Projects or companies don’t fail for lack of ideas, most of them fail because they solve problems no one really had in the first place. In this Masterclass, we’ll explore how to tell the difference between noise and the sparks that can ignite real change.

Valentina Marun, Danae Lois Gomez & Juli Groshaus, are Business Designers and Design Strategists at Vandals, a Strategy Consultancy that turns vision into value by bridging research, design and business to refine direction, shape what matters, and drive momentum. They go beyond building strategies by unlocking bold decisions, sharpening thinking and guiding transformation from insight to action. The goal? To move businesses forward by challenging assumptions, connecting clarity with execution and supporting teams see where they are, where they could go and how to get there.

Published between 1984 and 2005, Emigre was the first magazine specialising in typography to grasp the need for a change in graphic design in the digital era. In its pages appeared the representatives of a new sensibility that challenged the modern canon with typographic experiments that fragmented composition and challenged the legibility of texts. The magazine was a shock in the world of graphics at the end of the 20th century and represented the fracture between the old analogue generation, formed in the spirit of modernism, and the new post-modern generation that was beginning to develop in a digital environment. Its pages fostered debate in the fields of the profession and academia, endowing the practice of graphic design with a solid theoretical discourse.

In the Bookworm sessions we will explore iconic magazines and books that capture the spirit of the era in which they were created. The material comes from Elisava’s library collections, especially from its Reserve Fund, which contains publications that, due to their design, constitute a journey through the best of the past and present of modern graphics applied to the field of editorial design.

The Bookworm sessions are guided by Andreu Jansà, librarian and curator of the Enric Bricall Reserve Fund.

We will place the publications in their context and try to define what makes them relevant in the history of editorial design in the 20th and 21st centuries. The direct contact with the books and magazines that we will see in each session will allow us to experience the printed document from a material point of view: binding, paper, lay out, illustrations, typography. We will also be able to assess the adequacy between form and content.

20 Years in Design
Across nonprofit and for profit, startups and scale, on boards and in residence, in print and with AI, as a writer, designer, teacher, and leader — Rob’s career has spanned a wide range of projects at the intersection of design, culture, and technology. This talk will share some recent work from Notion as well as work from Google and MoMA, connected in their uses of strategic inquiry, brand-focused storytelling, and multidisciplinary human-centered design to convey unique stories and experience to global audiences.

Rob Giampietro is a designer based in New York, where he is Head of Creative at Notion, a productivity tool celebrated by Forbes’ “AI 50” list in 2024. Active across worlds of design, art, and technology, Rob has held creative leadership roles at Google (Material Design, Research & Machine Intelligence, Search/Assistant) and MoMA, where he was Director of Design during the museum’s historic 2019 expansion.

Rob taught for over a decade in RISD’s MFA Graphic Design program and has served as VP of AIGA/NY. In 2024, he was a jury chair for AIGA’s 100th Annual 50 Books 50 Covers awards. A graduate of Yale, Rob has had fellowships at MacDowell and the American Academy in Rome, along with recognition from the National Design Awards for his work at Project Projects. Rob has been an Advisor to the Aspen Ideas Festival and is a trustee and board member of the Aperture Foundation.

Notion is the connected workspace that allows teams and individuals to easily share documents, take notes, manage projects, and organize knowledge—all in one place. Users can create and customize beautiful documents, roadmaps, knowledge bases, and more, helping them work smarter and faster.

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LEÓN ROMERO is a Barcelona-based visual communication studio founded by Jorge León and Mikel Romero. The studio approaches projects through creative direction and visual design, delivering bold and functional solutions in both cultural and commercial fields, while seamlessly merging the physical and digital worlds in a cohesive manner.

Driven by typographic design, LEÓN ROMERO offers a wide array of services, including visual identity, graphic campaigns, editorial and web design, packaging, and art direction. Maintaining strong relationships with a vibrant network of photographers, illustrators, editors, and copywriters, the studio delivers projects of all sizes.

The leap between being a design student at university, exploring and practicing creativity every day and learning how to apply all that creative expression I had developed as a student, felt like trying to jump across a canyon when I got my first job. That was 16 years ago. Today I still grapple with the tension between “creative” and “industry” only now I see the challenges that once daunted me as opportunities to grow and thrive. I’ll be taking a deep dive on the lessons I’ve learned from my meandering journey from student to studio, sharing projects and processes that have got me here, the joy of collaboration and letting go of your ego and the importance of finding inspiration outside of the “industry”.

Michelle Phillips studied graphic design at the University of Brighton in England. In 2010 she moved to Berlin and made music videos before co founding Studio Yukiko, a Berlin-based design and creative agency.
Michelle is also a founding member and Art Director of Flaneur Magazine and Sofa Magazine and has been on the jury for TDC new york and D&AD awards.

Studio Yukiko was co-founded by Michelle Phillips and Johannes Conrad in 2012, a Berlin-based creative agency specialising in creative direction, art direction, brand strategy, concept generation and graphic design for commercial, cultural and indie clients alike.
The studio also runs it’s own projects, such as Flaneur and Sofa Magazine. With these research projects Yukiko continually experiments with contemporary forms of visual storytelling and fosters a deeper understanding of the audiences with which its projects engage.

The Odd Approach — Navigating the balance between bold creative visions and real-world constraints.
Case Studies — Exploring key projects through:
Concept — Keeping authenticity while ensuring functionality.
Production — Materializing ideas within technical and sustainable limits.
Execution — Adapting without losing identity.
Key Takeaways — Turning tension into a creative advantage

Cris Moya designs and manages spaces and events, from renovations to brand activations at festivals. With a background in Advertising, Cultural Management, and Spatial Design, she blends research, design, and marketing. After directing festivals like Offf Barcelona and 4YFN, she founded Detour in 2016, later leading This is Odd. Now, at Odd Spaces, she works mixing emotion and function to bring brand identities to life.

Álvaro Ferrer is a Barcelona-based architect focused on thoughtful, simple, and effective designs that integrate physical, natural, and cultural contexts. He believes in the respectful coexistence of buildings and their surroundings, balancing contemporary solutions with tradition. His work spans residential projects, public spaces, exhibitions, museography, landscape, playgrounds, and ephemeral architecture.

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Odd is a studio that designs and produces ephemeral and permanent spaces from Barcelona. We explore where cultural production, design, communications, and architecture meet, blending diverse perspectives to craft solutions that spark meaningful change in our environment.

Dot Dot Dot Dot represented a paradigm shift in the sector of magazines dedicated to graphics and visual culture. Published between 2000 and 2010, it promoted a more experimental and critical editorial design. Over the course of 20 issues, it contributed to enriching the discourse on graphic design, demonstrating that it was profoundly connected with other disciplines and aspects of the cultural sphere. In this way, the designer ceased to be exclusively at the service of commercial interests and became an author and researcher willing to question reality and propose alternative aspects of culture. In the magazine, the popular coexists with the erudite and the sublime with the anodyne in a dense amalgam that is often disconcerting but intellectually powerful.

In the Bookworm sessions we will explore iconic magazines and books that capture the spirit of the era in which they were created. The material comes from Elisava’s library collections, especially from its Reserve Fund, which contains publications that, due to their design, constitute a journey through the best of the past and present of modern graphics applied to the field of editorial design.

The Bookworm sessions are guided by Andreu Jansà, librarian and curator of the Enric Bricall Reserve Fund.

We will place the publications in their context and try to define what makes them relevant in the history of editorial design in the 20th and 21st centuries. The direct contact with the books and magazines that we will see in each session will allow us to experience the printed document from a material point of view: binding, paper, lay out, illustrations, typography. We will also be able to assess the adequacy between form and content.

We’ll walk through some of our projects and how we’ve worked on them, from design to development. APN is focused on collaboration; we work with a lot of different clients, studios, and designers, which makes each project completely different, with its own set of challenges, collaborators, needs, and structure. Whether we’re building a website from scratch, working with an established identity, or collaborating with other design studios, each project brings something new. Throughout this talk, we’ll show the different stages we go through.

After studying graphic design at Elisava, Christian worked at design studios such as Deutsche und Japaner and Naranjo-Etxeberria. In 2018, he co-founded Carter Studio, a Madrid-based graphic design studio. After nearly three years, he left Carter to start APN, aiming to focus more on the digital side, with a particular emphasis on web design.



Lucía studied fashion design in Madrid and worked for several independent clothing brands before spending three years as a fashion designer at Inditex. During this time, she learned how to code and developed a strong interest in graphic design, which led her to leave her job and join APN.

APN is a creative studio focused on design and web development. We offer a wide range of services including branding, graphic design and digital production. Our work spans across various sectors, collaborating with cultural institutions, fashion brands, independent creatives and commercial enterprises.

Computational Craft

Next to offering an insight into Vera’s work, this talk dives into creating motion through craft and computation. Vera shows how the tactility of weaving, knitting, and other tangible crafts can extend to the digital realm.

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Vera van de Seyp is a computational designer and educator based in NYC. Her work explores generative design tools, computational typography, and using artificial intelligence for design. Vera recently completed a Research Assistantship with the Future Sketches group at MIT Media Lab, and studied at KABK and Leiden University.

Vera van de Seyp has collaborated with clients like WIRED, Serpentine Galleries London, and Google Arts and Culture. She also teaches and gives workshops and lectures to inspire creatives to make (and code) their own design tools. She is a member of Alliance Graphique Internationale (AGI). Projects include playful websites, generative language installations, perpetually morphing typefaces, typographic tools, creative coding symposia, and textiles made with a hacked knitting machine.

Introduction in the world of the photobook from its foundations, history and current situation.
Students will acquire knowledge about their conception and work process developing a project with an author. Narrative, rhythm and sequence when the main content is image.

Jon Uriarte studied photography at the Institut d’Estudis Fotogràfics de Catalunya and at the International Center of Photography in New York, as well as a master’s degree in Artistic Projects and Theories from PhotoEspaña and the Universidad Europea de Madrid. He has exhibited in various art centers and galleries, both in collective and individual shows, among which are La Casa Encendida in Madrid, the Koldo Mitxelena in Donostia, Studio 304 in New York, the HBC center in Berlin and the Sala d’Art Jove in Barcelona.

He was the founder of Widephoto, an independent platform dedicated to curating and activities around contemporary photography. In addition, he conceptualized and coordinated for 3 years DONE, the project on reflection and visual creation promoted by Foto Colectania. He currently lives in San Sebastián, from where he combines the curatorship of The Photographers’ Gallery digital programs with the curatorship of the Getxophoto International Image Festival.

Five-day workshop learning how to create a Main Title Sequence for film.

In this workshop, we will learn the art behind creating a main title sequence for a movie step by step.

Ana Criado is an Emmy-nominated Graphic Designer and Creative Director based in California and Valencia. Known for her exceptional work in developing outstanding main title sequences for film and television. With +20 years of experience in graphic design, corporate identity, communication, and motion graphic design.

Over the past 12 years, Ana has collaborated with some of the most prestigious studios in Hollywood, creating captivating title sequences for notable productions such as Star Trek: Discovery, Star Trek: Picard, American Horror Story, Godzilla, also created graphic works for The 89th Oscars Ceremony, Apple, Nike, T-Mobile, IBM, among others.

Irma Boom is one of the most influential contemporary book designers, known for her innovative and experimental approach to editorial design. Boom challenges conventions and forces the reader to interact with the book in a different way, reconsidering its function and structure. She works closely with the authors and publishers of the books she designs, influencing not only the aesthetics but also the visual narrative and content. Her work has led to a revaluation of the book as a physical object, an unbeatable experience compared to e-books. We will see some of her most important books, such as the one dedicated to the textile artist Sheila Hicks, the invisible book about Chanel or the tiny catalogues devoted to her own work.

In the Bookworm sessions we will explore iconic magazines and books that capture the spirit of the era in which they were created. The material comes from Elisava’s library collections, especially from its Reserve Fund, which contains publications that, due to their design, constitute a journey through the best of the past and present of modern graphics applied to the field of editorial design.

The Bookworm sessions are guided by Andreu Jansà, librarian and curator of the Enric Bricall Reserve Fund.

We will place the publications in their context and try to define what makes them relevant in the history of editorial design in the 20th and 21st centuries. The direct contact with the books and magazines that we will see in each session will allow us to experience the printed document from a material point of view: binding, paper, lay out, illustrations, typography. We will also be able to assess the adequacy between form and content.