STUDIO AS STORYTELLING — WHERE GRAPHIC LANGUAGE AND MATERIAL EXPERIMENTATION COME TOGETHER TO GIVE STORIES SHAPE OF GRAPHIC DESIGNPRODUCT DESIGNDIGITAL FABRICATION

Joana de Sousa (b. 1992) is a designer whose work sits between tradition and technology. She likes to experiment, and she tells stories through clay, code, colour and composition.

Her practice is built on three areas: graphic design, product design and digital fabrication, with a strong focus on process and materials. In product design she works mainly in ceramics. She uses stoneware, faience and porcelain, builds with slabs, rolling and casting, and makes both sculptural and functional pieces. She formulates her own glazes, fires in raku and crystallisation, and decorates surfaces with stencils, silkscreen, engobes, pigments and lusters.

Digital fabrication runs alongside the hands-on work: 3D modelling and parametric design, 3D printing in resin, porcelain and filament, and laser cutting. She also does web and interface design, photography and image editing.

Joana has a degree in Marketing and Advertising and a Master’s in Graphic Design from ESAD.cr. She draws on traditional techniques and artistic movements and reworks them with a minimalist, contemporary approach and digital tools. A mural, a website or a ceramic object are made with the same hand and the same way of thinking.

She is also a guest assistant professor at IPLeiria. Teaching covers the same three areas and feeds back into the studio work.