Marbaden is the pseudonym used by Uruguayan automotive designer, artist and illustrator and is how Mario Ferreyra Daniel Barreto used to sign most of his works. Born in Montevideo in 1947, Barreto Ferreyra had a passion for cars from a very young age. He learnt to read early as well by collecting brochures and literature which also had the effect of stimulating his natural gift for drawing and enhancing his visual memory.
As a teenager he dreamt of having a career as an automotive designer. Unfortunately engineering was the only avenue open to him since in the early 1960s there was no opportunity for automotive designers in Uruguay as there was very little in the way of an automotive industry. But the prospect of a career training as an engineer took him away from his normal academic studies, but training as an engineer was an option that motivated him to try his luck.
In 1968, forced by the need to adequately fund his passion, he entered a competitive application for a cartographer position in the Ministry of Livestock and Agriculture. Despite there being 500 other applicants and his relative lack of experience and previous training he got a position of "expert cartographer cartoonist" with excellent score in the Department of Soil and Fertilizers Ministry of Livestock and Agriculture. In January 1969 he was moved to a project with a similar function at the Joint Commission on the Laguna Merin and later with the Department of Agricultural Research and Statistics (National Agricultural Census) as assistant principal expert in agricultural statistics.
Late in 1969 he entered the Phillips Industries technical department as a draftsman, complementing this work he began to take the first steps in the task of "industrial quality control."