Germán has been teaching at IE University for two years now. What started as a single course, became two in the following academic year, and he has just wrapped up the cycle.
Branding at the Segovia campus
In Segovia, he taught a branding course where students go through the entire process of brand creation—from definition to visual expression.
To make the project both fun and challenging, students work in teams on the identity of a city in 4 months. Last year, they were free to choose any city. This year, Germán gave them a curated list to ensure a wide variety of places, each with unique characteristics that are easy to perceive from the outside.
They designed for:
> Berlin
> Matmata
> Salvador de Bahía
> Svalbard
> Venice
There’s a whole learning process involved, because the project is a simplified version of what a real branding process would be. There’s a research phase to uncover the idea that makes the brand unique, a design exploration phase based on that idea, and finally a phase where the chosen design route is brought to life across a variety of touchpoints.
Getting through the first phase is a challenge, because students want to jump into designing right away. But if they start designing without a clear idea, they end up with empty forms. So you really have to guide them through it. Once they find the idea, though, they understand the value.
“I’ve been positively surprised by various groups. For both the students and myself, it’s rewarding to get to the end and see everything come together. What at first seems like mission impossible can be achieved really well by following the steps and working together,” says Germán.
Editorial design in the Madrid Tower
The spring course is taught at the IE Tower in Madrid and it’s a different one: it focuses on editorial design. The project consists of designing a fiction book, chosen by each team.
The books were:
> Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
> Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Roald Dahl
> The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
> Grimm's Fairy Tales
> Peter Pan, James Matthew Barrie
> The Giver, Lois Lowry
> The Notebook, Nicholas Sparks
> The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett
> The Summer Without Men, Siri Hustveldt
What’s amazing about this is that students start the course knowing very little and they end it with a book in their hands. They learn a lot about typography in general—reading fonts, more legible, less legible, grid systems, line spacing, proper margins, and everything else.
As a teacher, the hardest part throughout the course is getting them engaged with a world of rules. Helping them understand that first it has to be correct, well-crafted, and legible—and only then, if possible, creative. For restless students, editorial design can feel tiring or even boring.
But then comes the satisfaction of holding the book in their hands—the real piece—feeling the paper, seeing the layout, showing it to their families. It’s such a nice feeling to grab the book and see that what you envisioned has come to life.