Florence Dagostini at Café com Fika: The Unexpected in Product Creation

Tarcila Zanatta
Apr 8
6 min read

Florence Dagostini moves between graphic design and visual arts with an intuitive and experimental approach. At the helm of DaDa, her brand of original prints, she transforms collages into compositions that challenge the eye and explore the beauty of the imperfect. Inspired by abstract art, crafts and even the inventiveness of makeshift projects, her creative process is a balance between technique and freedom.

At Café com Fika, Florence shares her references and talks about her relationship with collage, reflecting on how experimentation can open new doors for the design of prints and home accessories.

DaDa rugs created from collages. | Credits: courtesy of the brand.

What inspires you the most? Are there any references that are always present in your work?

I think that, as someone who studied visual arts and works in design, the visual arts are an omnipresent inspiration. Artists like Matisse, Sean Scully, and Ellsworth Kelly are great inspirations. Abstract art in general interests me a lot, because it is very open and constantly provokes you to rethink visual paradigms.

But, more than all that, there are aspects of our culture that are fascinating to me and have always caught my attention. The “gambiarra”, for example, is one of those aspects. This inventive way of doing things with what you have at hand, most of the time imperfect, but always very intelligent, I find highly inspiring. I am much more attracted to imperfection, asymmetry, and the rustic, than to the attempt at perfection. I think that is why I was interested in folk art and crafts from a very young age. They have this empirical knowledge that is passed down from generation to generation, and this manual and sensorial relationship with the material that is very direct. It's a very raw way of creating, which indirectly inspires me a lot in what I do.

Collage is an essential technique in DaDa. What does it allow you to create that other processes don't?

In my case, I chose to work with collage because it allows me to deal naturally with imperfections, asymmetries and “mistakes”. Although this is not exclusive to collage, I found it easier to bring these elements into the creative process. There is a contradiction because my essence is more maximalist and colorful, but when I work with graphic design (my other area of expertise), there is usually this tendency to always seek alignments, grids and visual acuity. With collage, I want exactly the opposite of that. I don’t want to think too much about these parameters. I often choose pieces of paper that are leftovers from other collages and challenge myself to work only with these “leftovers”, without cutting anything else. This was a paradigm shift in my creative process and freed me from certain standards and judgments. I ended up creating a more intimate relationship with this technique because of the space of freedom it allowed me to find.

There is an interesting story about Matisse and collage. He painted almost his entire life and began to dedicate himself to collage when he was already debilitated and in a wheelchair. Although he devoted himself to painting for a longer period of time, he said that it was only with collage that he found the synthesis he was looking for between color and form - something he had sought all his life with painting. He called collage “painting with paper” and I really like that expression, because I think it defines the potential of this technique well.

Florence and some of her collages. | Credits: courtesy of the brand.

Is there a moment when you feel like a print is finished, or do you always want to keep experimenting?

That’s a good question. Over time, we refine our sensitivity, and the more familiar you are with a technique, the easier it becomes to identify when the composition is good enough. But in my case, there’s always been a tendency to want to add more things to the collage. Over time, I’ve been trying to train my eye to know when to stop, because sometimes what’s there is enough. The idea of simplifying and doing more with less has also become important. Technically, I’ve created some tricks to avoid ruining the collage just because I’ve gone further than I need to in the composition process. When I feel like it’s coming along well, I take a photo to record that moment, and then I start layering other pieces of paper, but without gluing them. Then, I compare the photo I took with the current point in the collage and, most of the time, I realize that it would have been better to stop back there. If that’s the case, I go back and remove the extra elements, returning to the point recorded in the photo and finishing there. This is something very personal, a process I developed after ruining collages several times by going too far.

DaDa's work strays from the conventional, but always with a technical and refined approach. How do you find this balance between the unexpected and the precise?

For me, it's a much more intuitive process than anything else. What I know is that even though I've been working with DaDa for seven years, I've never wanted to stop working as an art director and graphic designer for other clients, because I think they complement each other very well. So, as I mentioned in my previous answer, working with graphic design always requires this rigorous and precise approach to layout, typography, color palette, etc. And with DaDa, what I do is challenge exactly these paradigms, so maybe this is a combination that helps me find the middle ground between the unexpected and the precise.

DaDa rugs created from collages. | Credits: courtesy of the brand.

When you need to take a break to get inspired, do you have a ritual or habit that always works for you?

I'm not a person who does many rituals, but when I realize that I'm creatively exhausted, or uninspired and unwilling to create, what usually works for me is to distance myself from everything related to design and turn to other things. In fact, this is a habit that I try to maintain: cultivating other interests outside of the arts and design. I really enjoy reading fiction and being close to nature. Changing my perspective whenever possible, getting away from the screens and looking at the horizon. Going to the countryside is a godsend. If I can't go to the countryside, a walk through the fair, on 25 de Março or in a haberdashery full of trinkets is always inspiring for me.

What would you say to someone who wants to create with more freedom, without fear of making mistakes?

I don't know if I've ever really managed to free myself from the fear of making mistakes, so I don't know if I'm the best person to give advice in this regard. What I can say is that, in my case, what worked through DaDa was finding ways to create, techniques and languages that challenged me in this sense. Creative processes that put you in a place of vulnerability, almost like a child who is learning something new. Before starting DaDa, I decided to take weaving classes, for example. That was very challenging, because it was something I had never tried and, therefore, I made a lot of mistakes, it frustrated me. Being in this place of not knowing is very refreshing for me.

And yet, even doing this, as time goes by you become more comfortable with what you set out to try and naturally you start creating processes and ways to judge your own work again. You limit the way you do it because you've done it several times and already know, more or less, what looks good and what has gone wrong. So even with DaDa I fall into this place many times. I think the important thing is to be aware of this, to always be present in the moment of creation and observe these processes happening, to try as much as possible to return to that place of vulnerability that you sought in the beginning.

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