●           Brand creation for assessment in Graphic Design Project (Miguel Macedo, ESAD.CR). The briefing:
— choose a village in Portugal, regardless of whether we know it;
— transfer its name to the naming of the brand to be developed;
— decide on the product or service line the brand would commercialise;
— then freely drawing on the Portuguese rural imaginary to present it, while trying to avoid falling into clichés — the little cheese, the cured ham, the jam, the honey...

●           I chose Pergulho (Proença‑a‑Nova), the village in Beira Baixa where I grew up when I wasnʼt in Viseu: itʼs my fatherʼs homeland. The memory that struck me as I racked my brain for the most unusual and innovative product were the trails of little goat droppings carving paths through the village. My problem: how the hell am I going to sell them?

●           It was then that I discovered that, not to mention fertilisers, the making of hygiene and food products can also benefit from this adorable and much-missed (nowadays almost nobody keeps goats!) raw material.

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"O que há de mais nosso" (The most genuinely ours)
A kind of (anti-)nationalist mantra suggesting that even our worst can be very good. "O que há de mais nosso" emphasises the genuineness of the product, the production, and the brand's very soul, shamelessly asserting — in a stricter sense — the excellence of an ingredient that seems at first so repugnant. It applies both to a national reading (clearly with a touch of provincialism), as if shit were what the Portuguese do best, and can also be read as a manifesto for a rural identity that is resolved and free from hang-ups or submission to centralist logics — a cry against depopulation with a focus on the quaint and traditional.