Portfolio Basil Hefti

For Simon Hefti’s specialist book, I developed a modular design system for long-form content, diagrams, chapter openers, and recurring learning elements. Complex topics in architecture, data, and AI are transformed into a cohesive visual narrative.

For my final exam, I was tasked with designing a corporate identity and concept for a cookbook. Many individuals, particularly within the Gen Z demographic, have encountered the challenge of preparing meals for themselves or their friends, given the diverse array of diets resulting from food intolerances or ethical beliefs. In response, I had the idea of creating a cookbook tailored to individuals with alternative dietary requirements. Using decision trees, readers would be able to navigate recipes and prepare dishes that align with their specific needs. Each instalment within the series revolves around a core ingredient. The beauty of this cookbook lies in its versatility; it offers many culinary approaches for each ingredient, rendering it the sole cookbook one would ever need, hence its name "the last cookbook." Visually, the concept is complemented by an abstraction of organic growth, illustrating the various pathways available for traversing the recipes.

Square.com is a fictional chess website. With an aesthetic inspired by old video game advertisements and simple shapes it creates a retro but still fresh design. Everything builds upon a grid and a quarter circle. The corporate design spans over a website, a printed flyer advertising for a tournament as well as an original chess set.

The aim of this project was to design a book. Its content was going to be conversations about books that were held between students of my class and people of their choosing. To design the cover, our class visited a library in Appenzell, where we also stayed for three days. Every student was required to choose ten books from the library, out of each of which one picture had to be selected and used for the cover of our respective books. In total, we layouted 160 thousand characters and 230 pictures each. To me, the whole atmosphere of the mountains surrounding the library had a big impact, so I decided that my book was going to revolve around that. It shows all of these pictures and texts that hold no connection between each other coming together in a space they were never meant to share.

For this project our class went to Geneva. I was assigned a place where I had to gather material, photographs, texts, drawings or paintings in order to design five newspaper pages. In total, our class made four newspapers. Additionally, I painted the covers of all four newspapers.

The brief for this project was to design a poster for the “Master Abschlusskonzerte.” I really wanted it to be fun. Pretty quickly I had the idea of a little bag of sweets in the sense of “candy for the ears,” an arrangement of different flavours. As I was in the mood for a challenge and also for taking it as an opportunity to learn, I worked with Adobe Illustrator to make realistic looking packaging. Since doing the candy by hand in Illustrator seemed like a waste of time, I started up Blender for the first time and started experimenting. To me, this project was the entry point for playing with 3D, from which I have only taken it further.

The brief for this project asked for a visualization of respect. After thinking about it for a while, I decided that, since the poster was to be hung all around Switzerland, it should be specific to Swiss culture. One thing Swiss people are very good at is being private, sometimes overly much so. In other words, sometimes there's too much respect, making it more of a hindrance than anything else. With my design I wanted to show a breaking out. The type reads „z'vil Hemmige,“ which is Swiss German for too much inhibition. My idea was to show it as a liquid, and what better way to show liquid than with an animation? Previously, I had only done the Master Abschlusskonzerte poster with Blender, so my animation knowledge was extremely limited. With the help of the internet I figured out everything I needed to know and with a lot of work I acquired the technical skills needed to make this project a reality.

When I started going to a school for graphic design I noticed that I had stopped doing what had been my initial inspiration for graphic design: painting. Painting is how I got into visual design. So, I decided that I would, henceforth, do a painting everyday. After 1000 days, I decided to stop and allocate my time to other pursuits. I have proven to myself that I am capable of achieving this. To this day, I continue to engage in regular painting, essentially every day. It's a way for me to balance graphic design and doing art. A full overview can be found on my Instagram.

This project started out as a technical exercise where we had to illustrate the components that made up a technical object of our choosing. I chose a toy car. We then had to develop a typeface out of the shapes that we found. I chose to make a typeface with the intent of it being used for a product.