David Carvalho: Hello, Karpa

As a creative professional, David Carvalho prefers to keep his project involvement not unlike that of a buffet table -- overflowing with collaborations, side-projects and companies. In addition to co-founding Pkage Design and working at Spirituc as a senior designer, he's also responsible for Portugal's first online design store, Propaganda and the premiere PDF-based design magazine, Camouflage which, over the course of three years, published artists such as Tom Muller, Jemma Gura and Mark Boyce. Behance sat down with Carvalho and his alter ego, Karpa, to find out how they keep it all on the same plate.

Regardless of how insignificant an idea may seem at its inception, he's careful to document everything -- just in case. "Since my professional life depends on creativity, I give great value to all of my ideas. Nothing gets me angrier than forgetting about a quote a graphic or an idea that I thought  had something special. I know I'm not the only creative person sleeping with a sketchbook on the side of my bed, so if I have a bright idea I can do a small sketch when I wake up, so I don't forget about it."

His work and extra-curricular activities require much attention in the organization arena. For that, he turns to something that has revolutionized the way creatives work for years now: lists. "I don't have the memory of an elephant, and there is always so much going on, so it's really difficult to keep up with everything. Not only is work usually the biggest part of my day, but there is always so much stuff to do on the side. I run so many different projects and collaborations, I have lots of hobbies, I have a girlfriend, friends and family; if you mix all this my day should have seventy-two hours and maybe it shouldn't be enough. So basically my only hope is my to-do lists. I have always a new list every week that is updated or upgraded almost every day, so I can organize myself daily without losing anything."

A true artist, Carvalho invests all of himself in his projects, and with that offers a true reflection of himself and his high design standards. "My biggest frustration of all is to be unsatisfied with my work. Each project, I totally get involved in, and it's a true love affair where I put all my effort and knowledge to achieve the best result. Not only do I want to satisfy my clients, I also need to be truly satisfied myself with the result. And to achieve such satisfaction is not easy since I'm a true perfectionist. But all this is what makes me take my work to another level. My mission is to be happy doing what I love most together with the people I love, and in the end be remembered forever for the work that I have done."

Carvalho holds this much true: in the design world, education can only take you so far. "Being self taught, I have learned something very important: you can read, you can study all the design books in the world, you can know every design rule ever written, but in the end there is something you just have to have -- no matter what you have studied or read. That is creativity. If you follow too many rules, you would have made a nice police officer."