STUDIO NICOLAS ZUPFER

ISTATEMENT

Studio Nicolas Zupfer is a small, versatile design practice operating between Stuttgart, Berlin, and Cologne. We create visual communication for clients in the cultural sector—across both commissioned and self-initiated projects—from campaigns, identities, publications, exhibitions, and websites to experimental formats.

Our focus is on developing rigorous, thoughtful concepts. We often take on multiple roles and adapt to the task at hand—whether that means art direction, graphic design, web development, project management, or sometimes fundraising, consulting, editing, copywriting, photography, prompting, postproduction, or retouching.

Our clients value not only this flexibility but also our commitment to precise, analytical thinking. They share our passion for design not as surface polish, but as a tool to engage audiences both rationally and intuitively. Many appreciate working with us long-term and on equal footing—often less as a service provider, more as a partner in crime—trusting us with projects of all scales and sensitivities.

Our approach is rooted in open processes while aiming for clarity and efficiency. We like to be involved from start to finish and to collaborate closely with clients as well as with production experts and distribution specialists. Working often on-site—in artist studios, museum offices, rehearsal stages, printing workshops, or publishing houses—allows us to see differently, listen closely, and understand fully.

Our method explores craftsmanship and experimentation, reflecting on each project’s specific parameters—from occasion and strategy to structure and technology, right down to production, distribution, and perception. This way, constraints become opportunities. Or, in more sophisticated terms: the project’s implicit conditions are used as explicit design elements to let context, content, and form resonate.

Our goal is to create visual languages that are both distinct and appropriate. We strive for complex simplicity, poetic systems, rough elegance, and contemporary timelessness. So in the best case scenario, urgency becomes necessity.

IIBACKGROUND

The studio is led by Dipl.-Des. Nicolas Zupfer (he/him) and was founded in 2016, building on freelance and project-based work initiated during his studies in graphic design, fine arts, and psychoanalytic cultural theory at the State Academy of Art and Design Stuttgart, and following his work as an art director at Dorten Studios – Creative Consultancy for BMW Group Culture and Art Basel.

IIIAWARDS & GRANTS

• Berliner Senatsverwaltung für Kultur und Gesellschaftlichen Zusammenhalt (Project Funding) [2025]
• Stiftung Kunstfonds (Publication Funding) [2022, 2020]
• Stiftung Kunstfonds (Project Funding) [3 × 2021]
• Kunststiftung NRW (Project Funding) [2021]
• Ministerium für Wissenschaft, Forschung und Kunst Baden-Württemberg (Publication Funding) [2019, 2 × 2018, 2017]
• Amt für Kultur Stadt Winterthur (Project Funding) [2020]
• SV Sparkassenversicherung (Project Funding) [2020, 2018]
• Stiftung Landesbank Baden-Württemberg (Project Funding) [2018]
• Type Directors Club New York {Jury Award} (Design Award) [2011]
• Institut für Buchgestaltung & Medienentwicklung der Staatlichen Akademie der Bildenden Künste Stuttgart (Publication Funding) [2010, 2008]
• Type Directors Club Tokyo (Design Award) [2009]
• Hong Kong Poster Biennale (Design Award) [2009]
• 100 Beste Plakate DE/AU/CH (Design Award) [2009]

IVTEACHING, LECTURES & JURIES

• Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes (Juries) [2025, 2024, 2 × 2023, 2 × 2022, 2 × 2021, 2 × 2020, 2019]
• Universität Bern – Institut für Kunstgeschichte (Seminar) [2023]
• Technische Hochschule Würzburg-Schweinfurt, Fakultät Gestaltung (Lecture) [2022]
• Merz Akademie Stuttgart (Seminars, Workshop) [2022, 2021, 2017]
• Browser Sound – Festival for New Music and the Web (Jury, Lecture, Workshop) [2021]
• Hochschule für Künste Bremen (Workshop) [2021]
• Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste Stuttgart (Workshops) [2018, 2017]

VCLIENTS, COLLABORATORS & CONTEXTS