The ECAL Manual of Style

All you need to know about The ECAL Manual of Style

One of the world’s leading design schools opens up its innovative, highly effective teaching techniques to the world

Not everyone can attend ECAL, or École cantonale d'art de Lausanne in Switzerland. The school is one of the best places to learn about design, and, over the past 20 years, it has developed a hugely effective, highly engaging teaching method, which pushes its students to develop their creativity in a professional way, collaborating with established designers and brands, to create imaginative and futuristic projects.

Yet, this season, pretty much anyone can benefit from ECAL’s innovative pedagogical methods, via The ECAL Manual of Style. Our new book opens up the school and its teaching methods to a global audience, with this succinct summation of the best, most-effective way to acquire design skills today.

Authored by the acclaimed designer and writer Jonathan Olivares, the manual begins by posing the question, ‘How should design be taught today?’ to a number of prominent designers, critics and tutors, each of whom have been associated with ECAL in some way.

All you need to know about The ECAL Manual of Style

The ECAL Manual of Style

In this opening section, German designer Konstantin Grcic, answers by saying the one skill that is at the core of all good design is thinking; Mette Hay meanwhile, considers many different aspects of the design process, including, freight, production time and work hours, certificates, load tests, packaging, and most of all, impact;  the Serpentine Gallery’s Hans Ulrich Obrist, suggests we have to go back to the work of the Italian modernist artist and designer Enzo Mari, to re-learn new forms of design that will last; and for American designer Yves Béhar places emphasis on empathy and the personal point of view.

Following these pages, The ECAL Manual of Style presents a series of projects, demonstrating how, over the two previous decades, students, working with brands and tutors have created some of the most effective and challenging projects. There’s Ronan Bouroullec Kitchen Workshop, created in collaboration with Boffi; the Icelandic Whale Bone project, in which students fashioned objects created from bones collected on Icelandic beaches; and the Swiss Craft with Formafanstasma, a project conceived in collaboration with the Swiss watch manufacturer Vacheron Constantin.

Finally, the book concludes with a series of moving and insightful testimonies from former students, explaining how now established designers found their experience at the school, what they learnt, and how useful their time there was in developing their careers as designers.

All you need to know about The ECAL Manual of Style

The ECAL Manual of Style

A handsome, 208-page hardback book, featuring 300 colour illustrations, is both the perfect guide for young designers and design students, keen to sharpen their skills, and those wishing to deepen their understanding of the brilliant thinking that underpins much of contemporary design today. To find out more and order your copy go here.