An Interview with Adriana de Barros
by Neil de la Flor
You’re a web designer, fashion designer, graphic designer, painter, illustrator, flash film producer, and poet. Are you insane? What feeds your creativity?
In the words of R.D. Lang: “Insanity—a perfectly rational adjustment to an insane world.” There is a level of ‘creative’ insanity which drives me to make art. Sometimes too much of it because I do it non-stop (Laugh). I didn’t plan to be all these friendly “titles” that you mention, it just happened with time and it is mainly due to having more than one interest, e.g. in art, cinema, music, and literature. I’ve always tried to combine these various fields into my projects, so I’ve dabbled a bit in each. Although, I have no quest to do everything at once which would result in not finishing a project. I have phases and dedicate my time to perfecting my skills and exploring new themes and options. For example with my writing: I wanted to make poetry more appealing to a general audience. Sometimes poetry can be a bit dull, and when I combined visuals and animation to words, it is like the text becomes alive—cinematic. It did capture a bigger audience, even people who disliked reading poems liked the visual ones.
As for web, fashion, and graphic design. I work commercially in these fields, and it has been a natural expansion since they are all based on the same principle of “design.” There are differences of tools and materials, but the goal is to get the message across and make it effective within its medium. I also find it much more interesting diversifying with each project I take on, than always doing the same thing. It is like painting, I don’t enjoy taking 6 months to do one art piece. I prefer doing many art pieces throughout that time, which keeps me inspired. Unfortunately, not everything falls into this short time period category. Sometimes to launch bigger projects as for a web site, it can take many months to do. If I could do it in a few weeks, I’d be more entertained. (Laugh).
Are you a self taught artist or did you go to school to become an 'artist'?
I’m
self-taught. I studied art and design in high school which taught me a lot
of basics about art history, design and color psychology, and more. I just
have never stopped learning out of school. It is important to keep learning
every day, from your peers, from experiences, and even from books and school.
I used to read a lot about color psychology for fun, as well as other topics.
My goal was to pursue Cinema in University, but I'm in the wrong country for
that.
The funny thing about painting is that I am allergic to pigmentation, therefore for most of my life I have avoided using paints. I did explore paint but with very negative skin results. And none of this has ever stopped me from creating art, because if you have a deep passion for something there is always a way to do it. If you can’t use a paintbrush, you’ll use something else. I explored manual photo-montage, photography, drawing in ink and pencil, video-making, and years later web and Flash design. And in recent years I discovered that acrylics did not affect my skin as oils did so I began to paint again. I have been interested in exploring oil paints because I felt that it is valued more as a paint medium than some other techniques. But as time has moved on, I’ve learnt that the goal is really the final product, not so much what you use.
What do you eat for lunch?
I like to diversify even with my food choices. Life is too boring if you are eating the same thing all the time. I love all sorts of salads (with nuts, cheese, various types of lettuces and vegetables, and with other food surprises—anything but hair!).
I hate hair in my food, especially if it’s dog hair.
I love Italian and Thai food, but I rarely eat it for lunch (Dinner!). I like Brazilian food, ‘Picanha,’ which I sometimes eat for lunch. Soup, sandwiches, meat. Yogurt, milk, fruit milkshakes. I eat a pastry per day, that is on the agenda, but above all I’m careful and conscious with my health.
What’s your favorite part of the frivole.com?
When Neil and I are less stressed out about the web project, in those precise moments we have exchanged really funny, humorous emails. It is fun. What I like most about the actual site is that I feel that it will last the test of “web time,” it is meant to be functional, practical, and classic in structure so that you can simply focus on the clothing content. Something you can look at for a year, and not feel sick and tired of it after a month. A lot of sites have themes and I like themes, but many stores that we’ve become used to shopping (such as Amazon.com) often maintain their design structure and just upgrade certain functions. And their goal is to make the site appealing and simple for shopping needs, and not become a grand circus of bells and whistles making it difficult to shop. I really like the fact that we used a black background for the Frivole.com, because it isn’t commonly used in e-commerce clothing sites, and it just reminds me of a neutral background setting of some fashion shows.
What was the most difficult aspect of creating the site?
It is difficult to choose just one specific thing. There are various challenges
throughout the project, to name two: a lot of the online banking/merchant
technicalities are quite complex because we depend on third party sites to
provide some of these services. And each company works in a specific way and
has its own setup, so understanding all the bureaucratic details and everything
that needs to be incorporated for full security of transactions, has been
challenging. We are using the renown VeriSign certificate (128 bit-SSL) to
provide a safe shopping environment for Frivole customers.
Another obstacle is a ‘web browser’ issue. When designing a web
page there are objects/layout casing which end up misaligned on different
browsers screens and computer platforms. Resulting in seeing the page a little
messed up. Sometimes we get the page right on the first go, but not always,
and adjusting the page to make it look uniform for almost any browser is tricky
due to lack of standardization of Internet browsers.
If you could meet anyone—dead or alive—who would you most like to meet?
Leonardo da Vinci. He was advanced for his time, a master of various disciplines, and I’m sure he would teach me a lot. (Smile).
