Diana Sofia Paixão de Sousa

PERSONAL INFORMATION

Birth date:
10th November 1977

Address:
Palkkatilankatu, 9 A 6, 00240 Helsinki, Finland

Phone:
(in Finland) +358 (0)452 752 677
(in Portugal) +351 964 744 999

E-mail:
diana@dianadesousa.com
dspsousa@gmail.com

Web site:
http://www.dianadesousa.com

Nationality: Portuguese

Languages:
Portuguese (mother tongue)
English (excellent, IELTS = 8.5)
Spanish (I understand 90%)
French (fair)
Finnish (basic)

SUMMARY

I'm a communication designer. I do concepts for digital services, information architecture, visual and interface design for digital media. I've also been working as a project manager in these areas. I can do some 2D animation and I know the basics about photography, video shooting and editing. I’m pragmatical and resourceful, sociable and easy going. Excellent collaboration skills.

Specialties: Concepts for digital services. Information architecture, visual, interface, interaction & UX design. Branding and identity, illustration. Project management, leadership, team development, social networks, social media.

Main software skills: Photoshop, Freehand, Illustrator, Indesign, Dreamweaver, Flash, Final Cut Pro, Wacom tablets.

EDUCATION

09.2006 / 05.2010
Master of Arts in New Media. Media Lab of the Aalto University School of Art and Design (Finland).
In my thesis I developed an online service to promote design education in daycares, in collaboration with Helsinki Design Museum. This service, Esa ja Esineet (in English: Oswald and the Objects), encourages daycares to use social media and social interaction tools such as online forums, video, photo and document sharing services to connect and engage in conversation with the museum’s education team and other daycares, sharing their learning experiences, obstacles and suggestions.

10.1996 / 09.2002
Licenciatura degree in Communication Design. University of Lisbon Fine Arts Faculty - FBAUL (Portugal).
My final project was about a real-time game called “Urban Warrior”. The aim of the game was to arise reflection about the importance of our emotions in the process of developing self-conscience and self-knowledge. This was a conceptual and experimental project. The game would be played within a real-time installation that would take place at a specific street in Lisbon. A licenciatura is a 5 year degree, in between a BA and MA level.

WORK EXPERIENCE AND EMPLOYMENT

2006.09 / now
Freelance designer. Finland, Helsinki.
Concept and development of digital communication projects including illustration, visual and web design.

2008.03 / 2010.04
Project manager and digital designer at Zipipop. Part-time. Finland, Helsinki.
Concept, coordination and co-design of web based projects involving social media. Main projects: Zipiko, a mobile Web social tool for organizing events and ad-hoc get-togethers and Esa ja Esineet, an online service that promotes design education in daycares. Some visual and web design.

2008.09 / 2010.01
Visual designer, partner at Digitytöt. Finland, Helsinki.
Concept, visual design and maintenance of Digitytöt’s web site and blogs. Digitytöt was a women's video blog lifestyle magazine aimed at young urban adults, the first of it's kind in Finland. It's most popular areas were Fashion, Beauty and Design &Technology. Digitytöt had a strong presence on social media channels such as Blogger, Vimeo, Blip.tv, YouTube, Twitter, Flickr and Facebook.

2005.03 / 2006.08
Studio artist at advertisement agency adsek. Finland, Tampere.
I worked in the creative director’s team. We developed branding and marketing strategies for several Finnish food products and publishing companies. I was also working on advertising campaigns with high emphasis on digital media and methods.

2003.09 / 2005.02
New media designer at new media agency T. business solutions. Portugal, Lisbon.
Work included concept and interaction design, creating visual graphics and 2D animations for CD-Roms, web pages, corporate television channels, web banners and E-cards. I built web pages and e-newsletters with simple HTML and CSS and did graphic design for print invitations and direct mail campaigns.

GRANTS AND AWARDS

2009
Digitytöt online show (together with Helene Auramo, Sanna Aronniemi, Teppo Hudson).
AVEK grant in the amount of € 5.000,00.

2008
Esa ja Esineet online service for design education at daycares (together with Zipipop).
AVEK grant in the amount of € 17.000,00.

2008
Zipiko, an SMS based event organizer developed at Zipipop.
Best Early-stage Start-up (Mobile 2.0 Europe 2008) & selected for the start-up competition at Le Web '08.