is a communication/ graphic
designer based in Lisbon, Pt.
( 2026 )
A collective reflection on designing within a world of systemic crises, where the future feels cancelled before it can be imagined.
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Graphic Design / Web Design / Web development / Concept / Research / Writing
( 2026 )
What if the sense of future shock in pop music has disappeared? Afterpop reads contemporary pop through repetition rather than rupture.
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Graphic Design / Editorial design / Video / Concept / Research / Writing
( 2025 )
Apagão proposes a deliberate pause from design's productive logic, inspired by the stillness that follows an unexpected power outage.
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Graphic Design / Event / Campaign
( 2025 )
A love letter to design, embroidered onto a canopy, inspired by the Portuguese Lenço dos Namorados.
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Instalation / Textile Design / Concept / Research
( 2024 )
An editorial publication exploring postmodern graphic design and the pioneers who reshaped the field.
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Graphic Design / Editorial Design / Editing
( 2024 )
A poster inspired by Bruce Mau's Massive Change 24 manifesto, using the visual language of the digital world to illustrate change as ongoing and deliberately unfinished.
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Graphic Design / Poster Design
( 2023 )
A speculative cover design for Isaac Dunbar's single 'Backseat Girl', inspired by his discography.
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Graphic Design / CD Cover Design
David Sardinha (b.2005, Portugal 🇵🇹) is a Lisbon-based graphic designer. With a BA in Communication Design from FBAUL and an Erasmus Exchange at BAU, Barcelona, his practice is rooted in critical design as a method for reflecting on contemporary questions, both conceptually and graphically. Currently working as a freelancer.
( 2025 — 2026 )
Erasmus Exchange in Communication Design — BAU, Barcelona
( 2023 — 2026 )
BA in Communication Design at FBAUL — Faculty of Fine-Arts of the University of Lisbon
Development of visual identities and communication materials; art direction; editorial design; social media graphics and management; image and video editing; web design.
Profficiency with the CC Adobe Suite (Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign and Premiere Pro); developing skills in After Effects.
Experience with Figma, Readymag and Cargo; familiar with WordPress, VS Code, and basic HTML and CSS.
Speaks Portuguese and English.
Erasmus Exchange Student in Communication Design at BAU, Barcelona ( oct 2025 — jan 2026 )
Member of the Communication Team at the Student Union of Faculty of Fine-Arts of the University of Lisbon (AEFBAUL)
Participant in 'Observation, creation and composition workshop: From Reality to Visual Heterotopia by João Pestana and Duarte da Costa
Volunteer at Queer Lisboa 28, Lisbon International Queer Film Festival, 2024
Participant in the BoCA Sub 21 collective from Lisbon, at Goethe-Institut Portugal, BoCA Biennial 2023
Participant in the BoCA Sub 21 collective from Almada, at Casa da Cerca, BoCA Biennial 2021
Based on the motto "A Designer at the End of…" we collectively reflect on what it means to design in a world marked by systemic crises, where the future seems canceled before it can even be imagined.
It is in this context that the project examines the tension between what a designer believes they can do and what reality imposes upon them; between the urgency of the present and the rhythm of daily work; between the academic narrative that portrays the designer as an agent capable of resolving the world's crises, and the performative morality that this narrative ultimately produces.
Nowhere-Elsewhere emerges as a psychogeographical territory, an antimap that arranges the projects adrift, guided by uncertainty as a productive condition. All that remains is to inhabit this non-place as a possible, and perhaps even desirable, condition.
What if the sense of future shock in pop music has disappeared?
Afterpop reads contemporary pop through repetition rather than rupture. Taking the Brat era as a symptom of a present looping on itself, where novelty stalls and the future feels oddly familiar, it traces how pop has traded disruption for recurrence, and what that reveals about the cultural imagination of now.
Positioned between theory, pop culture, and visual practice, it treats contemporary culture not as a succession of trends but as a diagnostic tool, a space where broader political, technological, and economic conditions become visible.
In celebration of Design Day, we organised an event that proposes a deliberate pause from design's productive logic, opening space for experimentation, error, and process.
Inspired by the stillness that follows an unexpected power outage — when everything stops and people simply breathe —,Apagão invites us to slow down, bringing together a conversation with Rick Rubin, Bráulio Amado and Yara Kono, and a hands-on workshop with João Pestana and Duarte da Costa.
Inspired by the Lenço dos Namorados, we wrote a love letter to design, embroidered onto a canopy, exploring the fragility and emotional persistence in the face of the designer's precarious profession. It rejects functional utility, embracing the act of embroidering as political and relational expression, not asking what design does, but what it can make us feel.
Post_ is an editorial publication exploring postmodern graphic design and the pioneers who reshaped the field, from Wolfgang Weingart and April Greiman to the broader New Wave movement they helped ignite.
Inspired by Bruce Mau's "Massive Change 24" manifesto, I designed this poster using the visual language of the digital world — through textures, composition, and incompleteness—to illustrate the ongoing, deliberately unfinished change, as if the future it envisions were still being built.
Inspired by Isaac Dunbar's discography, I designed a cover for his single Backseat Girl.