Productivity as an Aesthetic Object
with Thibault Walter, Julien Mercier, François Bovier, Dimitri de Preux
Online Audiovisual Representations of “Fast Work”, 2013-2025
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.
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.
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/
INDUSTRIAL DESIGN
WOOLWEAR
with Herding Wool, Ugo Bompas
This immersive workshop explored footwear design through the materiality of wool.
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.
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?
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
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.
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
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.
TYPE DESIGN
Summer University to Bangkok
with Matthieu Cortat
Summer University to Bangkok with first year ECAL Master Type Design students.
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.
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).
FILM STUDIES
FILM STUDIES
MASTERCLASS THIERRY DE PERETTI
Meeting with Thierry de Peretti, French actor, director and stage director
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.
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
Maisie Cuisine Book
with Maisie Cousins
The aim of this workshop, led by photographer Maisie Cousins, is to use photography as a tool to broaden our powers of observation. During the week, students explored macro photography to create miniature and abstract worlds using everyday objects and accessories. This invites us to reflect: what else are we overlooking in our immediate environment?
MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN
Toggle - 2025
with Sébastien Matos
A collection of interface buttons designed and animated by first-year students of the Bachelor’s program in Media & Interaction Design. Each element includes a standard animation, an exaggerated animation, and an unexpected version. https://toggle.ecal-mid.ch/2025
PHOTOGRAPHY
ECAL x Polaroid Foundation
with Douglas Mandry
This workshop brought together ECAL graduate artist Douglas Mandry, the Polaroid Foundation, and around thirty Bachelor Photography students. They had the exceptional opportunity to work with a camera that produces Polaroid films in a 40 × 60 cm format and weighs nearly 200 kg. This experience was made possible thanks to its operators, John Reuter and Harriet Browse, who introduced the students to the use of this unique device and the Polaroid Foundation team. Douglas Mandry provided the project’s artistic direction and supported the students in their experiments carried out directly with and on the films. The final result was presented as a collective exhibition on ECAL’s premises, revealing a particularly rich diversity of approaches and visions.
GRAPHIC DESIGN
Workshop NORM - A Shape in a Shape
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.
MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN
Digital Attention
with Irene Pereyra
Where does our attention go? In this workshop, first-year students become their own data researchers for 24 hours, observing when and why their phone draws focus. They track triggers, emotions, recovery time, control, context, apps used, duration, body language, energy, and inner dialogue. These everyday traces are then transformed into a one-page scrollytelling experience, a visual story of how attention moves through a day.
FINE ARTS
GRAPHIC DESIGN
Vibrations Forward
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.
(Re-)Viewing Paik – 2025
with Patrick Keller, François Bovier, Erika Marthins
A comparative and practice-based study on the transformative effects at play in the digital and hybrid exhibition of a body of non-digital native artworks (some artworks by artist Nam June Paik serving as a mean of understanding).
FINE ARTS
FINE ARTS
MA CI
The Assembly of Writings
with Federico Nicolao
A collective exploration of the new relations between contemporary writing and artistic practice.
Design for Recycling through Automation and Robotics in Apparel Accessories and Footwear
with Maxwell Ashford
This project develops design for recycling textile-based goods, one of the most damaging waste streams, using contemporary toolsets to dismantle products into pure fractions.
TYPE DESIGN
Glass gilding workshop with Eddy Bennet
with Eddy Bennett
In this analogue workshop, students merged the ornate lettering styles of the late 19th century and the meticulous craft of reverse glass painting and gilding with their personal perspectives on type design. Thanks to Gold Leaf Supplies for supporting us with material!
MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN
Audio Reactive Festival Poster Series
with Talia Cotton
First-year students designed a series of audioreactive posters for a music festival. They utilized dynamic tools and live data input to explore sound-responsive visuals within social media's digital format, creating a cohesive and recognizable festival identity.
FINE ARTS
Deemed Visionless
GRAPHIC DESIGN
MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN
PHOTOGRAPHY
Video Clips – 2025
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.
MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN
Betaverse 2025
with Mario Von Rickenbach
Using a mixed reality headset, the students used their surroundings as playground. Through creative gestures, each experiment proposes a way of interacting with the environment.
GRAPHIC DESIGN
ALICE FRANCHETTI WORKSHOP – RICHARD NEUTRA
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.
MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN
PHOTOGRAPHY
Redesign 24-25 - S1
with Giliane Cachin
As part of the course given by Giliane Cachin, 1st year students are required to produce an edition by examining the different axes that make it up. The course offers a study of various grid systems and the fundamentals of micro-typography. During the semester, students will look for the best way to structure and arrange the content they have chosen (or which has been assigned to them, depending on the semester's data). Some essential rules to know in terms of printing and bindings will be reviewed at the end of the semester, in order to bring the conceptualized object to life.
GRAPHIC DESIGN
MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN
PHOTOGRAPHY
Magazine - 24/25
with Anouk Schneider Agabekov, Emmanuel Crivelli
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.
MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN
Screen Design 2024
with Harry Bloch
Websites developed over a semester according to a book chosen by the students as part of Harry Bloch's Screen Design course, second year Bachelor of Visual Communication.
MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN
Altered Ego
with Harriet Davey
Who are you in the digital realm? Your avatar, your videogame skin, your alter ego. Second-year students, led by Harriet Davey, crafted digital alter egos from scratch. They used Daz, Blender, and VR to explore an alternate personality or expression through the digital self.