Joost Grootens is a Dutch graphic designer known for his innovative approach to book design, especially in the field of atlases and reference works. His publications are characterised by an ability to present complex information in an accessible and visually appealing way, promoting the idea that design should serve content and not compete with it. He uses infographics, graphs and maps to simplify and organise large amounts of data aimed primarily at scientific and academic audiences, providing them with an intuitive visual navigation that allows them to explore the book in a non-linear way. We will see several examples of his work that demonstrate that such books can be functional and beautiful at the same time. Grootens knows how to find beauty in information and poetry in data.

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.

What can we learn from Ray & Charles Eames that might apply to the challenges we face today?

Ray & Charles Eames demonstrated—time and time again—design’s unique ability to address disparate clients’ needs, while finding ways to improve quality of life for all. What can we as designers and creatives learn from the Eameses that might apply to the challenges we face today?

Llisa Demetrios is the youngest granddaughter of iconic designers Charles & Ray Eames. She began her archiving career at the Mies van der Rohe Archive at MoMA in New York, and has since dedicated herself to extending her grandparents’ most important gifts to the world: their infinite curiosity and iterative design process. Her personal mission is to equip everyone with lessons of Charles & Ray so that anyone can use design to solve problems at all scales. Today, as Chief Curator at the Eames Institute, Llisa continues to share learnings from her legacy through exhibitions, events, and public tours at the new public space in Richmond.

Llisa Demetrios has spent decades caring for the Eames Collection and curating the Eames Ranch, initially alongside her mother, Lucia Eames, and now as Chief Curator alongside the Eames Institute of Infinite Curiosity team. Llisa loves welcoming guests, be they Eames aficionados or people entirely unfamiliar with design. Before the advent of the Institute, Llisa facilitated loans for “The World of Charles & Ray Eames” exhibition that started at the Barbican Centre in England in 2015 and continued to Sweden, Portugal, Belgium, Germany, Michigan, and the Oakland Museum of California in February 2019. She is also a founding and current member of the Eames Foundation Board of Directors, which oversees the historic Eames House in Los Angeles, and also a shareholder of the Eames Office.

Eames Institute of Infinite Curiosity

The overarching goal of the Eames Institute of Infinite Curiosity is to unpack the way that Ray & Charles Eames worked, the way they infused their designs and lives with curiosity and discovery at every turn to solve problems at any scale. “We don’t do ‘art’ – we solve problems,” said Charles. Then he added “How do we get from where we are to where we want to be?” They demonstrated—time and time again—design’s unique ability to address disparate clients’ needs, while finding ways to improve quality of life for all.

Being able to share the legacy of Ray and Charles in this way, to showcase their incredible process and wide-angled vision of design, is the dream of a lifetime. Their boundless curiosity and relentless pursuit of solving problems in furniture, film, exhibits, architecture, and textiles is in the name of the Institute. The Institute aspires to be a home for curious problem-solvers, both on-line and on-land.  I hope the Institute’s efforts will help people find inspiration for solving problems in their own world.

In 2022 Brunner launched Source Type, a platform for typographic research and visual literacy. Through Source Type he has published Rapid (2022), Karl (2022), and Reform (2023). Additionally he is a member of the Swiss type foundry Lineto where he published Akkurat (2004), Circular (2014) and Bradford (2018).
Brunner previously taught graphic design at the Rietveld Academie and has been a guest critic at Yale School of Arts, US; Werkplaats Typografie, NL and ECAL, CH. He has twice received the Swiss Federal Design Award (2006, 2012), as well as several distinctions from The Most Beautiful Swiss Books, The Best Dutch Book Designs and The Best Books from all over the World.

Published between 1997 and 2004, Nest revolutionised the approach to interior design and decoration with its innovative and unconventional approach. The magazine focused on interiors that told personal stories and explored the concept of ‘home’ in creative and sometimes quirky ways. Its pages included a variety of contexts that provided insight into a wide range of lifestyles and how a person’s environment reflects their identity. It pioneered the use of unconventional printing and graphic design techniques including the use of different paper textures, unusual inserts, cut-outs and unique formats that transformed the experience of reading the magazine into something interactive. Ironic and sophisticated, Nest challenged the notion of good taste prevalent in standard decorating magazines.

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.

A “club” is a physical place where people share interests, experiences and stories about a territory and/or reality. The Club Collage is a collective experience in which we ask ourselves how we live and interpret the images that surround us daily, making collages using images from my archive. Thinking of a participatory proposal, my intention with this workshop/club is to put in common my creative process, adapting a role of mediator of a work made by multiple hands. In this case, the students made a series of pieces taking as a starting point the geometric shapes of traffic signs together with common elements of diverse urban spaces.

Alberto Feijóo (Alicante, 1985) is a collector, accumulator, apprentice and visual artist interested in the field of photography and its relationship with other disciplines such as collage, installation or design.
He holds a degree in Communication from the University of Alicante in 2009 and a postgraduate degree in Contemporary Photography; Practices and Philosophies from the University of Arts London.
His work has been exhibited individually at the IVAM (Centro Julio González) in Valencia, Sala Kursala of the University of Cadiz and in the galleries Luis Adelantado and Punto in Valencia.

He has also participated in group exhibitions at Centro Conde Duque Madrid, LABoral Centro de Arte de Gijón, Centro Cívico Can Felipa in Barcelona, Sala Canal de Isabel II in Madrid, Sala de Arte Joven Comunidad de Madrid, ARCO 23, Fotomuseum Winterthur or The Photographers’ Gallery in London.
As a teacher he has conducted workshops and educational activities in IVAM Valencia, CCCC Valencia, Tate Modern in London, among others.
In 2021 he started the project “Club Collage” in multiple environments such as museums, galleries, prisons or schools.

NORM discusses their installation TRIANGULATION (on view in the Elisava project space) and places it in the context of their book trilogy ‘NORM: Introduction, The Things, Dimension of Two.’

Further on, NORM will talk about: their love-hate relationship with digital tools, the tension between intuition and combinatorics, the struggle for a common visual language, the ongoing seduction of fonts, the end of grid systems, good and bad and ugly commissions, the value of printed matter and the poetry of precision.

Dimitri Bruni and Manuel Krebs studied graphic design at the School of Applied Arts in Biel-Bienne. They established the graphic design studio NORM in Zurich in 1999. In 2005 Ludovic Varone joined the studio. They are based in Zurich.

NORM focuses on designing and publishing books and typefaces. Book design includes self-commissioned research in the field of type and graphic design, the most relevant being ‘Norm: Dimension of Two’ (2020), ‘NORM: The Things’ (2002), and ‘Norm: Introduction’ (2000). Commissions include collaborations with galleries, museums (MoMA, Tate Modern; Louvre; Centre Pompidou; Museum for Gestaltung Zurich), and artists (Arthur Jafa, Fischli & Weiss, Shirana Shahbazi, Simon Starling). 

Examples of typedesign include the ‘Simple’ typeface for Cologne/Bonn airport, the corporate typeface for Omega watches, the typeface ‘Replica,’ the corporate typeface for Swatch, and the recent typeface ‘Riforma’ and ‘Riforma-Mono’ (2018, 2024). 

In 2020, NORM presented the solo exhibition ‘It’s not complicated’ at the Museum of Design in Zurich, in 2024, ‘Disorder is more probable than order’ at Grafill, Oslo. 

Making data speak human

Designers across domains must increasingly engage with data. With the rise of AI, there is an opportunity to humanise data in innovative ways. In this presentation, I will introduce recent projects that explore these possibilities, ranging from an experimental tool translating energy forecasts into proverbs, to an internal application enhancing organisational efficiency. To bridge technology and human experience and decision making, data needs to speak human.

Yosuke Ushigome (yoh-skay oo-shee-goh-meh) is a London-based designer/technologist, currently working for Normally as Lead Interaction Designer. He works across disciplines with a focus on interaction design, digital prototyping, and futures research. For over 10 years, he has been involved in various R&D and visioning projects with organisations worldwide such as the NHS, Hitachi and Swarovski. He also writes about more equitable and sustainable ways we interact with technology on design publications such as Core77 and ICON magazine.

Normally unlocks the transformative potential of AI for clients, including IKEA, Google, Panasonic, and the NHS. We have a decade of experience at the intersection of human-centred design and AI engineering, applying AI to enhance operational efficiency and growth, and deliver innovative AI-enabled products and services

Advertising annoys. Advertising interrupts. Because advertising is, in the end, the price a brand pays for not having a memorable product. Through humor, the shortest way between two people, and a recognizable graphic style based on text and sobriety, PutosModernos converts the commercial message into content that people choose to see and, on many occasions, share. In this session, entitled “Spam for today: hunger for tomorrow” Joan will explain his vision of communication through a selection of commercial projects, reflections and learnings, accompanied with the history of the evolution of the brand, the construction of an audience of its own in the digital environment and some anecdotes of its successes and failures.

Joan Alvares

Journalist by training, publicist by profession and copywriter by obligation, Joan Alvares (Sabadell, 1983) is a copywriter and creative director. In 2009 he founded Poko, an independent creative agency with which he worked for clients such as Nike, Artfutura, Ray-Ban, Persol, Garmin, Trident or Warner Bross. He is currently partner and creative director of PutosModernos.

In advertising he has directed campaigns for Converse, Lacoste, Beefeater, Nike, FC Barcelona, Cabify, Roxy, Damm, Pepsi, Absolut, Red Hat, Torres, Imagin, Pompeii, Deutsche Bank, Malpaso Ediciones, Penguin Random House, Mobile World Capital, Teatro de la Maestranza, Spotify, Danone, Skate Agora, Arrels, Motorola or the Generalitat de Catalunya, among others. His work has been distinguished with 4 Laus Awards (ADG-FAD), with the Graffica 2021 Award, with the recognition of Creative of the Year (Agripina) or at the International Advertising Festival Cannes Lions. In 2023 Forbes included him in the list of the 100 Most Influential Creatives in the business world. He has been a professor at Istituto Europeo di Design, University of Westminster (London) or Elisava-UPF (Barcelona) and speaker at national and international festivals.

Putos Modernos is a self-parody of modernity to itself. And what is modernity? Modernity is running stressed out to your mindfulness class, searching for cheap flights from an expensive cell phone or combining down and ankles in the air. Modernity is you, modernity is all of us. With a community that today exceeds half a million followers in networks, PutosModernos creates content, products and advertising campaigns for brands and people willing to laugh at themselves. Among other milestones, PutosModernos has represented Spain at the International Poster Biennial, held in Santa Cruz (Bolivia), and has released its own series on Filmin (2023).

Some media have defined PutosModernos as “the art of making the simple viral” (Emprendedores magazine), “a form of post-postureo” (La Vanguardia), “daily doses of fine irony” (El Español), “reality without filters or autotune” (El País) or “the closest thing to a modern advertising agency”, according to Toni Segarra.

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.