This brazilian designer is the creator of Catarse, website where she shows her phylosophy of design: forms, colors, nature. Her desings are overwhelming, colorist and of hight quality. An excelent work. A little sample from the other side of Atlantic Sea.
H2o Magazine : Name, age and current occuppation.
Carolina : My name is Carolina Aboarrage, i´m 27 years old and i´m a graphic designer.
H2o Magazine : Your works are conceptual: they are forms, lines, color. Where do you find the insporation for such abstract design? How do they come up?
Carolina : I like to work with simple forms and i try to develop a singular language. I want to find something diferent in the compositions and to do what i´m always trying: to avoid my designer way of looking.
" The form variation, all the forms, without any modesty. Trying like a way for creation. Superficial and childlike." This is what i like to do.
H2o Magazine : ¿How is the process of your creations?
Carolina : Sometimes it´s trying shapes, destroying some shapes to create another shapes. Sometimes I create because I´m sad or beacause I´m very happy. Sometimes I start my creation through colors. It depends on my mood, it depends on the occasion.
H2o Magazine : What do you think is essencial in web design? Which do you think the essencial elements are?
Carolina : Which do you think the essential elements are?
The essential element is the interactivity. Internet is the only media that brings image, sound, action and interaction togheter.
When I started to work with web design i felt a hard difficulty in this particular point. Because you need to create more than a script, you need to foresee the action of the person who´s interacting.
H2o Magazine : And which do you think is the role of interactivity in this area?
Carolina : Interactivity allows to create a dialogue with the user.
H2o Magazine : Tell us about graphic design in Brasil?
Carolina : Brasil is a big country with some big centers. I live in São Paulo, the biggest center. I have to confess that i don´t have a great idea about what happens in the rest of the country in graphic design area.
Talking about production, i think we have wonderful designers doing experimental projects and trying to publishing their works. But i tell you that it´s not easy.
There is a book named LATINO (launched this year) and another one to be launched, named BRASIL INSPIRED. Both
are from the same publishing house, called Die-Gestalten Verlag. They have some brazilian works, including mine.
I think it´s good to see a little about Brazilian production.
H2o Magazine : How would you define the graphic design style in your country?
Carolina : It is looking for a national identity without folkloric referencies, something more delicate.
Internet is a global media, and i think it makes people lose their regional identities or lose themselves to search for these identities. Things are always repeated in every part of the World and it´s not different in Brazil.
H2o Magazine : Please, show us a sample of brazilian work in the internet.
Carolina : I think you can have a look to my website
www.catarse.com.
I put some of my works togheter in there. I did the graphic design but the programing of these works were done by two friend of mine, Garfield (www.gas-station.com/nslod) and Bona (www.rock-ville.com).
H2o Magazine : How do you see the situation of women working on computer graphics?
Carolina : There are a lot of women working in design but I think it´s still a masculine area.
I feel some kind of protectionism between men. They will never confess it, because it´s not a good thing .. (smiles) ... but it´s true!
H2o Magazine : Form or movement?
Carolina : Form.
H2o Magazine : Flash or dhtml?
Carolina : Whatever it´s usefull for me at the moment.
H2o Magazine : Your three favourite design tools.
Carolina : Freehand, Photoshop and my Mac.
H2o Magazine : Three webs you visit often.
Carolina : www.shift.jp.org, www.newstoday.com, www.vasava.es.
I would like to thank you, Bobbi Prado, for the translation of my interview from portuguese into english.
Mª Carmen Trevijano Moreno
