Organization
Surfactory is a design studio headed by the artist and surfer João Rei. The studio is located in Memmo Baleeira Hotel, in Sagres, Vila do Bispo. With an inspiring view to the entire Algarve coast, the creative director and designer João Rei coordinates an enthusiastic group of specialists in several creative areas. The studio is a multidisciplinary collaborative space, which welcomes artists from different areas. The Surfactory studio develops clients’ projects and creates from start to finish its own, such as Sagres Surf Culture. The studio location, near the sea and within a region with a great engagement with Nature like Sagres, is Surfactory’s biggest inspiration source.
João Rei
João Rei is a Portuguese autodidact born in Faro in 1971. He began his art career simultaneously with another creative approach – to the art of surfing. He started surfing at the age of 13, and that new interest revealed to him a brand new world of colours and emotions. This has been his main influence for both work and personal life since then. Alongside with Nuno Viegas he devoted ten years of his life (from1998 to 2008) to the B.Side project, a Portuguese brand focused on the creation and developing of boardwear. Always on a search to give a visual voice to his work he crosses different areas such as graphic design and illustration, with an aesthetic influenced by a broad spectrum from urban art to contemporary art. He’s the mentor and organiser of Sagres Surf Culture, an event that every year gathers in Sagres surfers and artists from diverse fields of creativity. His work has been recently featured in several books and magazines and he had the opportunity to show it in various lectures in the grounds of design and entrepreneurship. He currently lives in Sagres, where he divides his time between his freelance work and his passion for surfing. He lives in Sagres with his family surrounded by nature and sea. He’s “Artist-in-residence” at Memmo Baleeira Hotel, where he started Surfactory Design Studio, where he works for clients projects and creates his own author projects.
Manuel Castro
He was born in Lisbon in 1979 and lived there for most of his life. He grew up in Benfica and he’s a Benfica fan.
He learned to write at the Externato Fernão Mendes Pinto and claims that “this is the most important line in this text”. He kept on writing at Delfim Santos High— already for class newspapers—where a Portuguese teacher helped him realize, though twenty years later, that writing was what he really wanted to do when he grew up. At the time he devoted himself to something else, for which he had less talent: he took up surfing in the Algarve. Afterwards, he’d keep trying to become a surfer at Ericeira, a village he’d visited forever, and where he lived for ten years. Meanwhile, he attended the Contemporary History degree at ISCTE up until, so the story goes, surfing and writing made other plans for him.
In 2003 he created a blog to keep on practicing writing. He was with the Ondas collective and, several blog posts on, Rio de Janeiro’s Júlio Adler found them from the other side of the Atlantic, and he ended up being invited by João Valente to become an editor for SURFPortugal magazine. After that, he co-founded the content agency Onírica with his friend Miguel Bordalo. He kept contributing for Surf Europe, he worked with Tiago Pires and Quiksilver, created Zero Emag, and ever since he was invited by his friend João Rei to take part in the Sagres Surf Culture he rediscovered in the South a new refuge and inspirational grounds for his life, beyond Lisbon and Ericeira.
He’s a copy by day and writer by night—and as a photographer every once in a while.
Lars Jansen
“Can music change your life? This is what Lars Jansen may think every time he takes his camera to photograph a concert, a skater or a surfer riding a wave. Since he was a kid he was attracted by the magic of photography, although his family never encouraged him to devote himself to his passion. But everything changed in the early 90’s when he saw photos of Nirvana, Pearl Jam and other Seattle bands. He decided to take pictures of all the shows he was attending and try to make a living from it. A few years later he moved to the Algarve (southern Portugal) to portray its surfing scene. Soon after, the biggest brands started to ask for his images, and today he has become a regular photographer for the most prestigious magazines. 2011 is going to be a very busy year for Lars, as he is preparing a travelling exhibition on rock bands and is also working on the release of his first photo book. For many people this is a dream. For him it is something that started with a little rock n ‘roll.”
Bruno Fernandes
He discovered skateboarding on the beginning of his adolescence and that passion last for several years. It was the magazines, the boards and the imagery of this culture that led him to graphic design. Right after he finished a design course on high school, he had the chance to start his path in the graphic arts, thereby abdicating of a higher education. An autodidact attitude and a huge motivation made him grow professionally, from junior to creative director in several design studios. Nowadays, he develops projects from creation and developing of visual identity – his main work focus – to print and web design as a multidisciplinary freelance designer. He’s a member of the collective Lata – Cultural Platform, an association that recently started to create and promote cultural actions in the Algarve region.
João Ventura
João Ventura has 24 years old and he’s from Lagos. Since a kid he was interested in art, starting with illustration and stencils. After he graduated from the high school, he studied on ETIC, where he discovered that design was what he wanted to do in life. When he got his Design graduation he went for an internship on Surfactory Design Studio, with João Rei, where he still works. He likes graphic design and illustration. The ocean, the nature and music inspire him.
Ricardo Floxo
Ricardo has a Communication Design degree from the Algarve University. During his university course he took part of “Ideias em Caixa” project, organized by Cria (Division of Entrepreneurship and Technology Transfer of the University of Algarve) and he won a special mention with “Aparte” Project, which lead to the forthcoming development of an audiovisual and multimedia production company, We Make Productions.
Etic Algarve
The pioneer spirit of ETIC, based upon in the “know how to do it by doing it” has led to the opening of this school in the south region of the country, in the city of Portimão, intending thereby to respond to the constant search for candidates from the country’s southern Algarve, that has long deserved some investment in teachings within the creative industries. After 4 years of a rewarding experience in “barlavento” city, the requests from the student community led to ETIC Algarve – School of Innovation Technologies and Algarve Creation changed geographically, to a more central area – in the Municipal Market of Faro city – responding more effectively to our audience in terms of space, accessibility and proximity.
The access to Sagres Surf Culture is free, but the seating is limited. Register now!