First off, thanks for giving me the opportunity to be here. It's an honor to be interviewed by you guys. About my background, I always liked to draw when I was kid even though I sucked at it. Then some years passed and I had my first contact with computers. It was great! I remember using Corel Draw 3 and 4. In 1997 the internet started working in my country. My brother and I used to save pages on our computer and open them in Notepad to see the code and change it to create our own pages. The first table based design was like the best day of my life! I think that was when everything pretty much started. After that, I went to college and took a Graphic Design course and then started working for some companies.

You've got a degree in graphic design. Do you believe formal education is necessary in this industry? In your early days did you have difficulties finding a design job?

I don't believe it's necessary, but a good course always helps. Sometimes the learning process is a bit steep and with some help and guidence it's much eaiser to evolve. Besides that, there's all the art history that you learn. That was really useful to me, and to this day, still is.

To find a job in the early days was very complicated mostly because, in Brazil and in the city I live, nobody knew what design was, let alone graphic design. Graphic design to them was probably an urban legend or something, haha. When somebody asked me what I did for living I used to get a bit embarrased because I knew I would have to explain and talk a lot to make them understand the basis of my job. Now, at least I notice that there are more job opportunities for designers in my area.

You're the Photoshop expert. What are some typical problems one encounters when designing in Photoshop and how to overcome them?

Well, Photoshop is a fantastic tool. You have tons of features and filters that you can do pretty much anything with. The biggest problem is finding which one to use. I think the best way to learn Photoshop and any tool is to play around with it a little: test different filters, create experimental works and so on. This will allow you to get familiar with filters and all the features available. The most important thing, however, is creativity. The tools will only act as an aid to turning your ideas into reality.

The tutorials by Abduzeedo.com are Web-wide known and followed. How did you come to writing tutorials?

Everything started towards the end of 2006 when my studio was robbed; they took my computer, and my two backup hard drives which contained everything I had done in six months. It was terrible. I lost tons of experimental works. I used to do them just for fun to learn some cool effects and put some ideas down on paper. After the robbery, I decided that I would start a blog where I would be able to backup these experiments, and the tutorials started simply as a way for me to document the process of creating those effects.

My first tutorials were very short and straight forward because that was enough for me to remember the whole process. However, some people were having a hard time trying to follow my steps and so I had to start explaining more.

How does the tutorial writing process usually flow? Do you design and write simultaneously or design first and then write?

I always design first. The majority of my tutorials are from images I had done in the past so I just redo them again and write the tutorials. In the beginning it was a mess. I used to have 80-150 screen shots in my desktop and then I had to organize them in steps. Now I use a very handy software called ScreenSteps. It allows me to print screens straight to a step. That made my life much easier when writing tutorials.

A certain number of your tutorials have been published on http://psdtuts.com/. Tell us more about this collaboration? How did it start and how far has it gone so far?

Everything started last year, my blog had some tutorials that were very well known such as the Magic Hat, and the Digital Smoke with Liquify. But writing tutorials wasn't a daily thing in my to-do list. Collis Ta'eed the co-founder of PSDTUTS sent me an email asking me if I would be interested in writing some tutorials for them. I really liked the offer, I thought it would be a nice way to promote my work and an extra motivation to learn a bit more of Photoshop. I wrote weekly tutorials for almost 6 months. Now I'm still writing for them but I took some weeks off because I'm doing some traveling and I wouldn't be able to keep up at that pace.

A lot of designers would rather keep their secrets to themselves. Why is it important for you to share your design ideas in tutorials?

I think we can't show someone how to be creative or have an excellent idea, but we can help them on how to turn their ideas into reallity using Photoshop. I learn a lot from the tutorials because I'm always trying to simplify the process and writing tutorials is a way for me to do that.

Video tutorials are gaining popularity nowadays. Do you believe that video tutorials can make learning easier? Have you thought of making one?

I did a video tutorial last year; it was on how to create Bubbles in Photoshop. I think it's good, it can help you if you are a newbie and want to get used to the software. However, I have to say, in my opinion I prefer written tutorials, mainly because it's easier for me to take a quick look at the steps and it's more flexible in terms of going over and reviewing the steps. Say, for example, I want to return 3 steps or just want to try to reproduce the images on the steps, it's just scrolling up or down and that's it.

Also for me it's a bit more difficult to do video tutorials due to the fact that I'm not an English native speaker so I would need another person to do the speaking part, and that would take me more time to produce a tutorial. Maybe it's the extra motivation I need to improve my english skills.

Is graphic design more of a job or lifestyle for you? Where do you draw the line between job and personal life (if you draw one)?

Graphic design was more a lifestyle than a job for me. The majority of work I used to do was web design. However since I started the blog, that reallity has been changing day by day. Now I have done much more graphic design works than I used to so I can't tell you how that will end up. The coolest thing, at least for me, is that now there is a very thin line that separates my personal life and my job. And that's cool because I feel very happy doing what I do. In the past I used to work on some projects that were not so pleasant. At the end of the day I was really stressed and unhappy because I knew I could do more than that. Fortunately now, that is changing.

I find you post on "A Design Is Finished When… 23 Pro Designers' Opinions" rather interesting. When do you know that design is finished?

That was a really nice post because I had received a lot of emails asking me to do that, and I was curious to know some opinions from the experts as well. In my opinion, which I share with my friend Sean Hodge, is that a design is finished when it reaches the goals that were established at the beginning of the project. It means that it will work as planned to the target audience or if it's personal to your objectives. Otherwise it will always have something to add or remove because, as James White said, it's an organic process. For my personal projects, however, I do things a little differently. I leave it away for some time and then when I get back if I still like it, it's finished.

Your "Buy Me A Coffee" theme is pretty cool. How did you come up with it? Are you a coffee-lover? What's your favorite sort?

I really like coffee, it's extremely necessary for me, I can't start working without a cup of coffee. About the icon, when I started using it I received quite a few emails asking me to write a tutorial on that, and I did. The idea was to mix one of my most famous tutorials that was the Magic Hat Effect with the coffee to show that coffee boosts my creativity and it would be nice if people bought me some coffee. My favourites are mocha and capuccino.

Where do you find inspiration? Any designers whose work amazes you? What are some of the online sources of inspiration you would suggest?

It's really hard to tell you because there are so many amazing designers whose work I love and there are even more new designers appearing from all over the world. Each has something special and new, it's very cool to see them mixing techniques and producing fantastic pieces. But I could say that Eduardo Recife, Guilherme Marconi, Adhemas Batista, Chuck Andersen, Nik Ainley, Scott Hansen, and James White are very inspiring for me. Also some designers from DepthCore and Evoke are awesome.

To get updated with everything that is happening all over the world I would recommend Computerlove, Designyoutrust, FFFFound, tons of groups on Flickr and Abduzeedo.com of course.

What would you advice to beginning web designer?

My advice is always keep up to date with everything that's happening online and offline, try to participate in communities and forums. And always play around with the tools. The most important thing: have fun ;)