Katharina Shafiei-Nasab’s portfolio is not just Swiss graphic design, it’s a hybrid of everything that she’s learned, seen and experienced

Structured, considered and impeccably thought out, where would The Grads be this year if we weren’t to include German-Iranian designer Katharina Shafiei-Nasab? Based between Berlin and Zurich, you’d be surprised to hear that the recent graduate from Weissensee Art Academy never initially planned to follow the graphic design route. What first started as a career in fashion design soon turned into experiments with photography, fine art and coding, before an eventual pursuit of typography – a medium adorned for the fact that Katharina likes to build her creations in detail, fusing her works with subtle emotions and memories.

And that’s just it – Katharina’s work is not your typical Swiss design. Rather, it’s a hybrid of sorts that blends all of her previous experiences and learnings into one considered practice. This merge is evident by the subject matter she chooses to explore, be it an artist book for Berlin-based Martin Maeller, music or visualising speech for a publication about people in care homes. Below, we hear more about her journey into graphic design, how her multifarious background has helped her to structure her “chaotic” mind and why the community you build along the way can be the most important component of all.

It’s Nice That: What initially drew you towards graphic design, was it something that you knew you’d always pursue?

Katharina Shafiei-Nasab: No, not at all. When I was 19, I moved to Tokyo to study Fashion Design at Bunka Fashion College (Bunka Fukusou Gakuin), which had been a dream of mine since a very young age. After finishing my studies, I moved back to Germany and, even though I really loved studying Fashion Design, I soon realised that I didn’t want to pursue a career in the fashion industry.

During my time at Bunka, I developed a deep fascination for fashion publications – the wish to work with books and print media came naturally to me. After moving to Berlin, I applied for Visual Communication at Weißensee Academy of Art Berlin, which seemed like a good fit for me at the time because I still wasn’t completely sure which direction I wanted to go. The course covers many different fields such as photography, typography and coding, and it gave me the opportunity to try things out for myself, which I did. I even studied sculpture in the Fine Arts department for one semester because I wanted to learn how to combine graphic design with installation.

It wasn’t until I moved to Zurich to study for a year at Zürcher Hochschule der Künste that I realised typography was really the thing that I wanted to do. Of course, classic typography may seem very restricted but there’s actually no limit to it. You can apply it to any subject and connect it to any other discipline. It lets me connect the things I’ve already learned with other interests. When developing a layout, I follow a similar logical process to garment construction. I love to work in detail and with subtle elements, like when you look at the whole design and it tells a story or even triggers a memory.

My mind is very chaotic most of the time, so designing helps me to structure everything, put my thoughts in order and to understand them better. To be able to conceptualise things as abstract and ephemeral as thoughts and moods, and to see it printed on paper, is just one way to structure the world around me.

INT: How did you come to define your visual language, is there anything that you’re particularly inspired by?

KSN: To me, my visual language is really just the sum of everything that I’ve learned, seen and experienced. Obviously, Swiss graphic design has had a very clear impact on my work, but my visual language is a hybrid of all the disciplines and projects I’ve engaged with while studying.

I think inspiration can be found anywhere. What’s important is to find the right mood that you want to translate through your work and find a way to visualise it. Inspiration doesn’t necessarily have to come from something that’s obviously close to the medium you’re working with. For my graduation project, I made an artist book with the Berlin-based artist Martin Maeller. At the beginning of the process, he showed me a picture of a shoe and said that the material feeling was the mood that he would like his artist book to channel – and that was pretty much the only reference we worked with.

While I don’t focus on anything in particular, I am inspired by art, media and political theory – factors that have always been crucial to my work. I often reference some kind of theoretical input as I think it helps me as a designer to both position myself and my work, and to develop design concepts that people can recognise and relate to. Again, I think it really comes down to translating a mood after all.