The course of study becomes an image
14 Artworks narrating the IED Roma Bachelor of Arts
A project that brings together teaching, visual interpretation, and collaboration between students and alumni
A study plan is an essential tool for navigating an educational pathway, yet it often remains confined to a purely informational dimension that does not always clearly convey the structure and identity of a course.
It was from this reflection that the project of the 14 illustrated study plans, dedicated to the IED Roma undergraduate programmes, was conceived, with the aim of making the educational pathway more accessible through the visual language of illustration and graphic design.
The project developed through a collaborative process involving undergraduate students, who were invited to articulate their perceptions of the courses, the skills acquired, and future perspectives. Drawing on these narratives, four IED alumni illustrators, together with a number of students from the undergraduate programmes in Graphic Design and Art Direction and Communication Design, created fourteen artworks, translating into images the content, attitudes, and imaginaries associated with the different courses.
The illustrations were designed as posters and included in the printed study plan brochures: the front presents information on the educational pathway – subjects, structure, and development over the three years of study – while the back features the artwork, visually conveying the imaginaries and attitudes of each course.
The 14 courses thus take shape through distinct visual worlds: metaphors, scenarios, and figures ranging from playful to technological imaginaries, from narrative universes to more conceptual ones.
The diversity of styles and visual solutions does not adhere to a uniform aesthetic, but intentionally reflects the plurality of approaches and sensibilities that characterise IED’s educational offering. Difference thus becomes a design value, an expression of the richness that emerges from the encounter between different disciplines and languages.
The result is an editorial tool that brings together information and visual interpretation, transforming an orientation document into a designed object intended also to be kept and displayed.
A narrative in which education, creativity, and collaboration intertwine to give shape to a shared experience.
Artworks
Interior Design
A three-storey building marks the stages of the three-year programme. Each level corresponds to a year of study and a new design phase. An elevator connects the transition from one floor to the next. At the top, the thesis becomes a leap into the unknown, marking the beginning of a new path.
Project by Federico Foschetti
Product Design
A vending machine becomes a metaphor for the three-year programme. You choose, you experiment, you stay hungry for ideas. Each snack represents a subject, and every selection is a step forward in building your own path.
Project by Renata Gugliotta
Cinema and Video Design
A body becomes the filmmaker’s map. Head, heart and hands work together like the instruments of a one-man band, where thought, sensitivity and technique combine to transform intuitions and ideas into images capable of telling a story.
Project by Gaia Magnini
Interactive Media Design
A small crew travels through space, navigating apps, social networks, interactive installations and immersive environments. Each stop opens up new forms of expression and possibilities on a journey that looks towards an international creative future.
Project by Federico Foschetti
Illustrazione e Animazione
A workspace that resembles a constantly active laboratory, where techniques, tools and languages coexist and influence one another. What binds them together is imagination, the common thread that runs through the entire process.
Project by Federico Foschetti
Fotografia
A face breaks apart, revealing what lies within: the photograph. Each piece that breaks away becomes a snapshot of the journey, from the workshops and darkroom to the construction of the sets. It is not merely an image that shatters, but the photograph itself taking shape.
Project by Renata Gugliotta
CG Animation and Game Design
A role-playing adventure, somewhere between video games and fantasy worlds. Each year becomes a chapter, each exam a level to be passed, with its share of missions and detours. Along the way, you accumulate tools and skills that help your character evolve.
Project by Gaia Magnini
Fashion Design
An androgynous figure, as minimalist as a mannequin come to life, moves forward along a wire suspended between large needles. With every step, it passes through three bands of light marking the three years of the triennial, whilst in the desert, objects stuck in the sand preserve the skills acquired right up to the final catwalk.
Project by Marta Stabile
Design della Comunicazione
A sequence of words and actions that describe the work of a communication designer. Like a constantly updated list, it reflects the wide range of tools, skills and languages that shape the journey.
Project by Cesare Costanzo, Ferrero Franchi, Marianna Marchese, Matilde Sergio
Sound Design
A synthesiser embodies this journey. The keyboard represents the musical foundations from which every idea springs, whilst the modules transform and enrich the sound with new capabilities. The audio output is the final result: a fully-formed sound, ready to find its place in the professional world.
Prject by Linda Montanucci
Graphic Design and Art Direction
A backpack gathers pins and patches representing the subjects of the three-year programme. Each element marks an exam passed and becomes a sign of the journey completed. Together they form a visual map of a graphic designer’s training.
Project by Sergio Cosentino, Luigi Crusafio, Matteo Lagonia, Tommaso Ragni, Giuseppe Rumè
Fashion Styling and Art Direction
A young woman surveys the world of fashion spread out around her amidst books, sketches, fabrics and mannequins. It is within this landscape of images and references that the work of styling takes shape, where garments and visions come together to create new worlds of the imagination.
Project by Marta Stabile
Jewelry Design
A jewellery designer’s starter pack contains a small figurine accompanied by the tools of the trade. Pliers, scissors, wire and gemstones form the components of a portable workshop, where technique and intuition transform materials and details into precious objects.
Project by Gaia Magnini
Fashion Communication and Marketing
A girl works at her computer while notes about brands, concepts, buying and positioning gather around her. In this space of ideas, the strategy that connects fashion, marketing and communication begins to take shape.
Project by Linda Montanucci
The portraits of those who worked on the project
"To design v. [from Latin proiectare ‘to throw forward’] – 1. To draw up a plan for something, that is, to conceive it and explore the possibilities and ways of carrying it out; in other words, to channel the ideas of four people in a single direction; in short, a right mess."
Design della Comunicazione
"Stepping outside my usual field was the most stimulating part of this project. Working on posters for Fashion Design and Fashion S&E, coming from a background in illustration, meant building a bridge between two different languages. It was interesting to engage with a new visual language and find a way to interpret it through my own style, striking a balance between consistency and personal interpretation. Collaborating with the students from the European Institute of Design was fundamental, as well as the most dynamic part of the process, because their ideas gave me a solid foundation from which to start. Engaging with perspectives different from my own led me towards solutions that I probably wouldn’t have found on my own."
Fashion Design, Fashion Styling and Art Direction
"For me, turning a course of study into an illustrated visual narrative was a truly engaging experience; I pushed myself to tackle themes I had never explored before, and I find the results very satisfying. Despite this, the most interesting challenge of this project was to translate the course coordinators’ vision into a visual project that is both clear and engaging. The most interesting aspect of collaborating with IED was being able to work alongside various design professionals, such as sound designers, photographers and stylists."
Sound Design, Fashion Communication and Marketing
"Presenting a curriculum through images means transforming complex educational pathways into accessible visual narratives. The most interesting challenge was to find, for each course, an image capable of encapsulating its identity, energy and educational vision"
Photography
Interior Design, Interactive Media Design, Illustrazione e Animazione
Cinema e Video Design, CG Animation e Game Design
“We are all aware of how difficult it is to understand a course of study - and of how difficult it is to truly feel it.”
From this consideration, we set out to imagine an illustrated study plan that could convey the perspective of those who have embarked upon this educational journey. Some students expressed their idea of the course to other students and alumni, who transformed it into artworks.
The 14 courses thus became a treasure island, a musical console, a toy doll, an interstellar universe, or a superhero endowed with special limbs. Ideas and styles are entirely different, because richness in any project is grounded in difference.
“This project stems from the encounter between different yet complementary perspectives: on the one hand, those who experience the course on a daily basis; on the other, those who have already completed it and can reinterpret it through a more distanced lens.”
The task was to create the conditions for this to happen, through a distributed team composed of IED staff, freelancers, students, and alumni, working as a true agency: not with a single style, but with a shared creative direction.
Each artwork emerges from this balance—between experience and interpretation, expressive freedom and coherence—shaping a collective vision in which differences become part of the narrative, offering a richer reading that is more closely aligned with the reality of the educational pathways represented.
IED Roma Bachelor of Arts
