The Mechanics of Cinema in the Age of Artificial Intelligence
with Benoit Rossel
This research project by the Film Department at ECAL aims to assess the impact of artificial intelligence on cinema and film education.
PHOTOGRAPHY
Endurance - 2025
with Laurence Bonvin
Take risks, experiment, and try out new approaches or techniques in relation to a current or past project, or their future graduation project. Encourage them to take a project or idea further by experimenting with methodology, technique, and production methods, rather than relying on familiar processes, solutions, know-how, or tried-and-true formulas.
GRAPHIC DESIGN
Rationality/Expressivness - Carnal Verona Workshop
with Yanis Carnal, Raphaël Verona
The Swiss style, also known as the International Style, established itself as the symbol of a radical approach to graphic design and typography. It embodies an ideal of efficiency and rationality. Omnipresent more than half a century after its emergence, does it still hold the same relevance today? What is its influence on our imaginations and our practice? Doesn't Switzerland have other facets through which to communicate, and what new graphic and typographic languages could represent them?
PHOTOGRAPHY
Film Production – 2026
with Julien Bourdeille
Événement Lumineux Through an in-depth exploration of light as a narrative and sensory medium, first-year students created a short film on the theme “Luminous Event.” This project allows them to learn how to manage a complete audiovisual project while mastering the tools of filming, framing, and camera movement.
PHOTOGRAPHY
Last Minute Risk
with Natacha Lesueur
“What is clearly conceived can be clearly expressed, and the words to say it come easily.” Nicholas Boileau, *L’art poétique*. As students embark on their final year of study at ECAL, with their interests and methods taking shape, this final project offers an opportunity to challenge their own rules, established practices and influences, to refuse to settle for the status quo and to take risks.
DIGITAL EXPERIENCE DESIGN
RE-STRUCTURE
with RNDR STUDIO
During this one-week workshop, Master Digital Experience Design students used machine learning tools to decompose music videos into their constituent parts: segmented scenes, detected gestures, extracted colors, analyzed beats, separated audio stems, transforming linear audiovisual artifacts into structured datasets. These components were then reimagined as interactive, non-linear systems: explorable maps, generative timelines, rhythm-driven interfaces, and self-recomposing structures built with the OPENRNDR framework.
PHOTOGRAPHY
Suspended Motion
with Nicolas Poillot
By conceptualizing and producing visual content as part of an editorial series, students will explore the concept of applied photography in a practical, creative, and professional manner, working closely with Art Director Nicolas Poillot.
PRODUCT DESIGN
ECAL X GOOGLE - A Message From Tomorrow
with Chris Kabel
The Industrial Design team at Google (Google ID) initiated a collaboration with ECAL/University of Art and Design Lausanne to develop a concept for a mobile-focused product inspired by a daily ritual. ECAL’s Master Product Design students were invited to envision innovative hardware engaging with contemporary habits. Through compelling storytelling, these conceptual projects consider the human dimension of mobile technology: how it shapes everyday gestures and how our relationships with devices might evolve in the future. This collaboration reflects ECAL’s forward-looking approach to design, combining experimentation, critical thinking, and a strong receptivity to emerging technologies.
PHOTOGRAPHY
ANALOG MEDIUM FORMAT WORKSHOP
with Anoush Abrar
DRIVE For this week’s theme, “Drive,” first-year photography students were asked to create a portrait shot on medium-format film. Inspired by the sensation of a first driving experience, travel, empowerment, or discovery, the week aimed to explore the relationship between one or more people and a vehicle.
GRAPHIC DESIGN
PHOTOGRAPHY
Le livre d’artiste - 25/26
with Anouk Schneider Agabekov, Nicolas Polli
As part of the magazine course led by Anouk Schneider and Emmanuel Crivelli, second-year Visual Communication students had the opportunity to design a magazine during the second semester. Students were encouraged to fully embrace their artistic freedom at every level of creation, whether in terms of format, paper choice, binding, layout, illustration, text, or typography. In this course, the magazine can take shape through various forms of illustration, such as photography, reproduction, contextualization, drawing, 3D, and more. The focus is placed on the author’s artistic vision and the means used to bring it to life. Students take on multiple roles as editor, curator, and architect, assuming the responsibilities of art director, designer, photographer, stylist, illustrator, typographer, editor-in-chief, and editorial secretary. This course highlights contemporary editorial design by exploring the narrative potential of a carefully crafted content sequence.
GRAPHIC DESIGN
MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN
PHOTOGRAPHY
ECAL Light House
with Jean-Vincent Simonet, Léonard Guyot, Florian Pittet (Sigmasix), Vincent Jacquier, Julien Gurtner
During a week of collaborative work, first-year students in the Visual Communication department at ECAL were given the ambitious task of creating a complete audiovisual experience, designing a light and sound architecture based solely on five original musical compositions. Using a central totem-like screen installation and projections on the surrounding walls, enhanced with lasers, they created a visual environment, broadcast in real time, which was presented as a performance to the public at the end of the week. The aim was to construct a universe capable of fully utilizing the space and the various stage elements, inviting the audience to move around and experience the live performance in its entirety. Five cross-functional creative groups, each with a different sound base, were supervised by Jean-Vincent Simonet and Léonard Guyot to produce images and test them throughout the week on the device, which was developed, set up and operated by a sixth group under the supervision of Florian Pittet, Matthieu Minguet and Achille Masson.
MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN
Enshittification - 2026
with Tibor Udvari
Many platforms degrade over time, shifting from useful tools into manipulative systems. In this workshop, we explore enshittification as a creative method by modifying existing websites or developing small web experiments that exaggerate friction, automation, overload, and disorientation in order to reveal the underlying logics.
PHOTOGRAPHY
Pratique Photographique
with Maxime Guyon
This semester, students will explore how reflective surfaces transform our relationship to image and object. They become thresholds: what the object shows sometimes matters less than what its reflection reveals. Like a photosensitive material, they capture and replay the world, even embodying a form of technological and consumerist sterilization. Mirror-objects disrupt perception: as simulacra, they distort, double, multiply, or elude like a trompe-l’œil. They question what lies beyond the frame, showing what the object “sees” rather than what it is, and can become a space for self-reflection a mirror of their creator sometimes even fostering a narcissistic dimension.
PHOTOGRAPHY
CRÉATION PHOTOGRAPHIQUE
with Natacha Lesueur
Abracadabra! Starting with projects centered on a common theme, students develop their own in-depth work exploring the concept of “magic” in photography. They create a project that explores the relationship between reality and the imagination, using photography as a tool for revealing, transforming, and interpreting reality.
PHOTOGRAPHY
Applied Photography – 2026
with Calypso Mahieu
Le temps des Fleurs This course, which is both practical and technical, requires students to develop a true photographer’s eye. Its goal is to introduce students to, or help them refine their skills in various photographic genres, such as still life, portraiture, and architecture, as well as documentary and staged photography. These disciplines demand particular attention and great precision in the selection of models, locations, and objects. Mastery of composition, framing, and the management of light, whether natural or artificial, is essential for a successful shot. Throughout the course, students are guided to refine their observational skills and their ability to create images that are both precise and expressive.
Digital Clean Up Week – 2026
with Jamy Herrmann, Achille Masson, Julien Gurtner, Vincent Jacquier
From March 16 to 20, ECAL is taking part in Digital Cleanup Week, a worldwide event dedicated to raising awareness and taking action for a more responsible digital world. A week to repair, recycle, clean and think!
MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN
Screen Design – 2025
with Harry Bloch
Websites developed over the course of a semester based on books chosen by students, which they adapted into web experiences as part of Harry Bloch's Screen Design course, second year of the Bachelor's degree in Visual Communication.
PHOTOGRAPHY
Workshop - Rachel de Joode - 2026
with Rachel de Joode, Clément Lambelet
For this workshop, ECAL invited Rachel de Joode, Berlin-based artist whose practice explores the relationship between photography, sculpture, and digital images. During the week, students experimented with transforming photographic images into three-dimensional forms. Starting from simple concepts, they produced or gathered image material intended for printing and treated images as surfaces to cut, fold, layer, and assemble into sculptural objects. Through rapid tests and material experimentation, the workshop encouraged students to move repeatedly between image, surface, object, and documentation. By working with printing, scale, and spatial placement, they explored how photographic images can gain physical presence and occupy space beyond the screen.
GRAPHIC DESIGN
Contextual Design – BA2 S1 2025
with Nicole Udry
Genius Loci, or the spirit of the place, refers to the unique identity or essence of a location. In architecture, this principle suggests that the specific characteristics of a place should be reflected and extended in a design. In the case of the second-year graphic design students, they have applied this principle to communication projects focused on promoting or extending the identity of a particular place through design. Their work likely explores how to visually capture and communicate the essence of a space, using graphic design elements that resonate with the architectural features or history of the place.
GRAPHIC DESIGN
Type Design BA2 – S1 2025
with Aurèle Sack
Second-year students were required to manually develop the lowercase letters of two typefaces.
GRAPHIC DESIGN
Visual Identity – BA2 S1 2025
with Adeline Mollard
As part of the visual identity course led by Adeline Mollard, students developed a visual identity starting from a randomly selected business card. By appropriating one of its graphic elements and its title, each project offers a unique interpretation. The identity is then expanded across a range of formats, from business cards to F4 posters, including posters, flyers, business cards, and an animated poster.
GRAPHIC DESIGN
Editorial Design – BA2 S1 2025
with Diego Bontognali
As part of this editorial design course, students developed a research-based project focused on the selection and design of texts around a shared theme. Based on a curated set of sources, each project presents two editions with identical content, produced in both a large and a small format.
GRAPHIC DESIGN
GEOFF HAN – WORK AND TURN
by Leandra Adler, Cansu Celen, Layana Comte, Anaïs Dermont, Camille Genoud, Eve Gremaud, Eloïse Guillod, Mathis Harmant, Marie Hintzy, Matteo Lucca, Maxime Manera, Gaëtan Mauclair, Mathys Mauron, Emma Morisseau, Sara Pedersoli, Lucie Pittet, Hélène Prongué, Leonardo Mariucci, Alice Refachinho, Justine Renevey, Gaspard Schlatter, Laura Simons, Vu Toni Thien Duc, Maïa Yassin, Jonas Zesiger
In November 2025, 27 ECAL students took part in Work and Turn, a workshop led by Geoff Han exploring the theme of labor and the often overlooked work that sustains the school. Located in a former IRIL knitwear factory in the industrial area of Renens, ECAL occupies a vast building whose daily functioning depends on many visible and invisible forms of labor. Over five days, students worked in small teams to produce a collective 96-page pocket-sized publication. Each pair created an 8-page photographic visual essay focusing on a specific aspect of labor at ECAL. Rather than relying on traditional portraits, the projects explored more poetic and indirect ways of documenting traces of work through spaces, gestures, materials, and infrastructures. The entire publication was manually printed on an offset press by the students themselves, in either black or red and black. The printing process was a central part of the workshop: participants prepared the plates, set up the press, and ran the prints. This hands-on production process echoed the theme of labor explored throughout the publication.
MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN
Betaverse – 2026
with Mario Von Rickenbach
This project brings together a series of experiments created by students exploring the intersection between physical reality and immaterial imaginary worlds. Using a mixed reality headset, they transform their environment into experimental spaces where real elements become supports for digital creations.
Arboricrop — Next generation agriculture using real-time information from tree crops
with Stéphane Halmaï-Voisard, Younès Klouche, Frederik Mahler-Andersen Pietro Alberti, Maxwell Ashford, Alain Bellet, Laurent Soldini
Arboricrop is a research project conducted by a multidisciplinary consortium bringing together Vivent Biosignals, Changins – University of Viticulture and Oenology, and ECAL/Ecole cantonale d’art de Lausanne (HES-SO), with the support of Innosuisse. Its objective is to develop a miniaturized plant electrophysiology sensor designed for use in real agricultural conditions: the VITA Mini Sensor.
MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN
Talk to me – 2026
with Alain Bellet
By combining code, electronics, and physical prototyping, first-year students design interactive objects that react, respond, and invite interaction, gathered under the title Talk To Me. Using dialogue as playground and inspired by conversational interfaces, the projects transform physical objects into new forms of interaction.
GRAPHIC DESIGN
Création d'image - Double Reading - BA1 2025-2026
with Guy Meldem
First-year students were invited to design a 16-page publication. By experimenting with duotone through various printing techniques, they structured a dual reading experience dependent on the printed colors.
GRAPHIC DESIGN
Editorial Design - Great Expectations - BA1 S1 2025-2026
with Harry Bloch
During the editorial design course with Harry Bloch, the first-year students each laid out a chapter of Charles Dickens' Great Expectations. A final edition compiling all the chapters was produced for the occasion.
GRAPHIC DESIGN
Visual Identity - Cut & Paste - BA1 S1 2025-2026)
with Adeline Mollard
During the visual identity course, the 1st year of the Graphic Design bachelor had to carry out a poster project from a random event. They had to define their own visual system and explored a search for hand-made typographic posters. The visual identity of the event was developed through a poster and a flyer, accompanied by a research notebook grouping their entire creative process.
GRAPHIC DESIGN
Type Design - BA1 S1 2025-2026
with Robert Huber
First-year students were invited to manually sketch the typographic skeleton of lowercase alphabet letters. The objective was to maintain the proportions, curves, and characteristic axes of each letter while paying close attention to visual coherence and consistency in the drawing.
DIGITAL EXPERIENCE DESIGN
Pixel Perfect – 2025
with Romain Collaud, Frederik Mahler-Andersen, Lara Défayes
Pixel Perfect is the semester project of the Interface Design orientation module, semester I. It invites students to put into practice the methods and principles introduced in the Macro UI and Screen Grammar courses, exploring how graphic systems structure the digital user experience. Based on the analysis of an existing website, the project encourages a critical and creative reinterpretation of its visual identity and hierarchy. The challenge is to design a contemporary, coherent and expressive interface capable of renewing the original design system while respecting its uses, content and functional constraints, as well as its key principles: consistency, modularity, and the scalability of graphic and interactive components.
INDUSTRIAL DESIGN
Newspaper 2025-26
with Elric Petit
Newspaper is an industrial design project whose objective is to enable a personal stance on a topic of one’s choice. The project is based on an article taken from a newspaper or a specialized magazine, used as a conceptual and critical starting point. Through the analysis, interpretation, and translation of this written content, the project invites the development of a design reflection, questioning the issues, forms, and uses related to the chosen theme.
FILM STUDIES
Fiction Film Workshop with Marie-Elsa Sgualdo – 2026
with Marie-Elsa Sgualdo
The 2026 fiction film workshop for 2nd year students was lead by swiss director Marie-Elsa Sgualdo.
DIGITAL EXPERIENCE DESIGN
The Modular Mindset
with Antonin Waterkeyn
From connected watches to large-scale billboards, digital interfaces now operate across all scales. Designing a visual identity in this context requires thinking in terms of systems that can adapt to multiple formats, uses, and rhythms. This workshop explores the creation of modular, animated identities for a fictional music label, drawing on motion design and procedural logic. Using Cavalry, students develop dynamic visual systems that transform according to precise rules, while maintaining graphic coherence and a strong relationship to the sound universe.
MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN
Beyond The Screen – 2025
with Angelo Benedetto
Beyond the screen - is a series of interactive machines developed by students in their first year of Bachelor Media & Interaction Design. These systems are inspired by the relationship between instructions and execution within a computer system. These machines create text through a modular typographic system.
FILM STUDIES
Workshop Shitty Rigs
Workshop led by Michael William Farino, Jonathan Ricardo Argudo and Herbert Mayer and given to students in the Bachelor's degree programmes in Cinema and Industrial Design.
FILM STUDIES
Workshop with Benoît Dervaux
by Noé Bregnard, Eva Rust, Victor Durand Matinella, Lou Haenggi, Samuel Harari, Hana Magimel, Nolan Grando, Mileny Viera de Andrade, Zélia Zanone
Second-year Bachelor's students attended a workshop with Belgian cinematographer Benoît Dervaux, known for his work on the Dardenne brothers' films. He was responsible for the cinematography on the Swiss films Laissez-moi by Maxime Rappaz (2023) and À bras-le-corps by Marie-Elsa Sgualdo (2025).
DIGITAL EXPERIENCE DESIGN
Reality Check – 2025
with Emily Groves, Margherita Motta
Reality Check is a hands-on course that applies the theoretical foundations of the Human Lens module through real-world qualitative research and transforming insights into concrete design proposals. Students reimagined the human experience of digital services. Engaging with real people through interviews, diary studies and other research methods, they defined and prototyped new directions for existing services that bring meaningful experience to the fore.
FILM STUDIES
FILM STUDIES
MASTERCLASS THIERRY DE PERETTI
Meeting with Thierry de Peretti, French actor, director and stage director
PHOTOGRAPHY
Self-Initiated Project - Fall 2025 - MAP2
with Elisa Medde
This module assists the students to develop into a finalized work a project that further expands their interests and research. The module gives the opportunity to take some of the ideas, skills and themes explores in the first semester and make into a brand new work that can take any possible form: a book, an installation, an online project, a performance.
PHOTOGRAPHY
Soft Photography - Fall 2025 - MAP2
with Marco De Mutiis
The course, tutored by Marco De Mutiis, explored how emotions are being exploited and transformed by social media practices and aesthetics (e.g. influencer photography and CGI, operational beauty and weaponized cuteness), as well as through recent image technologies (e.g. generative AI platforms and text-to-image services).
PHOTOGRAPHY
Materialized Photography - Fall 2025 - MAP2
with Mazaccio & Drowilal
The purpose of this class is to examine the relationships between photography — in a context shaped by the digital — and its various modes of display. Students will have to consider what a photograph may be materially and explore how an image’s meaning is derived from both the mode of its distribution and the material form that it assumes. Although the final outcome has to include photography in a third dimensional way ( installation ), projects may use and combine image-based practices such as digital photography, collage, CGI, projection, printmaking, sculpture, objects, or performance, to encourage an expanded approach to photographic practice. The idea is to challenge the different types of engagement possible with pictures today.
PHOTOGRAPHY
Workshop - Simone C Niquille - 2025
with Simone Niquille, Milo Keller, Clément Lambelet
For this workshop, ECAL invited Simone C Niquille, Swiss designer and researcher based in Amsterdam whose practice investigates how digital images, computer vision, and 3D technologies shape the way bodies and objects are represented in contemporary visual culture. Through her research platform Technoflesh, Niquille examines the infrastructures behind digital imagery (from stock images and 3D assets to machine vision systems) and the cultural assumptions embedded in them. Her work reveals how datasets, rendering software, and visual standards influence how bodies, materials, and environments are modeled and understood.
PHOTOGRAPHY
Contemporary Photography - Fall 2025 - MAP1
with Clothilde Morette
The course explores the history of photography and related media through an approach that dissolves boundaries between academic and popular culture, and between photography and other artistic practices. Drawing on references from science, science fiction, literature, cinema, and the visual arts, students engage with a broad history of images from the early twentieth century to today. Based on key exhibitions of the Independent Group, the course introduces open themes such as technology, motion, and imagined worlds. Through research, appropriation, and the development of a mind-map accompanied by a theoretical text, students are encouraged to build connections across disciplines and reflect on the conceptual and narrative dimensions of their practice.
PHOTOGRAPHY
Applied Photography - Automne 2025 - MAP1
with Charles Negre, Milo Keller
The course focuses on developing the ability to respond to a commission within one’s own artistic practice, through an introduction to studio photography and constructed image-making. With an emphasis on still life, students refine their sensitivity to photographing and interpreting objects. Assignments revolve around transforming everyday objects into objects of desire, using the tools of commercial and product photography. Through styling, lighting, and visual storytelling, students explore how to reframe the ordinary as something compelling, working across both traditional and improvised studio setups.
PHOTOGRAPHY
Self-Initiated Project - Fall 2025 - MAP1
with Milo Keller
The course is a platform for the development of personal projects that arise from the desire and curiosity of each student. The basic concept of the work must be relevant to the field of contemporary photographic images. Each project can take a different form depending on the specificities, contents and inclinations of each participant. From books to multimedia installations, from performance to CGI, group discussions will articulate a plural vision of photography’s applications today.
MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN
COUNTDOWN – 2025
with Mario Von Rickenbach
The students worked on an interactive countdown in a web environment. Each day, they were tasked with creating a new sketch, culminating in their own collection, which could also be combined with projects from the entire class.
PHOTOGRAPHY
Workshop - CGI WITH AREA OF WORK – 2025
with Area Of Work
The Computer-Generated Imagery (CGI) Workshop is an introduction to 3D creation software that allows you to create images with photographic qualities that are not photographs. This workshop centers on the theme of “Minimal,” inviting students to explore the creative and technical foundations of contemporary CGI image-making. It emphasizes materiality and the expressive impact of reduction. Every form, light, and texture has a specific role, negative space guides the emotional tone, and fine details unify the composition.
PHOTOGRAPHY
ECAL at OFFPRINT Paris 2025
with Bruno Ceschel, Nicolas Polli, Milo Keller, Clément Lambelet
During Paris Photo 2025, ECAL will present a selection of its books at OFFPRINT Paris. ECAL Master Photography is pleased to present a selection of books created by its second-year students. This event offers an opportunity to engage live with the young photographers, exploring the origins of their projects and the stories behind each of these publications.
PHOTOGRAPHY
ECAL x PAPERBOY
with Charles Negre, Milo Keller, Clément Lambelet, Tanguy Morvan
Paperboy ECAL is the result of a close collaboration between Paperboy Magazine and first-year students of the Master Photography program. Under the guidance of photographer Charles Negre , they explored the potential of everyday objects to create mysterious and playful still lives.