Lisanne graduated from the Ontario College of Art and Design University (OCAD U) with a BDes in Graphic Design. For her, being part of the design community goes beyond the visual; she is passionate about research, writing and culture. Part of this derives from her academic past — before OCAD U, Lisanne studied Philosophy for a year and a half at Ryerson University (Toronto, Canada) — but it also stems from her innate curiosity about the world.

At a younger age, this curiosity supplied a steady stream of stories surrounding the fantastical (think: swimming after sea monsters, collaging bits of illustrated books together*). As an adult, she still holds onto playful “what ifs”, but her narratives are much more rooted in what design can do. This is best evidenced in her practice to date: Lisanne has worked as a Research Assistant at OCADU’s Strategic Innovation (sLab), investigating the nature of typography in pharmaceutical packaging; she has interned at MediaLABAmsterdam (Amsterdam, The Netherlands), collaborating on a project concerning the role of public screens in the urban sphere; and has worked at Fields of View (Bangalore, India) with an interdisciplinary team in order to design a solution for dealing with electronic waste. Although these positions have given her some space to cultivate her voice as a design storyteller—with blog posts and research papers—she hopes that the SVA’s Design Writing + Research Intensive will help her to further nurture this voice.

* Let’s just say these are still common activities for her today, albeit, in slightly different ways.