Oxalá te volte a ver outra vez, para me contares mais.
João Sousa
“Oxalá te volte a ver outra vez, para me contares mais” is a project carried out in the Advanced Studies in Editorial Design and Typography curricular unit, taught by Mário Moura, in the curriculum of the Master in Graphic Design and Editorial Projects at the Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Porto.
The wish to create this project arose right after the deaths of both my maternal grandmother and grandfather in January 2024. The grieving process and the need to reconnect with these two people who mean so much to me led me to leaf through the pages of the old family photo album that had remained stored at home for the last three generations of my family. This allowed me to reflect on the power of photographic images as windows of memory, and as living fragments of who we are and of what we are still trying to understand.
By rescuing these ancestral images and bringing them to a new medium, I seek to give them new life, allowing them to transcend their material state while carrying them into a timeless physical medium, paper — encouraging the protection of these artifacts and preserving the memories that live in them, keeping them from fading over time.
It is a deeply personal project, but one that echoes so many other stories of loss, memory and reunion. “Oxalá te volte a ver outra vez, para me contares mais” is, at heart, a sincere wish for reunion, with others and with memory.
Imprint / Technical Rider:
Year: 2025
Dimensions: 123 × 173 × 8 mm; 2 / 20 pages
Materials: Envelope in tracing paper 90 g/m², four-color inkjet; A1 poster on Munken Pure 90 g/m², four-color; 123 × 173 mm booklet on Munken Pure 120 g/m², four-color.
Resources and credits: Typefaces: Abril (José Scaglione and Veronika Burian, TypeTogether, 2006) and Scotch (Neil Summerour, PosiTyp, 2017); software: Adobe Photoshop, Adobe InDesign, Adobe Illustrator; photographs by family members; texts by the author.
Curricular Unit:
Advanced Studies in Editorial Design and Typography (1st year)
Supervising Professor:
Mário Moura
Keywords: Fold-out Archive, Memory, Ancestral Photography, Affective Design