For our annual Information Day, ZHdK opens its doors once again on November 21st, offering the unique opportunity to explore our wide range of study programs, meet both students and faculty, and experience the vibrant culture of our institution.

Whether you’re visiting from nearby or traveling from afar, we have prepared an extended program to give you a behind-the-scenes look at our BA and MA courses and, most importantly, the work of our students.

We’re looking forward to welcome you on this special day.

Find the full program here.

This year as part the Information Day, we take our team spirit directly from the playing field to the BA Visual Communication atelier. Our students will turn their studio into a football stadium and give you an in-depth insight into what it means to kick it like a designer.

Our bachelor teams will be waiting for you with a great line-up: fan merchandise, snacks, and cold drinks – ready for the match.

We’re looking forward to welcoming both new and familiar faces to this important event — Allez, allez, allez

A new showreel by our BA Visual Communication students premieres at this year’s Information Day, highlighting key projects and the development of their practice across semesters.

Watch the full version on our website from November 22nd.

How special is it to start a semester by traveling together as a whole group? To kick off the new term, the Master’s program went to Amsterdam and Rotterdam with both first- and second year students. The trip offered a rich mix of activities: museum tours, studio visits with designers and researchers, explorations of archives, and conversations with cultural practitioners. Rounding it all off, there was plenty of time to connect and exchange with friends and collaborators together in sunny Netherlands.

As part of the course Type Design Advanced in the 3rd semester, students explored the history of typography, paper, and printing during a guided visit to Papiermühle Basel, led by Martin Kluge.

The excursion offered an insight into the craft and cultural contexts behind type design, connecting this semester’s topic of Revival (designing a typeface based on a historical source) to its material roots.

A highlight of the visit was the viewing of selected originals from the Haas Collection Archive, including Max Miedinger’s original sketches for Helvetica.

The Junior Design Research Conference (JDRC) brings together MA Design students from across Switzerland for a day of exchange, reflection, and research-driven dialogue. Now in its 15th edition, the conference will be hosted by the Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK).

Founded over a decade ago as part of the Swiss Design Network Symposia, the JDRC rotates annually among the participating universities — FHNW, HKB, ECAL, SUPSI, HEAD, HSLU, and ZHdK.

The conference offers insights into current design research topics and methods while fostering cross-institutional dialogue and collaboration. The morning features student presentations on their research projects, followed by peer-led workshops in the afternoon. The day concludes with a social gathering — a chance to connect, exchange, and celebrate design research in all its diversity.

Find the full program here.

The Hybrid Media Lab was newly founded in 2025 with the aim to develop innovative publication formats that bridge analogue and digital media. Through interdisciplinary research and experimentation, the lab explores interactive modes of communication and new models for knowledge transfer across the humanities and sciences. Its work also engages with the ethical, legal, and societal dimensions of hybrid media — from questions of authorship and digital integrity to the role of AI in creative and academic production. Current and former partners include intercomverlag, ETH Zurich, UZH, and PHZH.

The Hybrid Media Lab is anchored within the subject area Visual Communication and affiliated with the Institute for Design Research at ZHdK.

For collaboration inquiries, please contact sarah.owens@zhdk.ch.

For more information, visit our website.

In the beginning of November, we had the pleasure of welcoming ZAMME to our student organized FUBU talk series. Their visit offered a broad insight into their practice, the story behind ZAMME, and their own way of fostering collaboration and exchange across cultures.

Through an open conversation, they shared how influences from Europe and South America shape their work. In addition to the talk, ZAMME brought a small edition of custom FUBU × ZAMME merch based on our students’ poster sketches. A heartfelt thank you to ZAMME for joining us and to everyone who helped make this memorable evening happen.

We’re thrilled to congratulate Nicolas Wagner for winning the Punch Prize, an award that explores innovative approaches to ecological sustainability, the climate crisis, and the complex relationships between humans, nature, and the more-than-human. His diploma project, Printed Plants Catalog (2024), not only earned this recognition but also took him all the way to New York, where he presented his ideas at the Swissnex Planetary Embassy.

Further the week long visit made it possible to collect 7 plants, native to New York City, to make a special edition of local plant dyes. The colors were extracted from Canadian Goldenrod, Black Walnut, and Japanese Indigo, resulting in a screen-printed postcard series inspired by the iconic NYC subway design.

Sport is never just sport. It disciplines, entertains, and connects. From stadiums to screens, from jerseys to interfaces. As technologies, norms, and global conditions evolve, so do the ways we play, watch, and communicate sports. In the workshop “Future of Sport,” our MA students explored how these shifts in the discipline might reshape visual communication.

Using foresight methods, they traced signals of change, imagined future contexts, and designed speculative formats inspired by tomorrow’s games. The results question what sport and design can become: sometimes playful, mostly critical, and full of new possibilities.

We look back on Vera Sacchetti’s Expanded Forms of Practice workshop from last semester, as it certainly deserves mention.

The workshop examined how design practice has evolved, moving from traditional understandings toward more expanded and interdisciplinary forms. Students heard from diverse practitioners and reflected on their own work, defining what expanded meant within the context of their personal practice. Building on these insights, they then situated their planned MA thesis projects within this broader framework and translated them into spatial form. The workshop’s outcomes culminated in an exhibition — a temporary manifestation of the students’ collective exploration.