Comunicar Design XI is a story about making communication design for an event about communication design at a school where, among other things, communication design is reflected upon and a large number of students study communication design.

Or rather: it was when we tried to make the communication design of a communication design event part of the event's own action, breaking with the tradition of merely assigning it a wrapping role. No matter how beautiful the image of this or that previous edition might have been, it always seemed reductive to us: it was defended by supporters of its graphic style, and rejected by its detractors... a conversation in which nothing was learned.

From the very first graphic design classes at ESAD.CR — perhaps due to a lack of specific vocation for that area, or perhaps because of an excess of it — I have been interested in playing the more or less silly game of the discipline's border issues. Which is the same as asking, from the height of puberty or because it is so often the elephant in the room: what is the relationship between communication design and art, individual expression and authorship? As everyone knows, we are simply talking about geopolitics.

In the end, these ambiguities (and the debate surrounding them) became quite explicit — otherwise, we would not, in practice, have simply taken our places, habits and persons as the image of an annual graphic design event.

For the series of videos we made, we had footage by Jorge de Almeida (who was also filmed), original music by Tiago Frutuoso, the extremely generous support of the snack‑bar A Praceta (as indeed in all moments of this project), which practically hosted us and so many times fed us for free, and who appeared on screen (besides ourselves): Pedro Rosa, Pedro Maçãs, Renato Maçãs, Carlos Reis, Luísa Barreto (photographed), senhor Alberto, Marcela Duchamp, Paulo Silva (photographed), Ricardo Dantas, Tito, Cristina Silva, Marina Silva, João Esteves, Mário Rodrigues, Ivo Marçal, Cláudio Teixeira, Catarina Barros, Diogo Agostinho, Zé Vieira, José Torres, senhor Lázaro, Ricardo de Sousa, Marcos Rêgo, Sornas, among many others with whom we lost contact, or whose names we didn't record, but who gave permission to be filmed and for the videos to be shared.

A Praceta never stopped operating during the weeks we worked there. In the video series, we also created slides for all the conferences and activities, and credits featuring everyone's dances (including those who ended up on the cutting room floor). However, they were lost over the years (dead external hard drives, the tyranny of distance, etc...).