Isabella Suafoa

I’m Isabella Suafoa, a communication designer with a focus on branding, creative direction, and digital design. I enjoy turning ideas into something people can connect with. Design that’s considered, engaging, and human. My practice sits where concept meets function, blending storytelling and design thinking to create brands that feel intentional and alive.

I enjoy working with artists, musicians, and lifestyle brands to develop visual systems that express their personality and purpose. From surf wax tins to album covers, my projects are built around connection; how design can bring people together and bring a vision to life. Recently, I’ve worked with emerging Australian musicians such as Harriet Ripley to translate their sound into cohesive visual identities that feel true to them. I also enjoy working on projects that explore lifestyle and culture, often using photography, packaging, and editorial design to create a sense of place and emotion.

During my degree of Communcation Design at Swinburne University of Technology, I built a strong foundation in concept development, and production. My work is shaped by collaboration, craft, and the same rhythm that inspires me outside of design: the ocean, live music, and community.

When I’m not behind a screen, you’ll usually find me surfing, training my dogs, or sketching new ideas on scrap paper. I love seeing how design fits into real life. How it can connect people, tell stories, and make the everyday a little more meaningful.

Harriet Ripley | Music Branding

An identity system built for Melbourne-based musician Harriet Ripley, blending personality and professionalism across her digital presence. The branding includes a full brand guideline, album cover, EPK, and website, all designed to reflect her sound and artistic direction. The outcome captures her mix of vulnerability, strength, and rhythm.

Shredling Fingerboards

A playful brand created for a fingerboard product inspired by surf culture. Shredling brings the feeling of catching a wave into your hands, using colour, motion, and organic textures. Each board box is designed to reflect a different terrain, (surf, skim, and snow) combining illustration, packaging, and tactile design.

Canadian Club Campaign

A campaign designed to reposition Canadian Club as more than just a beer alternative. This project focused on photography, packaging, and art direction to highlight the brand’s refined identity. Through styled shoots and social visuals, the work explored how Canadian Club can still be a refined whiskey brand.

Stupid F**k Album Cover

An album cover in collaboration with Melbourne punk-performance band Stupid F**k The Silly Clown. The design captures their chaotic, theatrical, zero cares energy through bold handwritten type, raw composition, and playful clown imagery. It balances humour and aggression in a loud, unapologetic visual statement.

Earthbound Festival

A concept design for a camping and music festival celebrating connection, nature, and sound. The identity draws from psychedelic and earthy tones, creating a visual world that feels immersive and alive.

Acknowledgement of Country

The School of Design and Architecture respectfully acknowledges the Wurundjeri peoples of the Kulin Nation as the Traditional Owners and knowledge-keepers of the lands, waters and sky that surround us, where we work, learn, create, communicate and make place. We recognise that sovereignty has never been ceded and this always was and will always be Wurundjeri Country. We pay our respects to Elders past, present and to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who continue to make a better world through design.

We extend our acknowledgement to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander staff, students, alumni, real-life clients, and knowledge keepers, who have contributed to our own education diversity and growth. We will continue to ensure that staff and students respectfully honour ancestral connection to Country and Place in everything that they do.

We are dedicated to the notion of design to make a better world and we acknowledge that making tools, shaping place, sharing stories, making meaning, wayfinding and collaborating have long been and continue to be both central and integral to First Peoples' cultures. We recognize that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples’ cultural contributions have continued relevance to design practice and commit to: reconciling ancestries of design and contemporary practice as well as pursuing culturally and professionally appropriate ways to engage with a diverse population of colleagues, industries and clients. In a time of treaty-making and voice we understand that there are overlaps between caring for Country and the sustainable production of goods, services, experiences, products and buildings.

Guided by the principles of respect, reconciliation, and reciprocity we undertake to indigenising and decolonising design practice by dismantling colonial structures and challenging biases that have marginalised Indigenous voices and design.

As students of SoDA you will be given opportunities to both engage with and educate yourself in Indigenous creative practices and cultural protocols through a lens of inclusivity, diversity, respect, mutual understanding, inter-cultural dialogue in all aspects of design practice. Indigenous people have been telling stories, making tools, and connecting to Country through visual media, placemaking and place marking for more than 60,000 years and these practices are part of an ongoing, evolving and live tradition.