MFA Graphic Design candidate
Boston University / Expected 2027
Graphic designer / Art director / Educator
Build worlds. Show the system.
Pedro Youssef turns research into visual worlds people can enter—identities, publications, environments, and image systems with a clear idea at the center.
Boston, MA
Working across print, space, and image.
Art direction✳
Visual identity✳
Editorial✳
Environmental graphics✳
Research✳
Teaching
Workshop Instructor
BU Visual Arts Summer Institute
Selected work
SXSW + Fitchburg Art Museum
Concept, system, material
and production
Selected work / 2024–2026
Ideas built
all the way out.
The strongest work does more than look consistent. It creates a world, establishes its rules, and makes every choice feel inevitable.
01 / Environmental identity
Wayfinder
A complete identity and navigation language for a contemporary art museum on Boston Harbor.
The idea
Use the high-visibility yellow of fishermen’s raincoats to connect Pier 4’s working-harbor history with a crisp contemporary museum experience.
The system carries one idea through identity, iconography, maps, directories, room signs, installation heights, and digital displays. It demonstrates design at two scales: the character of a place and the clarity of a single decision.
- Role
- Research, identity, information design, environmental graphics
- Scope
- Brand language, 21 icons, sign family, maps, elevations, digital
- Context
- Boston University / Academic project / 2025
02 / Independent publication
OAXACA
A 24-page field archive listening to Oaxaca’s walls as sites of memory, resistance, identity, humor, grief, and hope.
“This zine is my way of listening to the walls of Oaxaca.”
Field notes / Pedro Youssef
The idea
Treat street art as a living public conversation, then build a publication where many voices can move in different directions while belonging to the same current.
Original travel photography, writing, sequencing, texture, and a typeface by Oaxacan artist Elí Castellanos form a layered editorial system. The project balances authorship with respect for the artists and communities represented.
- Role
- Photography, writing, art direction, editorial design
- Format
- 24-page photographic zine
- Focus
- Place, public voice, cultural memory, sequencing
03 / Information design
Cryptid
Casework
American monster folklore reorganized as evidence: analytical, theatrical, and deliberately strange.
The idea
Give scattered sightings, locations, behaviors, and cultural myths the logic of a case file without designing the weirdness out of them.
A visual language for evidence, geography, scale, and creature behavior moves between archive and spectacle. Research makes the project credible; tone makes it memorable.
- Role
- Research, concept, art direction, information design
- Output
- Poster-driven visual dataset and image system
- Strength
- Complex material made legible without losing personality
More worlds / More methods
The wider practice.
Visual systems / Space
Artemis
Mission data and orbital movement translated into line, rhythm, distance, and form.
Publication / Method
Process
A catalog of influence showing how research, memory, and visual culture become original work.
View publication ↗
Campaign / Silkscreen
Priced Out
Boston’s housing pressure framed through a direct, satirical visual language.
Artist book / AI + craft
Merge
A handmade study of authorship, cultural fusion, emerging tools, and material judgment.
What I bring
A point of view
with production legs.
Find the idea
Research, cultural references, audience framing, narrative, concept development, and a clear creative rationale.
Build the rules
Identity, typography, grids, information hierarchy, editorial sequencing, and systems that scale across media.
Make it real
Books, posters, environmental graphics, RISO, silkscreen, fabrication, image-making, and production judgment.
Bring people in
Presentation, critique, feedback, teaching, and clear communication across students, collaborators, and teams.
Teaching / Boston University / 2026
Practice,
passed on.
At BU’s Visual Arts Summer Institute, Pedro designed and taught a hands-on intensive that moved students from a first idea to a finished, portfolio-ready object.
Design a Zine:
Concept to Finished Piece
BU College of Fine Arts
- 01ConceptAudience, message, references
- 02SystemGrid, hierarchy, type, image
- 03PrototypeThumbnails, dummy, critique
- 04ProductionSequence, finish, presentation
Born in Brazil
Based in Boston
About Pedro
Observation becomes a world.
Pedro is a Boston-based graphic designer, art director, artist, and educator whose practice is shaped by place, studio art, travel, and graduate design study.
His work begins with listening and research, then becomes a tactile system—books, posters, installations, identities, visual archives, or spaces. The goal is always a complete environment with a clear idea at its center.
2027
MFA, Graphic Design
Boston University / Merit Scholarship
2024
BFA, Fine Arts, magna cum laude
University of Massachusetts Boston / Sociology minor
Available for full-time opportunities in the Boston area