Interview with Mónica Pinto de Almeida

Mónica Pinto de Almeida ("MPDA") interviewed on Tuesday, 31 October.

Could you please tell us about your experience as a designer, artist, architect or creator?

MPDA : My experience as a designer starts around the year 2014 as a natural follow up to that date. I have education in Decorative Painting, Mural Painting, frescoes, furniture restoration, 15th century tile making, drawing and art history. All my life I have been surrounded by art and design. I opened my first atelier in 1997, and I had this evolution and passage to design in a very organic way and even as a challenge from my clients who wanted me to design different pieces for them.

How did you become a designer?

MPDA : I became a designer as a result of an evolution and professional growth, it was a natural passage, a move from painting to creating pieces, a discovery of new techniques driven by much personal restlessness. This is how my passion for design truly began. Gradually I learned product design in a self-taught way and in 2014 I started to outline a new professional path and together with my partner and mother we created the brand Mokki Design. It has been a very arduous path, I'm always in continuous learning, but at the same time it has been extremely rewarding and very interesting to see how all my background and training in the arts plays an enormous influence on the design that I do today.

What are your priorities, technique and style when designing?

MPDA : My drawings are very much inspired by my emotions, my passions, the things I admire. I think that any designer, artist has this characteristic, there is a greater force that impels us to create and that is out of our control. Then comes a more rational part that helps us structure a design. It's important to know what we want to transmit with a design and if its function can actually be beneficial, what it can bring to the world. I usually start the designs with drawings, sketches by hand, and then move on to a more technical phase with the help of 3D programs, and then for some designs I make full scale models to understand the volumetry and proportions. The final phase of any piece will be the direct collaboration with the manufacturer to start the first prototype and study if there are changes to make or not and the study of the light in the case of lamps.

Which emotions do you feel when designing?

MPDA : The emotions I feel when designing are several, usually there is an initial excitement, like when we are in love, in which even sleeping becomes difficult because my head won't stop, then comes a calmer phase of consolidation, to finally have again an explosion of excitement when we see the first real pieces in front of us, that is, to see the materialization of the idea is very overwhelming.

What particular aspects of your background shaped you as a designer?

MPDA : What shaped me most as a designer was my experience with materials due to my artistic background. Knowing where the materials come from, knowing how to work with them manually, knowing how they behave is extremely important and enriching nowadays when I make a design. I know how colors behave, I know how to work with natural pigments, I know how to make natural waxes for wood, I know how to work with shadows and perspectives due to Trompe L'oeil painting. All of this is carried to my current experience as a designer, all of which have become invaluable tools that shape my designs as well as the influences I can bring from my passions, such as architecture and the great painters.

What is your growth path? What are your future plans? What is your dream design project?

MPDA : My growth is everyday, with each new design or project I learn. In my plans is the presence of the Mokki brand in more and more countries and I embrace more and more projects that can be creatively challenging. In the future I want to continue to be myself and that people can look at a piece of me and feel a connection to their story, that arouses some emotion is always my dream and of course continue to work with light which is something that fascinates me.

What are your advices to designers who are at the beginning of their career?

MPDA : The advice I would give to young designers is to always stay true to their language, without that we don't have a truth and without that we don't have true design or soul. Always try to create a support network around us is also extremely important, to have good collaborators by our side is what allows us to propel ourselves, to have people by our side with whom we can learn and grow, they can be friends, colleagues or teachers, it doesn't matter, the important thing is that they can always show us a different point of view and that we can grow.

You are truly successful as a designer, what do you suggest to fellow designers, artists and architects?

MPDA : What can I suggest to other designers? To remain true, to always try to bring something better to the world, not to follow fashions or trends, to think about the future, and to be kind to each other.

What is your day to day look like?

MPDA : My daily routine always starts with a big cup of tea and after catching up on the normal household chores and family logistics I go to my office and go over the list of tasks I have for that day, chat with my partner, check the mails, design news...and then the concentration starts. I have many hours of office and computer time, but my favorite things are the meetings with the manufacturers, the meetings around a cup of tea in Sintra and being with people, just observing the day.

How do you keep up with latest design trends? To what extent do design trends matter?

MPDA : I always follow my line and vision without following the trends, but I am always up to date with the latest news, the latest materials, the new emerging designers and to understand what are the trends or phases we are in, because it also gives us a social-economic-environmental notion of our days. I don't follow trends at all, but rather adapt or evolve in what makes the most sense to me, such as sustainability issues in design and its entire sphere. My inspiration always comes from subjects very dear to me, nature, the arts, materials and colors, and architecture.

How do you know if a product or project is well designed? How do you define good design?

MPDA : What makes a good design a really good design I think should be the combination of beauty and function and the capacity to surprise us

How do you decide if your design is ready?

MPDA : The decision about whether a design is ready or not, is very intuitive, it is something we feel and sometimes we can also verify supported by a strong method of experimentation, of questioning everything and listening to opinions. When we have the feeling and have the verifications then yes, we can think that a design is indeed finished. But there are also cases of some designs that can always be evolving over time.

What is your biggest design work?

MPDA : I consider that I don't have a greater work than another in terms of design, all of them are very important to me at their moment, there is a great passion always for all of them during their creation and development. All are very special to me and all have very different characteristics. Right now I'm working on several new designs simultaneously which is really exciting, one of them is all metal and involves metalwork, manual handling on my part, and the others involve different materials like glass or textiles for example.

Who is your favourite designer?

MPDA : I don't have a favorite designer, I have many. I love Jaime Hayon, for me he represents very well Spanish design and the influence of culture, colors and characters in design. I love architecture, so Corbusier, Ricardo Bofill, Zaha Hadid, Walter Gropius ,are some of my favorites. I love Philippe Starck's personality, I love to listen to Kareem Rashid's lectures...There are so many, I also love fashion design and also ancient architecture and to know the geniuses behind some cathedrals and of course the great artists like Picasso, Jackson Pollock, Gauguin, Matisse, Rodin, Camille Claudel or photographers like Imogen Cunningham.

Would you tell us a bit about your lifestyle and culture?

MPDA : I currently live in Sintra, Portugal, next to Lisbon, Sintra is a town, a Unesco world heritage site, and has a mountain range that goes all the way to the sea, due to these characteristics, a microclimate is created where we have almost every day some fog and a somewhat melancholic atmosphere. Curiously, this reminds me a lot of my hometown in Spain, Vigo, in the region of Galicia, where we also have a very particular climate, with a lot of humidity, fog and the smell of the sea. For me to live I have to be in a city with sea, the Atlantic influences me a lot, the landscape, the characteristic smell of the sea...it is something that inspires me. I also use music in my daily life, I never work without music! It is very important to be surrounded by what makes sense to us as individuals, so that creativity can flow. More and more I look at things with a more critical eye, a more "design" look where we question more the function of everything and the emotions or experiences that a piece brings us.

Would you tell us more about your work culture and business philosophy?

MPDA : In my work culture the human factor is always above all, it is the most important for me to work, to collaborate with people I really like and with whom I identify in work methods. I am very demanding at a professional level, there has to be a seriousness, education and respect underlying everything.

What are your philanthropic contributions to society as a designer, artist and architect?

MPDA : As a designer I have a great responsibility to contribute to this field in a positive way, creating pieces that can have a positive impact and contributing to the education of young designers and beyond to understand the impact good design has on our society. I love it when I am given the opportunity, to speak to young people who may be starting out on their journey.

What positive experiences you had when you attend the A’ Design Award?

MPDA : By participating in the A'Design Award the learning I get from each application is enormous! During the whole process I am forced to see and think about the piece in a deeper way, and I learn to express many of the things that sometimes stay only in our heads, such as the concepts behind a design and its inspiration. I consider the A'Design award extremely important in that we grow as designers when we are given feedback by other professionals, when we are evaluated by such an extensive jury it gives us other certainties or raises questions. Finally, of course, when we are awarded, it consolidates our vision and recognition of our capabilities and helps our design to have a huge visibility platform. Being the designer of the day makes me feel immensely happy, recognized, and I hope I can continue to give back for many years to come with good design!!

Mónica Pinto de Almeida Profile