(01) Since 2014
Stopbath started in 2014 in a basement in Porto that still smells of fixer. Clara had the lease and Tomás had the enlarger. We now have the whole building and the same enlarger.
We’ve never pitched for work and we’ve never had a sales team. Clients find us the slow way, usually because someone they respect made something with us and it held up. We’d like to keep it that way, which is why we stay small and say no a lot.
(02) How we think
A print is a list of decisions
Printers mark up a photograph before they make the final print: where to hold back the light, where to burn it in, for how many seconds. A good print map looks like a coach’s playbook. It’s also the most honest picture we know of how anything gets made.
Who’s in the room
Clara Coelho
Founder, direction
Still makes the first print of every project herself.
Tomás Reis
Film
Will happily tell you which of your favourite films are too long.
Kofi Mensah
Design
Draws type at the kitchen table. Reads every contract.
Marco Lopes
Printer
Joined in 2016, after forty years at a newspaper. Has never once used the word content.
House rules
No pitches. Look at the work and decide.
Everybody goes to the first meeting, including whoever will actually make it.
Nothing leaves without being printed first.
The door stays shut when the red light is on.
Fridays we print. Nobody books a call on a Friday.