenge each other until the idea is strong enough to stand on its own. The final phase is always about refinement and coherence: removing what is not necessary, sharpening what remains.

It starts with a proper briefing, followed by immersion and extensive research. We map the brand, the category, the competitor landscape, and the cultural references that are relevant to the project. That research is broad and goes deep: it includes design references, exploration of material and finishing possibilities, and in-person market research, with visits to supermarket shelves to understand how the product behaves in the real purchase environment, side by side with its competitors. Then the creative process begins: intense brainstorming, concept development, rounds of exploration and testing. On packaging projects, my collaboration with Mateus Montenegro is close and constant. We develop concepts together, test them against the brief, and challenge each other until the idea is strong enough to stand on its own. The final phase is always about refinement and coherence: removing what is not necessary, sharpening what remains.

Accumulate as much repertoire as you can. Travel if you can. Read everything, not just design books, but history, literature, and a wide range of subjects. Listen to music from cultures you do not know. Try different foods. Every experience you have is raw material for future ideas, even if you cannot see the connection at the time. Learn to separate the quality of an idea from the quality of its execution. Both matter, but they are different skills. And build a practice of hammering the idea. Use every bit of the time you have. The first idea is almost never the right one. The discipline is in continuing past it.

Every element must earn its place. If you cannot explain why something is there, why that color, why that form, why that texture, it should not be there. Design is not the addition of elements; it is the discipline of removing what is not necessary until only the idea remains.

Conceptual clarity: the ability to identify the single most important thing a design needs to communicate and to organize everything around it. Cultural literacy: knowing enough about history, art, and everyday life to make references that resonate. And the capacity to receive criticism without ego, because design is tested in the real world, and the real world does not care about your intentions.

By protecting the thinking phase. The biggest time losses in creative work come from starting execution before the concept is clear, and then having to redo everything when the idea shifts. We invest more time than most in the briefing and immersion phases, which makes the execution phase faster and more focused. Clarity of intent is the most efficient time management tool I know.

There is no fixed timeframe. For a packaging project with the depth of the Guardião Excelência line, the process, from initial immersion through final production approval, generally takes a few months. The early phase is the most variable: some ideas arrive quickly, others require many rounds before they are right. Depending on the packaging material, finding the right supplier and managing lead times can also take considerable time. The most important thing in a project like this is not to skip steps.

Without wanting to sound like a cliché, there is no way to single out one job. It is a combination of decisions that put you in the right place at the right time. Every stage of life, every job matters. From the smallest to the largest.

Today at Tipz we work with Cooabriel, the world's largest company in its sector. Bimbo, a global company. Grupo Geofin, with companies such as DDChem, Feli, Nebrax and N_stry, Grupo Águia Branca, Vix Logística, among others. In total we have more than 30 clients.

Campaigns and designs that carry meaning. Communicating something that stays. Work that people connect with, consume, or feel something from. The Guardião Excelência project is that kind of work: the opening gesture of the package is the archangel's wing protecting what is inside. That is not decoration. That is design thinking expressed through structure.

Continuing to expand Tipz's national and international reach, deepening the conceptual quality and results of our work.

Always as a team, not least because I do not execute the design myself. Even if I did, the work is much larger than that: it starts in client services, moves through planning, execution, and production. It takes many hands to bring a project to life. Including the support and trust of the client.

At Tipz we always have several projects running simultaneously, both advertising campaigns and design. Unfortunately I cannot yet talk about the ones currently in progress, but it is gratifying to know the work never stops.

Through Tipz, our agency based in Vitória, Espírito Santo, Brazil. We are open to national and international inquiries for packaging design, brand identity, on and off campaigns, as well as the implementation of strategic planning work within companies.

One thing I would add is the importance of proximity to the client's reality. The Café Guardião project was not created from a distance; it was built from an understanding of what that cooperative represents for thousands of families, for the city, and for the state. Good design requires empathy, not just craft. The packaging did not start with a color palette or a typeface, but with a question: what is this product protecting, and what is its purpose?

We interpret these results as evidence that packaging can change perception when it works beyond visual impact. Excelencia Coffee Packaging was designed to be seen, touched and opened as an experience. For a product like Conilon coffee, which still carries a historical stigma when compared to Arabica, this sensory dimension was essential. The consumer needed to feel that this coffee belonged to a different value space.The first post-launch data already showed strong results: Natural increased 50 percent and Fermented increased 30 percent. In a later assessment, the performance became even more significant, with sales reaching 100 percent growth. In other words, the line effectively doubled its sales.For Tipz, this confirms that multi-sensory design can help consumers reassess a product before tasting it. The embossed wings, the soft-touch surface, the structural opening and the producer seal all worked together to create trust, curiosity and perceived quality. The package did not only communicate premium value. It made that value tangible.

The low-relief embossing was developed to create sophistication without depending on excess. We did not want the wings to shout. We wanted them to appear through light, shadow and touch, almost like a quiet presence protecting the coffee. This was important because the project needed to feel premium while remaining coherent with a cooperative context.The testing process was focused on balance. The relief needed to be visible enough to create discovery, but subtle enough to preserve elegance and production viability. We studied how the wing motif behaved under different light conditions, how it interacted with the matte surface and how much tactile presence was necessary for the consumer to perceive value without turning the package into something visually overloaded.This approach shows that premiumization does not always require expensive decorative effects. For agricultural cooperatives, sensory material design can be a powerful and accessible tool when used with precision. A texture, a fold, a surface or a small structural decision can create perceived value while still respecting production limits and the economic reality of the brand.

We treated this narrative with respect because it was not an invented brand story. It came from the name, the territory and the belief that coffee, the region’s main livelihood, was blessed and protected by Saint Gabriel the Archangel. Our responsibility was to translate that meaning into a retail object without making it superficial or decorative.The visual language was built around protection, origin and recognition. The wings became the central symbol. The opening mechanism turned protection into a physical gesture. The tactile relief gave the guardian presence without needing to explain everything through words. The producer seal brought the farming families into the front of the package, acknowledging that excellence comes from people, not only from a product category.In this sense, Excelencia Coffee Packaging works as both branding and cultural documentation. It builds a premium perception for the consumer, but it also preserves part of the community’s story. The package carries the geography, the spiritual reference, the cooperative identity and the pride of the farmers in a form that can travel beyond the region and still keep its origin alive.

The field research showed us that the biggest barrier was not the quality of the coffee. It was the perception around Conilon. Many consumers and buyers were conditioned to associate premium coffee with Arabica, while Conilon was often seen as a commodity. That finding changed the direction of the project. We understood that the package needed to make a visual argument for value before the first sip.The interviews with cooperative members revealed the pride, care and technical knowledge behind the product. The retail observations showed that most premium cues in the category were very predictable. This combination led us to create a different premium language: one based on origin, protection, tactile discovery and producer recognition.The most important finding was that Conilon did not need to imitate Arabica to become more valuable. It needed to be presented with its own dignity. That shaped the wing-shaped opening, the embossed guardian motif, the soft-touch finish, the refined color system and the producer seal. Every element was designed to say: this coffee has its own story, its own excellence and its own right to be perceived as premium.

The producer seal came from a very important conversation about recognition. In a cooperative system, collective identity is essential, but we also wanted to honor the individual farmers whose coffees were selected. Excellence does not happen anonymously. It comes from specific families, specific farms and specific decisions made throughout the production process.That is why the seal was placed on the front face and treated with gold hot stamp. It needed visibility and dignity. It could not be hidden as secondary information. At the same time, it was not designed as a generic premium badge. Its role was to recognize the producer and connect the consumer to the human origin of the coffee.The production decision helped reinforce that meaning. Gold hot stamp gives the seal presence, but the concept gives it legitimacy. Without the producer story, it would only be decoration. With that story, it becomes a mark of pride, authorship and respect inside a cooperative framework. It reminds the consumer that this package represents not only a premium coffee, but also the people who made it possible.

Excelencia Coffee Packaging reinforced something we believe strongly at Tipz: origin-specific products need design systems that reveal their truth instead of applying generic premium codes. The methodology behind this project, combining research, cultural immersion, retail observation and sensory design, will continue to shape the way we approach packaging briefs for agricultural and cooperative brands.For future projects, we see strong potential in structural gestures, material storytelling and producer recognition. Many agricultural products have deep cultural and human narratives, but they are often presented in a purely functional way. Packaging can help transform these stories into perceived value without losing authenticity.There are still dimensions to explore. The wing language can evolve into secondary packaging, gifting formats, limited editions and point-of-sale experiences. The producer recognition system can become even more personal and traceable. The tactile vocabulary can also expand, creating different levels of discovery across product lines. The lesson is clear: when structure, material and story work together, packaging can become a strategic business tool, not only a container.

I believe the public conversation around design recognition often focuses on the final object, but not enough on what design can unlock for the communities behind that object. In Excelencia Coffee Packaging, the package is beautiful and carefully crafted, but the most important aspect is what it helped make visible: the value of Conilon coffee, the pride of the producers and the cultural strength of São Gabriel da Palha.The A’ Design Award recognition is important because it gives international visibility to a project rooted in a very specific agricultural context. But the retail results are equally meaningful because they show that design recognition and business performance should walk together. This project did not only win attention. It helped the product sell, helped consumers reassess a stigmatized variety and helped the cooperative communicate excellence with more confidence.What is sometimes underdiscussed is that packaging can be a form of economic dignity. When it gives a historically undervalued product a stronger voice, it can influence how buyers, consumers and even producers perceive its value. For us, that is one of the most powerful roles design can play: not only creating desire, but helping a community’s work be seen, respected and valued.

The sensory sequence was very consciously choreographed. We wanted the consumer to discover the package in stages. From a distance, the structure, color and front composition create premium shelf presence. At arm’s reach, the wing shape and the producer seal begin to reveal the story. In the hand, the soft-touch matte lamination and the embossed relief slow down the experience and invite closer attention.This was important because Excelencia Coffee Packaging needed to make quality perceptible before reading. The consumer should feel that the product is special even before processing the copy. The contrast between the smooth matte surface and the wing relief creates that moment of discovery.We explored different material possibilities during development, but many options either felt too decorative or too distant from the cooperative nature of the brand. The final vocabulary was chosen because it was refined, tactile and meaningful without becoming excessive. The package needed elegance, not noise. The materials had to support the guardian concept and the premium positioning in a way that felt natural to the product’s origin.

The main principle was to keep the structural and symbolic system consistent while allowing each variant to express its own sensory identity. Natural and Fermented are different processing methods, with different flavor profiles and production stories, so they could not feel like the same product with only a small label change. At the same time, they needed to belong to the same Excelencia family.We solved this through a shared architecture: the wing-shaped opening, the guardian concept, the producer seal, the premium finish and the overall hierarchy remain consistent. Differentiation happens through color, supporting details and the way each variant expresses its own character within the same framework.For designers working with artisan or cooperative food producers, I would suggest starting with what must never change. That is the identity core. Then define what can change to express variety. A good range system is not rigid, but it is disciplined. It gives each product enough personality while protecting the memory of the brand. In Excelencia Coffee Packaging, cohesion comes from the guardian. Differentiation comes from the coffee itself.

The research showed that the problem was not only visual. It was about perception, confidence and purchase intent. During our immersion at Cooabriel, the shelf audits across Greater Vitória and the interviews with directors, cuppers and retail partners, we understood that Conilon coffee had strong quality and regional relevance, but the previous packaging did not communicate that value clearly enough.The redesign translated those insights into direct visual decisions. We created a stronger shelf block, a more organized information hierarchy, a distinctive color system for each line and a visual language that combined accessibility with greater perceived quality. The cream pack for Traditional and the deep teal pack for Extra Forte helped differentiate the products clearly while maintaining the same brand universe. The archangel wings, the seal, the typography and the cooperative signature worked together to create trust at first sight.The first documented result was a 45 percent increase in sales volume for the Traditional line. In a later assessment, that growth reached 100 percent, meaning sales had effectively doubled. For us, this confirms that packaging design is not only about making a product look better. When guided by research, it can change perception, open doors in retail and generate measurable business results.

Conilon coffee often carries a perception challenge, especially when compared to Arabica. Our intention was not to disguise Conilon or make it look like something else. The goal was to reveal its own value with dignity, craft and confidence.The engraving-style illustration brought a sense of heritage, detail and permanence. It helped connect the product to agricultural tradition and to the idea of something carefully protected. The matte lamination created a more refined tactile experience, inviting consumers to look closer and handle the package with more attention. The deep teal substrate moved the brand away from generic category codes and gave it a distinctive, premium presence on shelf.Together, these elements created visual nobility without losing the product’s regional truth. I believe design-led repositioning can help agricultural products change the way they are perceived when it respects their origin instead of hiding it. In this case, design helped Conilon speak with more authority, proving that a regional product can carry cultural depth, commercial value and international design relevance.

The balance came from understanding that the cooperative origin was not a limitation. It was the brand’s greatest source of differentiation. Cooabriel represents collective work, local production, technical knowledge and a direct relationship with farmers. Our challenge was to make those values visible in a packaging system that could still compete against larger brands with more media investment and stronger retail presence.We built the system around clarity, recognition and shelf impact. The pack needed to be easy to understand, strong enough to be seen from a distance and distinctive enough to be remembered. The 100 percent pure Conilon message, the cooperative signature, the purity seal, the bold typography and the archangel-inspired visual universe helped create a direct and trustworthy brand presence.The Bronze A’ Design Award recognition reinforces how important this balance was. The project did not try to imitate mass-market competitors. It created its own territory: a coffee with popular reach, cooperative truth and a more distinctive visual identity. That combination allowed the brand to compete with more confidence, even in a crowded category.

That history made the project more strategic from the beginning. We were not only creating a new appearance for the brand. We were helping Cafe Guardiao return to the market with renewed credibility. When a product has already failed in retail, buyers and consumers do not simply need something new. They need a clear signal that the brand has changed.This influenced the redesign in several ways. We avoided anything that looked fragile, generic or improvised. The new packaging needed to communicate consistency, quality and confidence very quickly. The visual system became more organized, the brand became more visible, the product information became easier to read and the cooperative origin became a stronger asset.For me and for Mateus Matos Montenegro, the project showed that visual identity can help rebuild trust when it is more than a surface change. A good redesign can create a new first impression for a brand that already carries an old memory. In this case, design helped buyers reconsider the product and helped consumers see it with new eyes.

The engraving-style line art was chosen because it gave the packaging a sense of craft, origin and detail while remaining viable for the production reality of the project. For this line, the objective was not to create a luxury package with complex structural effects, but to elevate a high-volume coffee through intelligent graphic decisions.The line art allowed us to build a richer visual world using illustration, contrast and repetition. It also worked well with the archangel concept, because the wings could appear as a protective presence around the brand without overwhelming the information that a retail coffee pack needs to deliver. The botanical elements helped connect the product to the field, reinforcing the agricultural origin of the coffee.The technical challenge was to keep the illustration beautiful and legible within flexographic printing and cost parameters appropriate for a cooperative brand. That required controlling the level of detail, color contrast and visual density. The result is a package that feels more valuable without becoming economically unrealistic. The premium perception comes from precision, not excess.

We see the Cafe Guardiao identity as a system with strong potential for expansion because it is based on simple and resilient principles: protection, origin, clarity and shelf strength. These principles can guide the brand as it grows across Espírito Santo and moves toward national retail distribution.The identity should evolve without losing its connection to São Gabriel da Palha, to Cooabriel and to the farmers. Growth should not make the brand generic. The guardian concept, the wings, the cooperative signature and the clear differentiation between lines are assets that can adapt to new formats, new products and new retail environments.The fact that the redesign opened doors to retail chains previously closed to the brand shows that the visual system solved more than an aesthetic issue. It changed the commercial perception of the product. Long term, the most important role of the identity will be to preserve that trust while allowing the brand to become broader, stronger and more nationally recognizable.

I would say that research is not a bureaucratic step before creativity. Research is what makes creativity more accurate. In this project, the risk was to create only a prettier package. That would not have been enough, because the real challenge involved previous market failure, category stigma and a product that needed to recover trust.The qualitative research helped us understand the shelf, the buyer, the cooperative, the product and the consumer’s perception of Conilon coffee. But just as important as the research was the strategic planning and tone of voice work previously developed by my partners Lygia Bellotti and Mariana Kawase. Their contribution helped define the brand’s direction before any visual solution existed, giving the project a stronger foundation in positioning, language and market relevance.That is why we focused on hierarchy, shelf impact, differentiation between the lines, clearer product information and a stronger symbolic territory. For boutique creative agencies, this is an important lesson. You do not need to be the largest agency to create relevant work, but you need to go deep. Cultural immersion, planning and voice prevent superficial solutions. They help design become a business tool, capable of sustaining value, changing perception and giving the brand a stronger place in the market.

The sequential engagement was very intentional, even though this line is not based on structural effects or heavy tactile finishes. The sophistication of the project comes from how the visual information is organized and revealed as the consumer gets closer to the product.From a distance, the package needed to create a strong block on shelf. The contrast between the cream Traditional line and the deep teal Extra Forte line helped build visibility and differentiation. At arm’s reach, the consumer begins to read the brand, the 100 percent pure seal, the Conilon message and the cooperative origin. During handling, the illustration details, wings, botanical elements and information hierarchy create a richer perception of care and quality.The idea was to make the package work in stages. First, it attracts attention. Then it explains the product. Finally, it reinforces trust. For a high-volume coffee line, this layered experience is very important because the packaging has only a few seconds to change perception and influence purchase.

The compact format required a very clear typographic architecture. With 110 mm of width, 60 mm of depth and 220 mm of height, every element had to work quickly and efficiently. The typography needed to create impact, organize information and make the product easy to understand in a crowded coffee shelf.The bold condensed letterforms gave the word Cafe a strong retail presence. They created visibility from a distance and helped the package compete in a high-volume category. Below that, the Guardiao brand mark brought personality and distinction, while the supporting typography organized roast, grind, purity, weight and cooperative information.Traditional and Extra Forte were differentiated mainly through color, contrast and illustration tone, but the typographic system remained consistent. This allowed each line to have its own personality while still belonging to the same family. At the point of sale, this consistency is essential. It helps consumers recognize the brand quickly and understand the portfolio without confusion.