FILM STUDIES
Documentary film workshop with Verena Paravel - 2026
with Verena Paravel
The 2026 documentary film workshop for 2nd year students was lead by french director and visual anthropologist Verena Paravel.
FILM STUDIES
Documentary Film Workshop with Marie-Eve Hildbrand - 2026
with Marie-Eve Hildbrand
The 2026 documentary film workshop for 1st year students was lead by swiss director Marie-Eve Hildbrand.
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
Editorial Design – BA2 S2 2026
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
Visual Identity – BA2 S2 2026
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
Contextual Design – BA2 S2 2026
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.
MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN
Dynamic Identity - 2026
with Angelo Benedetto
First-year students designed visual identities for fictional museums. As part of the Dynamic Display course led by Angelo Benedetto, this project led them to create graphic universes that that express the character of each imaginary exhibition site.
DIGITAL EXPERIENCE DESIGN
The Mind Reader Interface
with Gaël Hugo, Paul Lëon
The Mind Reader Interface shifts computing from the reactive to the proactive: from a system that obeys commands to one that anticipates them. Where smart environments cast their users as pilots issuing constant instructions, this project removes the friction of instruction altogether. Intention is no longer declared through a screen or a button. It is inferred. Reading context, habit and the signals of presence, the interface acts before it is asked. It sheds the form of the device to become a Ghost in the Room that senses rather than obeys. The user no longer pilots the space; they inhabit it. The system does not read thoughts, only traces, and stages the distance between anticipation and understanding: what we gain, and what we quietly surrender, when a space begins to act on our behalf.
PHOTOGRAPHY
Staged Photography – 2026
with Charlotte Krieger
Unseen This course introduces students to the creation of a seven-image series built around the theme Unseen. They will learn to combine set design, characters, and lighting to produce strong, coherent staged images. Through a practical and technical approach, the course develops their ability to conceive and manage a complete photographic project, direct models, work with natural and artificial light, and collaborate under conditions similar to professional editorial or commercial shoots. Students will refine their photographic vision while preparing for the creative and technical demands of the industry.
PHOTOGRAPHY
Analog Medium format workshop – 2026
with Anoush Abrar
Deconstructed Portrait The goal of this workshop, led by photographer Anoush Abrar, is to explore the meaning of the contemporary portrait. Working with the concept of the “deconstructed portrait,” the students created an image in pairs. The Digital Medium Format workshop week serves as an introduction to both photography equipment and specialized software.
PHOTOGRAPHY
Création cinématographique– 2026
with Orsola Valenti
Off-camera By exploring what lies outside the frame, students develop a sensitive and reflective approach to audiovisual creation. Throughout the semester, students are encouraged to reflect on the political and formal issues surrounding the moving image, as well as the relationship between the visible and the invisible.
PHOTOGRAPHY
Création photographique– 2026
with Natacha Lesueur
Documentary, the power of make-believe Based on projects developed around a common theme, the students develop a personal, in-depth project around the theme of pretense. They build a project that plays with the limits of veracity in photography, using it as an artifice of deception.
FILM STUDIES
Morgane Beslay – Le Mur (Directing)
by Morgane Beslay
Following their difficult separation, Eliane and Laure have to repaint a wall of the house they are leaving, a wall as full of their own history as that of others before them.
FILM STUDIES
Nafi Touré – Le Mur (Photography)
by Nafi Touré
Following their difficult separation, Eliane and Laure have to repaint a wall of the house they are leaving, a wall as full of their own history as that of others before them.
FILM STUDIES
Charlyne Genoud – Respirer une fois sur trois
by Charlyne Genoud
In group strength-training classes, people breathe in unison every day. Charlyne lifts weights alongside three retired women who love to sing. What if a cheerful gym could be the place to break our family curses?
FILM STUDIES
Jann Kessler – se métamorphoser ?
by Jann Kessler
How do I build healthy, equal relationships? An intimate cinematic-therapeutic journey of discovery.
FILM STUDIES
Floriane Roulin – Petites Bouées
by Floriane Roulin
During their father’s wedding preparations, Sophie and Mila are confronted with their childhood memories.
FILM STUDIES
Mathys Nouspikel – Capriccio
by Mathys Nouspikel
Arsène runs away before playing for his dying grandfather, but an unexpected encounter helps him find the courage to return.
FILM STUDIES
Robin Kaufmann – Sous ma peau
by Robin Kaufmann
The night Gabriel celebrates his abuser’s conviction, he is confronted with Lucien’s tenderness.
FILM STUDIES
Maéna Hirt – Pauvre Pauvre Timothy
by Maéna Hirt
Timothy disappears. Then Astride's friends vanish, and soon the entire town seems to fade away without explanation.
FILM STUDIES
Pauline Pichard – GLORYLAND
by Pauline Pichard
Last spring, unknown lights appeared in the sky above Lausanne. In a garden, the last fragment of an ordinary Eden, tales blur with rumours after a series of strange disappearances.
Design Research for Digital Innovation (EPFL+ECAL Lab)
Côme Brocas – MountResilience
by Côme Brocas
How can we facilitate dialogue, engagement, and decision-making in response to the challenges of water management and climate change in mountain regions? This replicable demonstrator from the European project MountResilience is the result of participatory and interdisciplinary research conducted in the heart of the Valais Alps. The web application brings together experts and the general public around three interconnected sections: relative indicators provide a shared overview of the situation in real time, participatory field observations foster engagement, and a catalog raises awareness of local solutions. The evaluative study of the tool identified several factors influencing engagement in the design of climate change adaptation solutions.
Design Research for Digital Innovation (EPFL+ECAL Lab)
Sofia Lelis – Èvokâ II
by Sofia Lelis
Èvokâ II is an interactive installation that invites visitors to the Cantonal and University Library of Fribourg to enter into dialogue with the archives. Through an AI-based conversational interface, a presence living within the collections gathers memories connected to the canton and, in return, reveals fragments, stories and traces of Fribourg's heritage. This design research project explores how digital archives can become more accessible and resonant, questioning what connects us to a collective identity: places, emotions, stories and lived memories. Developed with the Swiss Data Science Center and supported by the Swiss National Library, Èvokâ II transforms archival consultation into an intimate experience, between personal memory and shared history.
Design Research for Digital Innovation (EPFL+ECAL Lab)
Zeynep Erol – SWITCH – Sofra
by Zeynep Erol
Sofra is a culturally adaptive conversational agent that supports dietary behaviour change by understanding how people relate to food. Developed within the EU SWITCH project, it builds a personal food culture from photos, mind maps, and voice notes that users provide to represent their everyday practices, motivations, and heritage. This profile shapes the agent's tone and suggestions, moving guidance from generic to grounded in each person's context. Developed through three user studies, the project shows how cultural resonance makes dietary support more relevant, respectful, and engaging. Combining interaction design and AI prompt engineering, Sofra challenges universal approaches to health technology and advocates for systems that adapt to, rather than flatten, cultural differences.
GRAPHIC DESIGN
Type Design BA3 – S1 25–26
with Aurèle Sack
The third-year students had to develop a typeface and digitize it.
PRODUCT DESIGN
ECAL AT THE FESTIVAL DES CABANES, VILLA MÉDICIS, ROME
with Camille Blin
For the 2026 Festival des Cabanes at the Villa Medici in Rome, students from the Master in Product Design were invited to develop a project related to the Villa's garden, in collaboration with the renowned Italian ceramics manufacturer Mutina. The Villa's gardens offer a rich historical and spatial context, conducive to exploring aesthetics, function, and interaction with visitors. Students had access to the entire Mutina catalogue (tiles, bricks, and other materials) to build their installations. The project was selected and mentored by the French designer Ronan Bouroullec, ECAL, Villa Medici and Mutina.
GRAPHIC DESIGN
MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN
A Matter of Frames - Workshop avec Vera van de Seyp
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
PHOTOGRAPHY
Workshop with Rineke Dijkstra
with Rineke Dijkstra
What is good portrait? What technique do you choose? What kind of light do you use? Daylight or flash? What location or backdrop do you choose for? How do you choose your subject? How do you approach someone you don’t know? In this workshop, the students have explored what makes a good portrait and which tools you can use to create one.
DIGITAL EXPERIENCE DESIGN
Ethical, Accessible and Mindful Design
with Irene Pereyra
Ethical, Accessible & Mindful Design is a one-week module that trains students to examine the ethical dimensions of design decisions. Through practice, students learn to design experiences that are inclusive, transparent, and considerate of their broader social impact. This semester, the module took low-vision accessibility as its central design constraint. Working under the brief Goodbye to All …, students were asked to guide a user through a permanent, irreversible, and non-negotiable farewell. Beyond WCAG compliance, the exercise required sustained attention to contrast across all interface states, legible typography, keyboard-only navigation, focus visibility, and layout integrity at both 100% and 300% zoom, without loss of hierarchy or readability.
GRAPHIC DESIGN
Image Creation BA3 – S1 25–26
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.
MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN
Portfol.io
with David Liebermann, Maximilian Kiepe, Jana Reddemann
Hello World! Goodbye predictable, standardized and interchangeable web. Students questioned the conventions of the digital World, explored the Wide possibilities of the medium, and even invented new approaches to interact with the Web. And what better way to give web design meaning than through the students own portfolios, understood as expressions of attitude and personality. https://websites.ecal-mid.ch/
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.
MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN
A Story for a Shape – Workshop avec Mélanie Courtinat
with Mélanie Courtinat
Ce workshop explore la paréidolie, notre capacité à projeter du sens et des émotions sur des formes abstraites. À partir d'une primitive géométrique (cube, sphère, cône...), matrice fondamentale de tout univers numérique, les étudiant·e·s en binômes doivent concevoir une expérience en réalité virtuelle. En s'appuyant sur une synchronisation précise entre l'espace physique et un environnement Unreal Engine, le projet transforme ces objets fixes en supports narratifs.
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
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.
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.
MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN
Reverse DIffusion – 2026
with Matthieu Minguet, Jamy Herrmann
This workshop explores the use of real-time video streams as a medium for transforming reality. Through live capture or interface-based processes, participants experiment with different ways of altering images using locally run diffusion models. The video stream is approached as raw material, opening up new perspectives on how reality can be perceived and transformed.
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.
GRAPHIC DESIGN
Editorial Design BA3 – S1 25–26
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.
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!