Here’s the TL;DR.
I’m a designer that loves to do too many things, including branding, systems, photography, podcasting, among others.
I’m also a geek, a lover of music, pop culture and technology. I love to learn and currently think I can change the world with design education.
Ok, now for the full story.
Name’s Bruno Figueiredo. I’m a brand designer with a background in multimedia. Mostly work in brand and product design for tech brands and for the last 4 years I’ve been building design communities in Portugal and Online, looking to grow the practice as an open platform for a better world.
Outside of work I’m a music lover, an amateur street photographer, an average cook, and a tech geek that spends too much time watching reviews. Love the occasional game on my PS4 or Switch, spend hours watching tv shows and movies and definitely need to do some more exercise.
I’m Portuguese born out of Barcelos, a small city in northern Portugal home to the clay roster figure most people associate with my home country.
Ever since I was a small kid I drew on every surface available. Imagining worlds inside worlds was my thing and so I grew to love arts (even though I did study sciences in High-School). For a while there I though I could be an Architect, but by the time I was 16 I knew all I wanted to do was create stuff. Be it animation, design or even some 3d and programming, if I could hack it to create something then I would jump in and just build whatever I could.
It was also around this time that I started working with my family’s business doing textile weaving design through CAD like software, and that pushed me into graphic design as a career.
In college I studied multimedia design, which allowed me to explore everything around the world of design. From video, to animation, to programming or typography, even though I didn’t studied much I did a lot finding excuses to create. Any extracurricular project that I could join was a great excuse to create and so I grabbed them all.
Back in 2012, one of those side projects became my first professional love, an online cultural magazine called Culturarte where I grew side by side with friends. Where I learned all about video reporting, motion design, web design, social media management, a little bit of concert photography and even a lot of journalistic & copy writing.
From there I got the chance to work as a freelance for a few years after college, doing a mix of graphic design and video production work for cultural & musical projects, and an assortment of small businesses like restaurants and local commerce.
After that, in late 2016 I joined OutSystems where I grew professionally to what I am today. I started as a Junior Designer but quickly evolved into the Senior Designer role and eventually helped hire my whole team. It was my “school” on the tech industry, leadership, creative direction and even mentorship.
It was also there where I started to learn about systems design and eventually was led to Figma and the amazing community I’m so involved in today. In 2020 I managed to head to San Francisco, right before the pandemic started, for the first ever Config, and since then it’s been a hell of ride where I got to find my current passion: to make design a tool for all, not just a few.
More to come, or not,... we’ll have to wait.
