Nesra Mussa — Product Designer & Creative Technologist

Outside the brief

Experimental Work

Painting and working with physical materials is how I experiment outside of digital design. It is where I developed my instinct for composition and color, and where I practice the same iterative thinking I bring to every design problem.

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Introductions

Inspired by Kehinde Wiley, the world around the subject was built before she was painted. Every visual decision in the background came from conversations and time spent understanding who she was as a person. The mangoes, the green, the blue were research translated into paint. The process was not that different from UX work. Before designing for a user, the work starts with understanding who they actually are.

Painting

Introductions

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Somewhere Green

I started with a single shade of green and every decision after that was a response to what was already on the canvas. By the end every color, every tone and every edge was in conversation with everything around it. I did not plan it that way. I just kept asking whether each new decision made the whole thing more coherent.

Painting

Somewhere Green

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Present Tense

Everything around the mirror is painted but the mirror itself is real. I embedded a physical object into the canvas to change how someone experiences the work. Where you stand, what light is in the room, who else is there all become part of the piece. I was interested in how a single material decision could make the viewer an active part of the work rather than just someone looking at it.

Painting

Present Tense

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Alive Enough

This painting is about hope. After finishing it something felt missing and the issue was that the emotion behind it needed movement to feel complete. A static canvas could not do that on its own so a moving projection was layered onto the finished work. Identifying what a medium cannot do and finding a way to solve for it is the same thinking that drives every project in this portfolio, just expressed differently here.

Painting

Alive Enough

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The person behind the work

Hi, I'm Nesra.

I started my design journey through physical art, where I spent a lot of time experimenting with materials and different ways of expressing an idea. That gradually led me into digital design, where I now focus on building products and working through different versions to find the strongest solution, something I’m continuing to develop through my studies in New Media and Digital Design at Fordham University, with a minor in Computer Science. I design apps and websites, and I’m working toward becoming a product designer while continuing to explore emerging technologies, especially in ways that combine digital systems with physical materials.

Tools: Figma p5.js HTML/CSS Adobe CC Blender

Let's worktogether.

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