#553 The Designers Behind Nike Run and Gemini | PORTO ROCHA (Design and strategy agency)

**Felipe Rocha** (0:00)
A lot of people, like they say, like, hey, but it felt like this logo is so familiar. It feels like it's always there. And for me, that's my favorite type of design. When the creation, when the designer, it feels invisible because it makes so much sense.

**Leo Porto** (0:12)
Our growth was always a consequence of us focusing on work and our people. We're not planning to grow, but growth is a consequence of doing great work. What do you do exactly ?

**Felipe Rocha** (0:24)
I like to say that the work that we do doesn't really create culture, but in a way it's a dialogue with everything that is going on out there.

**Leo Porto** (0:32)
We see designers as strategic thinkers and vice versa. I think strategists should also be able to contribute with their vision of how that gets translated into design.

**Felipe Rocha** (0:42)
A case study starting from the beginning when somebody is entering the room and ask you, can you walk with me on my brand identity ? Can you tell me everything ? The one thing that guided the work, what's the one thing that Nike has like no one else can claim ? It's their legacy. And the one thing that I love the most about this work is that this solution is so obvious, so simple. It's pretty much like just taking the Nike logo and replacing Nike with Run.

**Leo Porto** (1:10)
I think Covid happens three months later.

**Felipe Rocha** (1:12)
Could you be able to have a system from A to Z designed by AI ?

**Leo Porto** (1:16)
AI is replacing the base of the pyramid when it comes to designers who are starting out. What are the different phases you are going through between the brief and the solution you came with ? I 100% believe that if you put a bunch of people that think the same in a room, nothing interesting is going to come out of there.
Hello everybody, thank you for listening to The Bold Way. Today I am with Porto Rocha, Philippe Rocha and Leo Porto, alias Porto Rocha, right ? How are you guys ?

**Felipe Rocha** (1:47)
We're good.

**Leo Porto** (1:48)
Pretty good. Where are we exactly ? We're in Bushwick, Brooklyn, New York. Brooklyn, New York. USA. Amazing.
For those who don't know you, who've never heard about you, who don't know who you are and to push them to stay until the end of this interview, who are you, what do you do and what are we going to learn today ?

**Felipe Rocha** (2:12)
Well, I'm Philippe Rocha. I'm the founder, one of the founders of Porto Rocha. Porto Rocha is a design and strategy agency. As Leo was saying, we are here in New York now. We are based in New York, but now we also have an office in London.
And the work that we do is pretty much working with branding, creating branding systems. And of course, we can talk more about that once we go through it.

**Leo Porto** (2:40)
Yeah, for sure.

**Felipe Rocha** (2:40)
But I think that's a quick summary.

**Leo Porto** (2:42)
Yeah. Yeah, I'm the other half of the name Porto Rocha. Philippe is Rocha, I'm Porto, the other co-founder and creative director.
And you're doing the creative and you're doing the strategy. This is the same exact thing. We have a similar background in graphic design and also kind of similar in how we both overlapped with advertising at some point in our careers. So when we met, we were kind of doing the same thing, graphic design for brand identities and we started working together. So the strategy side of the business was actually an addition that happened maybe a year or almost like two into the business when we hired our strategy director because we, I think, I guess to answer that question in a deeper way, we already have, I think a hard time sometimes making a distinction between design and strategy, even though there are completely different disciplines, I think historically and traditionally both advertising and design, they have separated those two sides so far apart where strategists do all the thinking, designers do all the manual work, and I think the way we approach it is actually much more integrated where we see designers as strategic thinkers and vice versa. I think strategists should also be able to contribute with their vision of how that gets translated into design.
So, but yeah, Natalie joined us in 2023 ?

**Felipe Rocha** (4:20)
Last ?

**Leo Porto** (4:21)
Two.

**Felipe Rocha** (4:21)
I mean, we started working.

**Leo Porto** (4:22)
No, just kidding. 2020 It's 2020 Yeah. Oh my God.