Barbearia Porto

Oscar Maia:

Founded in 1946, Barbearia Porto has a remarkable heritage in its midst. Guided under the most strict principles of excellence and through constant update of its methods, rapidly it transformed itself into a barber shop of reference in the city. Reinvented from generation to generation, Barbearia Porto holds a unique historical legacy that is passed along to each of its successors. So, with the arrival of the contemporary gentleman, it is important to adapt to an urban lifestyle, offering not only a new haircut but also an unmatchable experience that represents the vast heritage gained throughout the decades of the shop’s life.

In October 2015, the barber shop received a new group of successors who were interested in transforming and adapting the place to contemporary standards, but simultaneously seeking to preserve and assume a strong presence of its important historical heritage.

It seemed fundamental to me that Barbearia Porto’s new graphic identity should somehow be based on all of its “vintageness” and everything related to vintage, not only by the way how typography and layout would be used, but also by how the various materials would be produced and finished.

The shop’s window display was completely made by hand, recovering the almost extinct technique of gold leaf glass gilding and representing a more detailed and historically accurate approach to the project. Letterpress printing and other fine manufacturing techniques and materials are also used to produce the shop’s stationery and the other designs, as a way of making a statement on the concepts of timelessness and rediscovery which are associated with the shop and the services it provides.