patrícia furtado

What’s all the fuss about?

These were my grandparents, looking at me for the first time, trying to figure out if i looked more like mom or dad. And there I was, on the other side of the glass. That’s my first official picture. I was born in Lisbon, Portugal, in the excellent year of 1977. Yes, sadly it’s true, I’m thirty-something.

When I was 2 and a half, my mom got me a baby brother. Miguel realised quite early he had to run very fast if he was ever going to escape my constant hugging, cuddling and kissing. No wonder he went into sports.

I was 4 when I got my beautiful first bike. Miguel was quite excited as well. That is, until i gave him a lift. Mwahahaha!

The school years

Jardim Escola João de Deus was my kindergarten. Strangely, I was a nightmare to feed. It took the entire canteen staff around me to make me eat my soup. Nowadays I eat too much, instead. But it would still take an army to make me swallow that dreadful black bean soup!

My primary school was Externato Luso Britânico. Pretty cool place, where we learned English since 1st grade. I wasn’t a cool kid, though. I spent my breaks reading Enyd Blyton books, the little geek! I was in the Clube Atlético de Alvalade gymnastics class, but it was quite clear I wasn’t going to be the next Nadia Comaneci.

Next was Escola Preparatória Eugénio dos Santos, for two years. I was very proud of my good grades on every subject, except of course - you’ve guessed it - Physical Education. And somehow, I was proud of that too.

At this time, I thought it would be a good idea to learn guitar. Didn’t do as much for my style as I hoped for, and turned out to be way harder than I thought. So, despite several new attempts over the years, I never learned more than a few chords. To this day, I still know how to play Stand by me.

Escola Secundária de Padre António Vieira is where I spent my high school years. Still quite the geek, I was involved in pretty much everything I could: school choir, theatre group, creative writing, photography, school newspaper. It’s where I met some of my best friends today.

If, as a kid, I wanted to be a famous singer or a detective - yes, I read too many Agatha Christie’s and Conan Doyle’s -, by now I was pretty much set onto being either a writer/journalist or a designer. (I also liked Quantum Physics, but it sounded like too much work.) After a couple of years, the school newspaper gave me a hand in making that decision: I realised I was writing fewer and fewer articles, but was now responsible for the whole layout and illustration. It also helped that I had great art teachers.

My design career officially begun at 14, when I was hired to do the technical illustration of a maths textbook. With the money I made, I bought myself a big Yamaha keyboard. Hey, if the guitar wasn’t meant to be, maybe this was more my thing. Or, as it turned out, maybe not.

In 1993, I wrote a short story who won me a bus trip around Europe on the Autocarro Europeu. I had travelled a bit with my parents before, but this was the first time away on my own. Lisbon-Paris-Geneva-Florence-Venice-Barcelona-Lisbon in a bus full of people I’d never met before, first kiss included, and I was a different person. And I’d been bitten by the travelling bug.

After 3 years of French classes in school, I decided to follow up by joining Alliance Française, which gave me the opportunity to attend in July 1994 a Lions Club sponsored event, CCMI94. I spent a whole month in France, with 40 other youngsters of 24 nationalities, visiting the Strasbourg and Metz regions, and having the time of my life. The following year I returned as group animator of CCMI95, this time around Dijon and Le Creusot.

1995 was also the big year of going to university. I got in Faculdade de Belas Artes da Universidade de Lisboa, where I spent the next 5 years completing my Communication Design degree, already doing some freelance design and illustration work on the side. And babysitting. And tutoring. And, of course, going to drunken university parties.

I met Francisco through common friends that year. We started dating in the summer holidays, and we had loads of fun together. We shared music and books, went to countless gigs, travelled a lot, and we were to stay together for nine and a half very nice years.

In 1997, I felt the ground crumble under my feet, with the sudden death of my grandfather Ildo. Within a few years, all my grand parents were gone, and my world was a darker place. Grandparents are the best thing ever invented. At least mine were, and I miss them so.

When the Expo98 was organised in Lisbon, I got a job at the Swatch Pavillion. Selling swatch watches to tourists in a horrible uniform. It was harder than you may think, and after a couple of months, I was so tired, I fell asleep for a second and drove my mom’s car into a tree. I still don’t have a car of my own, I drive my mom’s golden Twingo. Some people never learn…

On the 5th year of my degree, I enrolled on an Erasmus exchange, and spent three months in Hatfield, at the University of Hertfordshire’s School of Art in Design, and fell hopelessly in love with London. At school, I divided my time between the photography lab and the printmaking workshop.

After university, I started working at Ideia Ilimitada, a very cool design studio where I learned almost as much as I did in university. It was my one and only full-time job ever, and although I loved working there, I secretly plotted moving to London. About a year later, we actually did.

Not bored yet? The rest of the story is coming soon.