Every year the competition "Festas de Lisboa" challenges professional and amateurs, artists and designers to come up with creative ideas to celebrate the popular festivities that occur every year in June throughout Lisbon, Portugal.

Competitors must create project in the shape of a sardine, which has become the symbol of these festivities. The sardine should represent Portugal or Lisbon's culture in a creative way. 

Teaming up with another artist we created two projects for the contest. 

Using a minimalist design and simple elements this project is meant to represent a typical Portuguese inn or seafood restaurant. 

The characteristic paper towel table covers are a common sight at these type of places, as well as the blue colour and outline.

Another typical Portuguese element is the "bica" por expresso coffee, which serves as the eye of the sardine  

Called "O Zé em teletrabalho" this sardine is a playful take on a Portuguese pop figure named Zé Povinho. This fictional character was created to represent the working class that always gets screwed by the government, so it is usually seen doing a "Screw you" type of gesture with the arms, becoming his icon posture.

Tweaking it a little to adjust to the recent reality of covid-19, this time around Zé Povinho is instead showing his coworkers proof he has been vaccinated. Although Zé Povinho is often seen inside a barrel to make the drawing fit the shape of the sardine we wanted we thought that dressing him in underwear and slippers only would be a funny way to represent some of the Portuguese working class nowadays, as a stay at home worker.