In this session, I will share the stories and the behind-the-scenes details of some of the projects I have participated in throughout my career from a strategy and verbal identity perspective. The goal is to showcase the key aspects of my work and the impact it has on the design and visual creation processes of the teams I collaborate with.
It’s going to be mostly about words, but please don’t panic, I’ll be showing some images too.

Marc Torrell

I’ve loved writing since I was a kid. As I grew older, I wrote less. The novels and poems I once dreamed of writing turned into headlines, simple concepts, and brand names. I graduated in Advertising and Audiovisual Communication, worked for large international agencies and dinosaur clients, and later discovered the meaning of design through collaborations with studios like Mucho, Hey, Lo Siento, Querida, and Pràctica. In 2013, I co-founded Usted with my friend and partner, Martí Pujolàs.

We consider Usted a hybrid between a traditional advertising agency and a design studio. The focus, whatever the project is, is always the same: strategic thinking, concept with longevity and carefully crafted art direction. We work straight with clients or collaborate with fellow studios in conceptualization and verbal identity tasks for clients of all sizes and markets.

In this first session we will try to find out what makes a well-designed book and what factors determine excellence in editorial design. We will look at recent examples of award-winning publications from the Most Beautiful Swiss Books, Best Book Design From All Over The World and the LAUS Awards. By browsing through the books we will be able to feel their material presence and examine the elements that make them up: binding, paper, composition, typography and the fit between form and content. Moreover, through the verdict of these prestigious prizes awarded by specialists, we will be able to analyse current trends in editorial design. Each student will be able to express their opinion and choose their own favorites according to his or her own sensibility.

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.

Tolaas has shown her projects in many museums and institutions including Museum of Modern Art, MOMA, New York; National Gallery of Victoria NGV, Melbourne; DIA Art Foundation, New York; CCA Singapore, Tate Modern London; Shanghai Minsheng Art Museum, Shanghai; MORI Museum, Tokyo. She has worked with universities such as MIT, Nanyang Technical, Tsinghua, Stanford, Harvard, and Oxford. She has built up several types of smell archives such as: Smell & Communication/ language; Smell & Coding, Smell & Anthropocene; Smell & Extinction; Smell & Sensory Ecology; Functional Smell Molecules. Tolaas’ collections of smell molecules; smell complex structures and smell para data from 1990 and ongoing are including up to 20,000 smell recording samples and formulas.

Smell Molecules are the Air’s Alphabet

How much of what we communicate is influenced by what we see? And what happens to our stories when sight is no longer an option?

How can we activate the hidden information in the air that surrounds us all? Air is a shared medium, connecting all living beings. Where there is air, there is life, and with life comes the language of smell. Air is both information and emotion in motion.

Could the details carried by smell molecules transform how we communicate? How can we engage with critical topics from an entirely new perspective through olfactory information? What if the essence of content could be revealed through smell, offering a new way of perceiving the past, present, and future?

Working with experts and scholars worldwide, I focus on developing a new approach to understanding, communicating, and displaying the chemistry of smell in diverse contexts. I capture smell molecules from various sources, analyze them, build precise databases, and create innovative ways to narrate their stories. These molecules reveal dimensions often overlooked.

The goal is to inspire a shift towards a more sensory-driven perception of the world. The transformative power of smell has shown me that change is not just possible—it is essential. Smell, deeply linked to emotion and memory, has a profound significance in human experience. Its connection to the amygdala-hippocampal complex enhances its ability to evoke emotions and memories, making it a powerful yet neglected tool for understanding life.

Life is everywhere and constant. We all breathe the same air, collectively shaping it. My work serves as a reminder of this shared reality.

Historical, sociological, and cultural influences have led us to neglect parts of our potential. Education is vital for reawakening these dormant capacities, tapping into our sensory abilities.

Smell unites us and kindles joy, which is often overlooked today. Across cultures, it enriches social rituals and gatherings, shaping human connections. In a world dominated by virtual and artificial intelligence, we must remember that our senses are our most advanced interface—intrinsically intelligent and grounding us in our humanity.

Our emotional depth distinguishes us from machines, and smell plays a central role in that.

The essence of life lies in reconnecting with our olfactory senses. Training this sense provides fresh perspectives on societal challenges and brings optimism. With growing global instability, recalibrating our communication and decision-making processes is more crucial than ever.

We need a sensory reboot—an approach to interpreting sensory inputs constructively. Engaging our sense of smell activates memories and emotions, fostering learning and action. Instead of being constantly online, we should strive to be “on-life,” rooted in genuine experiences. Addressing global challenges begins by reconnecting with our senses, cultivating tolerance, and rediscovering what it truly means to live.

In this special session, Thierry will share content you won’t find online or on social media: the initial client presentations. He will explain how we developed these at Base, focusing on objectives, flow, and storytelling. Using examples from both the cultural and commercial sectors, Thierry will emphasize a key principle at Base: the importance of crafting each presentation uniquely for each client and context, avoiding any standardization of the creative process.

Thierry Brunfaut is a creative director and one of the founding partners of Base Design, the international network of branding studios based in Brussels, New York, Geneva, and Melbourne. He is the author of the renowned 5–minute poster series, a professor, and a regular speaker at design and branding conferences around the world. Thierry bears a striking and seemingly contradictory resemblance to Moby and Kermit the Frog.

Base Design is an international network of studios that creates brands with cultural impact. Located in Brussels, New York, Geneva, and Melbourne, our team of 80+ creatives, strategists, and digital experts design and develop simple yet powerful brands and build unique personalities. Founded in the early ‘90s, the company has evolved continuously over the years and is now steered by partners across all four studios. Clients include Apple, The New York Times, The Institut Français de la Mode, la Fondation Cartier, Studio Brussel, MoMA, Bob Dylan Center, Dior Galerie, La Monnaie Opera, IFAW, The Prince Estate, Orior,
Bozar, NY Mets, Caran d’Ache, Caudalie, the JFK Terminal 4, and many more. Base Design is B–Corp certified since 2023.

We, humans, struggle to build empathy towards large amounts of information. ¿How do we solve these challenges when the problems we face today are so inherently big, interconnected, wicked, and globalized? In this talk, we will explore some humble experiments done to overcome this lack of empathy through art, technology, and participatory experiences.

Pau Aleikum Garcia is a media designer and the co-founder of Domestic Data Streamers, a 25 people studio that since 2013 has been focused on creating info-experiences. He also leads de Master in Data Design at Elisava. He is a guest lecturer at The New School (NYC), Hong Kong Design Institute, the Royal College of Arts (London), Politecnico di Milano and the Barcelona School of Economics. He built and permanently lives in the Residence for Artists HeyHuman! and is part of the Posttraumatic Collective. Usually, he doesn’t speak in the third person.

Domestic Data Streamers is an award-winning studio exploring how to express data through film, robotics, code, theater, or architecture in schools, prisons, cinemas, the streets of many cities, and even the United Nations Headquarters. They work for commercial brands and all kinds of old-school and new-kinky institutions. They truly believe data can be a real trigger of change and build bridges in a polarized society.

Welcome to our back room! This Masterclass is like a deep dive into Vandals’ essential tools that will take you from understanding the “why” to figuring out the “what.” By integrating design and innovation methodologies, we’ll help you uncover needs and explore new possibilities. You’ll gain key insights to expand your knowledge, incorporate diverse perspectives, engage stakeholders, reflect on strategies, communicate effectively, and experiment with iteration.

In this session, you’ll develop strategic thinking skills to foster creativity and make informed, objective decisions. You’ll also acquire practical techniques for structured problem-solving, inclusive decision-making, and embracing iteration to continuously refine your approach.

Danae Gómez Lois

As a Design Strategist and Business Designer, Danae seeks to transform client’s businesses by articulating their purpose and growth territories, creating services, experiences, and business models that pivot around the differential value that they bring to the world. Through her life, she has immersed herself in diverse cultural landscapes across South and Northern America, the Caribbean, and Europe. Drawing upon these experiences, she applies her insights to drive transformative changes in businesses. Fueled by a passion for comprehending behavior, culture, experience, and forward-thinking, currently, she is shaking perspectives together with her partner at Vandals, a research and strategy service designed to challenge conventional thinking, while also contributing as a Master’s lecturer at Shifta by Elisava.

Vandals

Our research and strategy services are designed to challenge conventional thinking, emphasizing the unique value each business brings to the world. Allergic to absolute ideas, we reject rigid thinking and embrace the tough questions. Our goal is to inspire and guide companies, teams and entrepreneurs through method, reason and boldness in the following stages: [01] Where are you now? [02] Where do you want to be? [03] How to get there? We can assist you by designing or revamping your business concept, connecting you with what people value, ushering you to new areas of opportunity, positioning and articulating your company’s identity, shaping service or product experiences while dynamizing the people, culture & processes that run behind scenes.

Anette Lenz recent solo exhibition at the Museum Angewandte Kunst in Frankfurt, Germany (2021), is the foundation for this conference where she will share her perspective on culture, society and life throughout her designwork.

The graphic work “I am part of the big picture and the big picture is part of me” by Anette Lenz serves as a fitting prelude to her concept of a design resonance that, in today’s times, could hardly be more topical.”

Quote from the Museum Angewandte Kunst website: “In her first large-scale solo exhibition in Germany, Anette Lenz contextualizes, ironizes, and comments on her own attitude towards life. She transforms the Museum spaces into immersive graphic worlds that make visual communication a tangible experience: sensual, poetic, and thought-provoking. The title “à propos” – which means “by the way” – does not merely allude to the fact that she has something to add, a comment of her own to make, but also lays claim to relevance, to a comment made at exactly the right point and time. (…) Rather than turning us into consumers, the impact of her work enables us to participate in graphic design’s inventiveness and power of expression, in a sophisticated game of ever-new interrelationships between information and imagery.

Anette Lenz is a german graphic designer based in Paris, France.

She concentrates on work with cultural institutions.

Thinking up a project, structuring a singular and evolving visual identity at the heart of the public space are issues that she has always invested in. She views graphic design as a powerful means of both poetic and political connection. Her poster-work is included in important international collections.

Anette Lenz teaches at HEAD — Geneva University of Art and Design, Switzerland. She is a member of AGI.

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.

Jose Rosales graduated in audiovisual design from BAU Design University. Lover and observer of everyday life. FIFA professional player. Majorcan and Madridista. Urbanite. Perfectionist. Founder, Art Director and Creative Director at Codea Studio. I can’t stop swinging back and forth. Nervous and calm at the same time. I was hooked on Chinese food and now I’m hooked on Crossfit. A big fan of Denis Villeneuve, Jacques Tati, Camarón de la Isla, Kady Cain and Serge Gainsbourg.

Eyal Weizman is the founder and director of Forensic Architecture and professor of Spatial and Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths, University of London, where in 2005 the founded the Centre for Research Architecture. In 2007 he set up, with Sandi Hilal and Alessandro Petti, the architectural collective DAAR in Beit Sahour/Palestine. He is the author of many books, including Hollow Land, The Least of all Possible Evils, Investigative Aesthetics, The Roundabout Revolutions, The Conflict Shoreline and Forensic Architecture. Eyal held positions in many universities worldwide including Princeton, ETH Zurich and the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna.

He is a member of the Technology Advisory Board of the International Criminal Court and of the Centre for Investigative Journalism.

In 2019 he was elected life fellow of the British Academy. In 2020 he received an MBE for ‘services to architecture’ and in 2021 the London Design Award. Forensic Architecture is the recipient of a Peabody Award for interactive media and the European Cultural Foundation Award for Culture.

Eyal studied architecture at the Architectural Association, graduating in 1998. He received his PhD in 2006 from the London Consortium at Birkbeck, University of London.

Forensic Architecture  is a research agency based at Goldsmiths, University of London. Our mandate is to develop, employ, and disseminate new techniques, methods, and concepts for investigating state and corporate violence. Our team includes architects, software developers, filmmakers, investigative journalists, scientists, and lawyers.

We are an interdisciplinary agency operating across human rights, journalism, architecture, art and aesthetics, academia and the law; in 2022, the Peabody Awards programme wrote that we had co-created ‘an entire new academic field and emergent media practice’.

In this workshop, we will turn bootlegging into a method and examine the phenomenon that originally developed from smuggling and pirating into a common practice in the music and fashion sector, but today also in the world of graphic design and branding. Your task will be to develop your own bootleg and explore the boundaries between piracy, homage and re-creation. The choice of media is expected to be free.

How do you want to position yourself and your way of working in a world in which your work is influenced by countless impressions, especially from the Internet and social media. Today you have access to many sources of information and influences. To what extent do you allow your work to be influenced by other styles and methods, and how can you claim authorship for your work? Who owns an idea? We will try to approach this topic in the workshop and discuss it. Have fun!

After graduating from Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam, Serge Rompza has co-founded the Berlin and Oslo based design studio NODE in 2003, together with Anders Hofgaard. The two offices collaboratively focus on identity, print, exhibition and interactive work. Clients include Haus der Kulturen der Welt Berlin, Vitra, MIT Program in Art, Culture and Technology (ACT), Lithuanian Pavilion / La Biennale di Venezia, Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA).
Since 2004, he has regularly been teaching at art and design academies across Europe.

Irma Boom is a bookmaker based in Amsterdam. She has created over five hundred books. Her experimental approach often challenges the conventions of traditional books in both physical design and printed content. Since 1992, Boom has been senior critic at Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, and she gives lectures and workshops worldwide. She has received many awards for her book designs and, in 2001, was the youngest person ever to receive the Gutenberg Prize.

Boom’s books are in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Art Institute of Chicago; Vatican Library; and Centre Pompidou, Paris, among other institutions. The Special Collections of the University of Amsterdam collect her complete oeuvre. In 2014, Boom received the Johannes Vermeer Award, the Dutch state prize for the arts. In 2019, she received an honorary doctorate from the Royal College of Art, London.

The Survival of the Book or The Renaissance of the Book!

The distribution of information has always been dependent on its changing form. The classic book can’t escape that and is now feeling it acutely. The digital book is decidedly on the rise. But its appearance in the form of flat, digital images need not threaten the three-dimensional book. The new competition even encourages us to explore the intrinsic characteristics of the printed book more intensely.

I think we stand on the verge of a new flourishing of the classic book. Perhaps it has even begun already: the Renaissance of the book. For the printed book, preconceived layouts are a thing of the past. The book designer must first become thoroughly familiar with the content before beginning the actual task at hand: conceiving a structure and a form. One can compare designing a book to performing a piece of music: a conductor explores the music and interprets it. The book designer is an editor and director of texts and images.

The result of this effort is the freezing of time and information, which is a means of reflection; compare it to a photograph or a painting. An image at a given moment serving as a reference of time and place. The flux inherent in the internet doesn’t allow you that kind of time. The printed book is final and thus unchangeable. Moreover, the extra use of base materials and man-hours (with printing and binding) forces you, to some degree, to make conscious choices.

I make books where content and form are closely connected. The content of the material very much determines the design. This makes each book unique: never the result of routine treatment. My books have a physical presence through their dimensions, scale and weight. Their form may be emphatic, but it is always determined by the content. The need for the book’s intimacy – the paper, the smell of ink – is certainly not nostalgia or false sentiment.

The printed book is a fundamental and integral part of our tradition and culture, of published and public knowledge and wisdom. The book is dead. Long live the book!