Marcos Oliveira: Follow Your Gut
Senior Designer
by Elizabeth Lavis
|20 Dec 2024
Shoot’s official Creative Leader and unofficial Senior One-Man-Band Designer, Marcos Oliveira, learned to rely on his instinct early in his career. “My top advice for aspiring designers is to follow your gut,” he says. “In a very rational and data-driven professional environment, our guts often lead us to paths we would not otherwise have taken. Study and learn outside the field of design. The more things you know, the better your ideas will be.”
Curiosity and the drive to know why things work have served Oliveira well as a design generalist, as does the knowledge that even small actions can be profound. “The best piece of advice I’ve ever heard was ‘do what you can, with what you have, where you are.’ I think it is great because it acknowledges that everyone can make a difference, despite how small or niche it is, and that takes the pressure off having to come up with the next great global innovation in every project you make,” he says.
Oliveira comes from Aracatuba, Brazil, and his socially-minded community of friends and family members influenced him to question and investigate how he could use his design talents to help others. However, his design path didn’t solidify until he was in his late teens. “I did not know what a designer was until I was around seventeen,” he says. “When I was young, I had the very ‘young Brazilian boy’ cliche dream of becoming a professional footballer.” He credits a lecture by Fabio Lopez for setting him on his career path. “He talked about some social design projects that he’d done, and I realized design had the potential to create a positive social impact,” Oliveira says.
"The Fantastic Global Cooling Machine", Shoot
His design approach is in-depth and research-heavy, with a clear focus on the client's needs. “We like to work closely with the people involved in the project and problem,” Oliveira says. It starts by listening to the client, exploring their needs and dreams, and trying to better understand their vision. Then, I need to investigate the problem to better understand it and try to gain new perspectives and make connections.”
The strategy hinges on how impactful the idea could be, using Shoot’s “impact scale”. “The impact scale helps us show the client what the level of engagement needs to be for each idea and manages expectations,” he says. The client stays involved through the creative end of the process through regular check-ins on text and visuals. Oliveira also believes in total honesty and trust from the first client meeting. “We try to be clear about everyone’s responsibility and what each side needs to deliver the work, and then establish checkpoints in which we can discuss the process,” he says.
Oliveira balances a full work schedule with ample self-care time. “Since the pandemic, I found that establishing our boundaries and respective personal time is essential to be able to take care of our health and then deal with the work,” he says. He also draws inspiration from an utterly unorthodox place: his email mailbox. “I like to check the ads from small businesses,” he says. “There are a lot of references to popular culture that we can learn and apply to projects.”
Ultimately, Oliveira finds purpose and passion in the sheer art of creating. “What I love most about my work is taking an idea, shaping it, and bringing it into the real world feels like magic. It's great when you can use that idea to make a difference in people’s lives.”
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