By the time the Top Award jurors arrived in Paris for Fedrigoni Explore Creative Summit, which took place on 5 June 2025, their deliberations were over. Their mission, while we waited for the 4pm award ceremony, was to present examples of creativity in action through presentations and workshops.
First to step up was our own Simon Esterson (Pulp and Eye), talking about ‘magazines: a new age’, which he illustrated by presenting indie publications such as car mag Magneto, surfing title Acid and the large-format Entorse.
Meanwhile, upstairs, Diptyque’s head of content Marianne Givone ran a session based on the graphic codes of the candle brand’s timeless oval label dating from 1961. For this workshop, the only constraint was that participants’ creations be set ‘within the oval’.
Back on the main stage, Silvana Amato’s ‘Not just Bodoni’ presentation showed the breadth and depth of Italian type history, concentrating on twentieth-century typefaces and their use in her work and that of her students at ISIA (Higher Institute for Artistic Industries), Urbino.
Amato’s lecture drew on her research for her forthcoming book, Quousque tandem and other writings, which covers all the great designers in Italian type history, and does not shy away from type made during the Fascist era. Her talk overlapped with two workshops, the first of which was Melanie Mues’s ‘Make a Photo Book in 30 minutes’.
‘People surprised me by getting on with scissors and glue right away,’ says Mues, ‘and the results were fun and individual.’ When making real-world photo books Mues lays out hard copies of the images with the photographer. ‘When the project is outside the computer you can share with the artist and talk about it, and physically move images around. You can see the natural pace and flow of the book. You see the full picture. In the final stages I make a mini-book to check the structure, the rhythm.’
Next up was Sebastián Yañez’s ‘Ode to Paper: Creativity and Sustainability in Labels’, another satisfying scissors and glue session. Based in the wine region of Mendoza, Argentina, Yañez is passionate about drinks labels and their unique challenges: ‘It’s so complicated because if you don’t choose the right colour, the right layout, the whole thing is gone,’ he explained. Yañez’s agency Thingular, with offices in Spain and Brazil, has clients in 25 countries worldwide, including Casillero del Diablo’s Devil’s Brut, 37 Lenguas and Kaiken Boulder.