My name is João Rei. I am a Portuguese designer born in Faro in 1971 who started an art career simultaneously with another art form, the art of surfing.

I started surfing at the age of 13 and a new world of colours and emotions were revealed to me, and this has been the major influence in my work and life ever since. Since then I have been passionate about boardriding, art, music and life itself. All of these were the trigger to start to travel, work, live and learn. Thanks to this I have met a lot of artists and boardriders with whom I have shared countless adventures.

With no academic art degree whatsoever, I soon replaced school for experience and opened my eyes to contemporary art, learning from experiencing and observation. Since then the more I see the more I perceive and desire to learn.

In 1999 i started a brand project from scratch, with my good friend Nuno Viegas, called B.SIDE. since then we embraced all design, production, marketing, management and distribution of this project of love. It was an amazing journey until the end of 2008, when we decided to freeze the project.

Nowadays I work as a freelance graphic artist.
Being a compulsive productive person, my work swings over diverse areas: from graphic design to photography, from music to illustration, from sculpture to street-art, from video to music, etc…
I often collaborate with other artists, brands, shops etc on a variety of different creative projects, featuring limited edition artworks.

I am also developing an international collective concept by the name of ARTRIDERS, which collaborates closely with other artists from different creative languages but shares a mutual link, the fact that we all emerged from a boardriding culture.

In the process of creating my own distinct visual dialect, I am constantly searching new inspiration beyond temporary design tendencies and underground culture.

As time goes by through this white canvas of life and i grow old, i am more and more committed to improving my work... despite that i still look at life in a simple way. i love the ocean, my friends and family who allow me to realize that the best is yet to come. Read Less