GRAPHIC DESIGN
Type Design BA2 – S2 2026
with Aurèle Sack
Second-year students were required to develop the whole alphabet for one typeface.
GRAPHIC DESIGN
with Aurèle Sack
Second-year students were required to develop the whole alphabet for one typeface.
GRAPHIC DESIGN
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
with Adeline Mollard
As part of the visual identity course with Adeline Mollard, the students developed a visual identity based on a randomly drawn business card. By appropriating a graphic element and its title, each project offers a singular interpretation of it. Each proposal also involves the selection of a tool linked to the associated event (tattoo machine, sander, lithography equipment, etc.), used as a conceptual and graphic extension of the project. The identity is deployed across a range of formats, from business card to F4 size, including posters, flyers, business cards, as well as an animated poster.
GRAPHIC DESIGN
with Adeline Mollard
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
with Aurèle Sack
The third-year students had to develop a typeface and digitize it.
GRAPHIC DESIGN
MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN
by Malik Ahmed, Alexander Anhorn, Melissa Appelon, Marc Auderset, Olivia Bindon, Baptiste Boulanger, Suriya Brambilla, Diego Buccelloni, Marta Casemi, Davia Ciccoli Trannoy, Alizée Clavien, Timoféi Cruz, Ethan Degano, Nora Dizeko, Andrea Domínguez Formet, Mathias Dugenne, Mathias Gelin, Tanguy Genier, Lila Gomez Gaillet, Juliana Granato, Xenia Grange, Bérangère Gremion, Helena Hell, Rocio Hernandez, Salomé Huwiler, Rebecca Indermühle, Kevin Jeangros, Nolan Latorre, Jose Pardo Pariente, Zachary Ramelet, Gabrielle Richard, Théo Rizzo, Alessia Rollini, Malcolm Semedo Barreto, Anastassia Siebold, Philippe Strässle Zuniga, Baptiste Sultana, Luna Tavernier, Margaux Tinguely
Traduire le mouvement en matière
GRAPHIC DESIGN
with Guy Meldem
Third-year students had to produce an edition over half a semester, discovering as their subject an event that appeared in the newspaper on the date of the first lesson.
GRAPHIC DESIGN
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?
GRAPHIC DESIGN
PHOTOGRAPHY
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
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.
GRAPHIC DESIGN
with Jonathan Hares
Third-year students had to produce an edition over half a semester, discovering as their subject an event that appeared in the newspaper on the date of the first lesson.
GRAPHIC DESIGN
with Gilles Gavillet
Through the lens of visual identity, this project explores issues related to graphic language and art direction. Each stage of the project examines a different aspect of visual identity development: research, concept, visual language, design, and communication.
GRAPHIC DESIGN
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
with Aurèle Sack
Second-year students were required to manually develop the lowercase letters of two typefaces.
GRAPHIC DESIGN
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
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
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.
GRAPHIC DESIGN
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
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
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
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.
GRAPHIC DESIGN
with Dimitri Bruni (NORM), Manuel Krebs (NORM)
How can graphic design be promoted by demonstrating its fundamentals? Led by the studio NORM for first-year students, this workshop aims to highlight ECAL’s Graphic Design programme through the didactic lens of elementary instruction. Each day, students were assigned a global theme (A – Words, B – Images, C – Graphics, D – Drawings), along with a series of simple questions. By combining this input, they produced three collaborative double-sided posters, intended to be offset-printed for ECAL’s Open Days. Each poster features its own duotone combination and folds into a booklet. This project emphasizes how the combinatory potential of simple elements can become a powerful tool in graphic design, while underlining the importance of process in creation.
FINE ARTS
GRAPHIC DESIGN
with Joël Vacheron, Angelo Benedetto, Olympe Boutaghane, Francis Baudevin
Based on archives and experiences associated with Vibrations (1991–2013), this research analyses how the magazine's textual, graphic and photographic content provides insight into the challenges of communicating about popular music today.
GRAPHIC DESIGN
by Lidia Molina González
It all started with taking a break. A pause. A moment alone in a shared space: quiet, ordinary, a little strange. Toilets might not be the first place you’d look for big ideas, but that’s why we chose them. Toilet Break uses this overlooked space to explore how we live together, take space, and connect. This first issue is about in-betweens: between public and private, inside and outside. It gathers voices from Switzerland, Belgium, Japan, across generations and practices. A place where ideas circulate freely, where serious things can be said with a wink. A collective and personal space to test new editorial forms, listen more carefully, and believe in detours as a way forward. To take, quite literally, a moment to reflect and sit with things.
GRAPHIC DESIGN
by Flora Hayoz
FACE À FACE is an exploration of loneliness through two mediums: dance and graphic design. This project brings together two practices to give shape to a hybrid creation. On one hand, a choreographic piece co-choreographed with Gaia Menchini, centred on states of loneliness and then captured on video. The second medium is a publication that extends the piece. By questioning the book as an object, it is designed to be read by two people and becomes a tool for dialogue and listening. The publication thus diverts from its usual uses, creating a sensory experience. The two media interact with each other, inviting us to experience solitude both in movement and in the sharing of reading. Thus, FACE À FACE offers an experience where solitude becomes the starting point for an encounter.
GRAPHIC DESIGN
by Paul Paturel
Grime Index is an interactive VJ-ing project that centralizes, visualizes, and enables navigation through iconic moments of grime — a chaotic genre born on London’s pirate airwaves. By turning audio data into visual identity and live signage, the project makes a performance-based, oral, and improvised culture more readable. Designed for both newcomers and longtime fans, it is built around three interchangeable modules — MC, instrumental, and lyrics — honoring the culture of sampling, MCing, and mixing. Diarization, transcription, dynamic typography, and real-time effects combine to reveal grime’s living and navigable memory.
GRAPHIC DESIGN
by Léa Corin
Neither Fully Free, Nor Fully Captive explores the theme of day parole. Through a video installation and a book, this project archives and documents the activities of an association dedicated to reintegration. The projection, conceived as an emotional archive, combines experimental videos with sound testimonies from individuals on day parole supported by the association, revealing the complexity of this transition. The book, as a complement, adopts a documentary and sensitive approach, blending stories and visual creations. This project transcends graphic form to foster social dialogue and shed light on an essential yet often overlooked issue.
GRAPHIC DESIGN
by Marc Facchinetti
The Swiss Climate Report is an editorial design project that explores climate change through data. Based on recent meteorological records, put into perspective with historical averages sometimes dating back more than 150 years, the book is supported by plugins custom-developed for InDesign. These tools translate scientific data such as temperatures, UV radiation and Dobson units into typographic variations and ASCII forms. This experimental approach offers an alternative reading of climate information. The project offers a raw and precise computer graphics perspective.
GRAPHIC DESIGN
by Mathilde Driebold
This book exists for what remains of us—and perhaps, of you. Fragments of an intimate past inscribed in, and lost within, a social context that goes beyond us. This diploma project takes the form of an editorial narrative, blending personal stories and social archives. Through this work, I explore the traces left by addiction within a family setting, bringing individual and collective memory into dialogue. Ce qu'il reste de nous also demonstrates that graphic design can be used as a tool to question social realities, give shape to sensitive subjects, and break the silence.
GRAPHIC DESIGN
by Hugo Scholl
MODULAT is a variable typeface designed around the concept of a musical visualizer. Starting from a neutral design, it branches out into multiple character sets, each allowing adaptation to different graphic and sonic worlds. Its variation axes enable it to adjust to a wide range of display formats, making it suitable for use across various digital platforms. Conceived as a modular tool, it questions how a typeface can accompany music while maintaining visual coherence. The project combines formal experimentation with a search for graphic adaptability.
GRAPHIC DESIGN
by Emilie Müller
It is good to believe that the library is resilient. Not as a relic of the past, but as a presence that reinvents itself, oscillating between the tangible and the intangible. It's not a question of denying the digital, nor of clinging to our yellowed pages. But to understand that if we accept the library as a moving space, an organism that mutates with the times, then its future may not be so bleak. My diploma is a non-linear immersive library, conceived as a virtual house. Each piece evokes one of six themes from the Jan Michalski Foundation's Varia collection. In the form of a web interface, the project celebrates the serendipity inherent in physical libraries, while questioning how digital technology can translate the book experience.
GRAPHIC DESIGN
by Eliot Dubi
At the individual level, we can neither predict nor prevent the next disaster; we can only arm ourselves with the right reflexes to face it. JUST IN CASE is a website that gathers, through four scenarios — large wildfires, dam failures, industrial accidents and earthquakes — the key actions to remember when everything turns upside down. A clear tree-like navigation, concise texts and flat-style illustrations keep learning accessible without resorting to sensationalism. A triptych of posters promotes the site to the wider public. Designed for a generation flooded with anxiety-fuelled alerts, the project turns worry into simple, immediate actions — just in case.
GRAPHIC DESIGN
by Coraline Beyeler
5R is a documentary book explores the contrast between urban and rural agriculture, focusing on developments driven by new generations. It addresses issues related to pollution as well as social, health, and economic challenges.
GRAPHIC DESIGN
by Delphine Brantschen
What Remains to Be Stitched is an interactive website shaped as a memory palace. Through her mother's oral accounts, the graphic designer weaves together Brazil's past into 3D icons and narrative fragments. No objects or images have been preserved from this life — only words. These words are my only inheritance. But what remains when even she no longer remembers them? Blending graphic design, modeling, point clouds and spatial storytelling, the project explores a poetic form of transmission, stitching memories to preserve a fragile link between memory, culture and identity.
GRAPHIC DESIGN
by Candice Aepli
Brindille et Azilise invite you to imagine children's space differently, by offering a lively, playful universe in their bedrooms. Here, the story is not read between the pages, but lies on the floor and climbs up the windows. It slips under an arm. It tucks in dreams. It's a whole world at children's level, where ecosystems come to life through furniture, transforming everyday life into a playground for exploration. Le jardin, collection no. 1 The gardener has slipped seeds into the soil, the bright sun warms the petals, the mouse nibbles on the sly, and in this corner full of life, everyone is busy and smiling.
GRAPHIC DESIGN
by Diego Steiner
Hybrid Modules explores the link between traditional craftsmanship and contemporary technologies through the creation of a 3D-printed modular typographic tool for use with a manual letterpress. Designed on a grid, the modular alphabet becomes a set of physical dies, which can be inserted by hand into the press. The slow, repetitive process becomes an integral part of the visual language, making visible the time and care of the gesture. A series of A2 posters promotes a series of fictitious conferences entitled “ART, CRAFT & TECHNOLOGY - Guests in Switzerland”.
GRAPHIC DESIGN
by Cyprien Valenza
Patterna is an experimental variable typeface designed around two axes: Weight and Weaving. Inspired by Cassandre's Bifur from the 1930s and the arrangement of threads on Jacquard looms, Patterna is based on a rigorous grid that structures shapes and spacing. Its modular layering system allows for graphic experimentation with variations, making each composition dynamic. Numerous alternates reinforce its formal richness. Patterna challenges fashion conventions by offering a modular, dense typeface designed as both a graphic tool and a writing system.
GRAPHIC DESIGN
by Constance Mauler
My project explores the Club Kid scene. Born in the 1980s in New York, this movement emerged as a radical response to artistic and social elitism. Led by queer and marginalized individuals, it transformed nightlife into a space of freedom, resistance, and self-invention. This publication aim to create a dialogue between the original generation of Club Kids and the contemporary scene, to show how this movement continues to challenge norms, invent new codes, and assert liberated identities. An immersion into a flamboyant and deeply political subculture.
GRAPHIC DESIGN
by Alfredo Venti
Points de rencontre/Treffpunkte is an inclusive graphic system designed to make sociocultural resources more visible and accessible to people facing linguistic isolation, or to anyone seeking to join a social network. Inspired by educational tools used with non-native speakers, it combines pictograms, color coding, visual keywords, and modular signage. Installed at the entrances of community centers through interchangeable panels, and complemented by poster campaigns (print and web), it brings these structures into public view for those looking for a service, a network, or simply a welcoming place.
GRAPHIC DESIGN
by Amélie Bertholet
a room of our own is an editorial project born from the relationship between my flatmate, Flavia, and myself. This book explores how a relationship lives and evolves within a shared space: our apartment. Often seen as a transitional phase, cohabitation here becomes a long-term space of emancipation and sisterhood. Nurtured by feminist references—beginning with its title, borrowed from "A Room of One’s Own" by Virginia Woolf—the project questions the place of women within spaces of creation and intimacy. Through symmetry and collection, the book translates the experience of a lived space into an editorial object. The layout's grid, drawn from the apartment’s floor plan, creates shifts in scale and layout to reflect the transformation of 3D space into the 2D printed page.
GRAPHIC DESIGN
by Dorian Pangallo
In an era where crises follow one another and justify a state of permanent exception, Sublime Democracy is a critical multimedia campaign portraying democracies stripped of their foundations, yet upheld by persistent symbols sustaining the illusion. Designed as a contemporary fable, the work draws on precise presidential speeches and polished visuals, integrating AI as the engine of a critical process where falsehood becomes language. By playing with the codes of power, it questions our habituation to fear, authority, and dominant narratives.
GRAPHIC DESIGN
MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN
PHOTOGRAPHY
with Sami Benhadj
Music video projects created within the framework of the Sequence course supervised by Sami Benhadj. Each 2nd-year student in the Graphic Design, Media & Interaction Design & Photography Bachelor programs produced an individual music video. Taking an existing track as a starting point, every project sought to translate the music into images, exploring visual storytelling, rhythm, and staging. Students were encouraged to experiment and develop a creative and personal approach, resulting in original graphic worlds where sound and image resonate with one another.
GRAPHIC DESIGN
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
with Robert Huber
Designing a logotype means defining a strong visual identity anchored in a specific context. First-year Graphic Design students developed a hand-drawn logotype based on a subject, theme, or environment of their own choosing. This creation was informed by prior research in typographic archives. Each student produced a reference booklet and a specimen system based on six or more typefaces, to ground their visual and conceptual exploration. Balancing typographic culture and contemporary expression, each project investigates what makes a visual identity truly distinctive.
GRAPHIC DESIGN
with Angelo Benedetto
During the information design course the students of the second year have been asked to design a cartographic poster based on a film in the road movie genre, in a direct or abstract representation.
GRAPHIC DESIGN
with Alice Franchetti
During this workshop, each student was tasked with designing a poster inspired by the architectural legacy of Richard Neutra. Drawing from his modernist philosophy and formal principles — clean lines, transparency, strict geometry, and integration with the landscape — each student visually reinterpreted Neutra’s ideas within a 2D graphic format.
GRAPHIC DESIGN
with Aurèle Sack
The second-year students had to vectorize a typeface they had drawn last semester.
GRAPHIC DESIGN
with Diego Bontognali
Development of an editorial system deployed across three publication formats, centered on the theme of prohibition.
GRAPHIC DESIGN
with Adeline Mollard
During the visual identity course with Adeline Mollard, the students had to develop an identity project promoting a collection chosen by them. Each project includes the design of a catalogue contextualising and presenting the collection, together with the design of a poster.
GRAPHIC DESIGN
with Guy Meldem
In the age of social media, Instagram has become a true space for graphic experimentation. This semester, first-year Graphic Design students created a printed edition of at least 100 pages, exploring the question: what does it mean to design for Instagram? Through this investigation, they examined the platform’s visual codes, its attention-driven dynamics, and the graphic forms it inspires. Each project reflects on how these creations can be translated, extended, or reinterpreted in the digital space. Balancing printed matter and online presence, these works outline new ways of inhabiting both images and networks.