Nina Levett

Surfaces, words and fireare how I make sense of the world

Nina Levett — self-portrait

Nina Levett

I design surfaces for brands that want to say something. I wrote a book about why. Now I teach artists how to stop being invisible.

About Me
Nina Levett — illustrated portrait

Building worlds on surfaces,
from day one

I grew up in Vienna between two irreconcilable parents. I studied architecture at the Angewandte, moved to Italy, had two children, fled in the night, and came back to a city that held all three of my languages.

I look at fabric, at porcelain, at walls, and I find the repeating shape hidden inside the chaos. German is where I stand, Italian is where I loved, English is where I think.

  • surface pattern design for global brands
  • collections in MAK Vienna and Museum Angerlehner
  • 457,000 monthly views on Instagram
Work

A focused and deeply personal approach

Every surface teaches something different about weight, repetition, and what survives the fire. I pour everything onto a surface, then I see what it can hold.

The book behind the work
♢

Porcelain

Words fired into glaze at 1,200 degrees. The heat makes them permanent.

♦

Textile

Frustrated Unpaid Mother Dress. Pattern design that says what fabric can't.

◯

Automotive

Porsche Cayenne wrapped in surface pattern. The car became the plate.

□

Paper

Toilet paper, wrapping paper, morning pages. Some surfaces are meant to be thrown away.

✎

Writing

4 million words of morning pages. One memoir. Twenty chapters. Thirty years.

★

Teaching

Art That Sells. For artists who need to make money and stopped waiting for permission.

Things I Burned Down to Build

Things I Burned
Down to Build

I didn't plan to write a book. I planned to record a course — 49 scripts sitting in a folder for six years. The course never happened. What happened instead was that I sat down one morning at 5 AM and started writing to a man who didn't reply.

Two thousand one hundred and ninety mornings later, I had four million words and no course. The book came out of those mornings the way honey comes out of a hive — slowly, with heat, knowing the bees did the real work.

"I had to write it because I burned people with my words. For years I wrote on porcelain plates. Then I stopped making art and aimed those 1,200-degree words directly at people. They couldn't hold what porcelain could."

  • Literary memoir — ~38,000 words, four acts, twenty chapters
  • Comp titles: Cusk's Aftermath, Smith's Just Kids, Offill's Dept. of Speculation
  • Complete manuscript — seeking representation
Contact for manuscript

The surface holds everything

✎

Morning Pages

5 AM, every morning, for six years. Four million words before breakfast.

🎨

Surface

Porcelain, fabric, cars, walls. Every material has a breaking point.

🔥

Fire

1,200 degrees in the kiln. What survives is permanent.

📖

Book

The words that porcelain couldn't hold became a memoir.

🎓

Teach

Everything I learned about being seen, in one course.

Nina Levett leggings and planners

Wear the pattern.
Plan the chaos.

Original surface patterns — the same ones that went on Porsche Cayennes, porcelain plates, and museum walls — now on leggings you actually move in.

Plus digital planners built from how I actually work — morning pages, project tracking, the slow discipline that turned four million words into a book and a career.

  • leggings with original surface patterns
  • digital planners for creative discipline
  • same design DNA, wearable and usable
Shop now

Art That Sells

For artists who need to make money and don't feel seen. A course built from twenty years of surface pattern design, brand collaborations, and 457,000 monthly views. Plus a community of artists who stopped being invisible.

Join the community

Let's talk

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