There is a particularity about the education system which we take as given – that students, from infant school to university, are grouped together according to their age and experience. While this organisational rationale is understandable, there are benefits to doing things in a different way, if only occasionally. The Porto Design Summer School course attempts to be one such occasion.
Participants from around the world, aged between 20 and 50+, have gathered in Porto every year since 2013 to take part in a two-week course that focuses on editorial design. They bring with them different cultural perspectives, experience and skills. Some at the beginning of their design careers, want to expand their knowledge, while others, as professionals, want to break their routines and refresh. Whatever the reason, this coming together in new surroundings, establishes a group dynamic in which each participant is able to extract relevance and meaning while being guided through a common set of course tasks by a team of established international designers.
Why Editorial design?
Despite the large range and variety of both visual and conceptual approaches that book design can offer, and the ways in which they oblige multiple and simultaneous considerations, books are nevertheless objects that have tangible limits. Beyond the possibilities of engaging in the structuring of content – itself a powerful attraction – there lies another reason that make books such an appealing and satisfying challenge for designers – their physicality.
A book is not an on-going project subject to change; its parameters are not in a state of flux. The decisions a designer makes about size, format, number of pages, layout and so on, are permanent. There is a beginning and an end. And in a world where so much is in a state of flux, perhaps there is a refuge of certainty in producing an object whose edges we are able to define. None of this makes editorial design static or without challenge. It offers the possibility of producing a self-contained, portable and rewarding expression of the act of transformation that lies at the heart of the design process.
Tutors (see Tutors in main menu for details)
The core tutor team at the inception of the summer school in 2013 consisted of Andrew Howard, founder of the Porto Design Summer School and Studio Andrew Howard, course leader on the MA in Communication Design at ESAD (Escola Superior de Artes e Design, Matosinhos); Hamish Muir, founding member of 8vo, partner of MuirMcNeil and former lecturer at London College of Communication; and Jessica Helfand, author, artist, founding member of Design Observer, and former lecturer at Yale University (USA), and British designer Jonathan Barnbrook.
The complete list of tutors since (including the first edition) is as follows:
Andrew Howard / UK / PT (2013–present)
Hamish Muir / UK (2013–2025)
Jonathan Barnbrook / UK (2013)
Jessica Helfand / USA (2013–2016)
George Hardie / UK (2015)
Adrian Shaughnessy / UK (2016)
Catherine Griffiths / New Zealand (2017)
David Pearson / UK (2017)
Sonya Dyakova / UK (2018)
Ronnie Fueglister / Switzerland (2018/19, 2022, 2026)
Nikki Gonnissen / Netherlands (2019)
Rejane Dal Bello / UK / Brazil (2022)
Miguel Almeida / Portugal (2022)
André Cruz / Portugal (2023–present)
Lizá Ramalho / Portugal (2023)
Ana Resende / Portugal (2024–present)
Miguel Howard / Portugal (2024–present
(The course was suspended in 2020 and 2021 because of the Covid–19 pandemic and restarted in 2022)
Guest speakers (see Guest speakers in main menu for more details).
In addition we have organised informal social ‘design evenings’ whose aim is to introduce participants to local practitioners who make a strong contribution to the lively design context in Porto. These have been Nina Paim, Susana Carvalho, Joana Lourencinho Carneiro, Fabian Harb, João Castro, Pedro Nora, Inês Nepomuceno, Mariana Marques, Dário Cannatà, Ana Resende, João Santos, Miguel Almeida.
Participants
Since 2013 we have welcomed participants from the following counties – Argentina, Armenia, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Cambodia, Canada, China, Colombia, Croatia, Denmark, France, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Hungary, India, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Lebanon, Malaysia, Malta, Mexico, Moldova, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Peru, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Turkey, UAE, UK, Ukraine, USA.
