Felipe Taborda at the Telling Stories Festival: branding, lectures, and HSE CREATIVE OPEN

Brazilian designer Felipe Taborda was among the guest experts at the Telling Stories festival, organized by the HSE Faculty of Creative Industries. His participation in the festival program included a series of professional discussions, a public lecture, and engagement with student initiatives.

Discussion on branding

During the panel session "Contemporary Branding: Regional Perspectives," Taborda joined experts from France and Russia to explore the nuances of national branding. The participants analyzed how local cultural codes help brands stand out in a globalized market and why regional context remains a vital tool for modern designers.

"Where Ideas Come From" Lecture

At the HSE Art and Design School, Taborda delivered an open lecture focused on the mechanics of the creative process. Using his work in the music and publishing industries as examples, he demonstrated how a core idea dictates a project’s visual language and form. The lecture was followed by an open discussion, where Taborda interacted with students and answered questions about his creative methodology.

HSE CREATIVE OPEN and Student Engagement

Taborda also took part in the award ceremony for the annual HSE CREATIVE OPEN student competition. He joined the organizers on stage to present awards to the winners, noting the impressive quality and diversity of the projects submitted by the finalists.

Following his participation in the festival events, Taborda sat down for an extensive interview. He discussed his creative methodology, his background in film and photography, and the various challenges facing the contemporary design industry.

I guess with any project you create, it’s important to be open to changes —which will inevitably happen during the process. The important thing is not to lose your self-confidence and, most importantly, your critical eye.

It’s all visual. And it is all a mix of your own personal culture. You just have to know how to balance these things in an aesthetic and clear way. That’s all.

By reading good books, watching classic movies, and researching the past masters’ works (nothing is “new”… everything has been done before). With this kind of background, young students can achieve their own perspective on life.

It is quite important because it all begins with physical materials — such as paper and a soft pen. Knowing how to deal with these simple things will help shape their future.

Believe in yourself and stand up for your idea when presenting it to a client. Usually, the client does not understand design — just as the great majority of us do not know anything about teeth. We have to rely on dentists and what they say. With design, it is exactly the same: the client should rely on the designer.

Since I only show projects that were completed, I do not speak about the ones that were rejected — and I have many, just as many as the completed ones. You really do learn from a negative response, and I must admit that it hurts. Every new project is a challenge.

This is a delicate balance, but it works quite well for me. I do need to be involved with personal projects — even if they do not come to fruition (which has happened many times). My mind is constantly working, and I love thinking up new projects and ideas. This is what keeps me alive. Both personal and commissioned projects bring me recognition.

What I mean by that phrase is that you have to maintain your ethics in your work, with the people you work with, and with your clients. Acting like this will help maintain a certain balance on the (crazy) planet we currently live on.

What I like to observe most when I am traveling the world is discovering that the local cultural aspects of any society are alive and well — even with “so-called” globalization. Different accents in the way people talk, personal ways of dressing, packaging, hairstyles, etc. Every human being is unique, and finding this “uniqueness” within ourselves is the key to surviving in this homogenous and pasteurized world.

As I said in my talk, certain industries are directly linked to the economy — such as fashion, beauty, art, and design, among others. Over the past five years, we have seen a change in the way the younger generation is dealing with the worries of their own lives and work. Young people all over the world (as far as I can see) are becoming increasingly critical of the establishment, fed up with politics, influencers, fake news, and so on. We will have to wait five more years to discover where all this anger will take them.

To call AI a “new pencil” diminishes what AI really is: a powerful new tool (or whatever you want to call it) that is already changing the way everything has been done so far. My advice for the new generation is to try to understand and study AI — the more, the better — in order to know how to use it, as this is an inevitable part of their future lives and work. As I said, this is their world, not mine.

The Beatles, no doubt. Working closely with the four of them as a group — as they used to be.

Свобода. Всегда.

Local identity in a global cosmopolitan way.

A lasting legacy, by all means.

Every year is a masterclass in knowledge. And our wisdom and perception develop with this.

Always learning from the past. The only “new thing” in the world is technology. Everything else is a remake of something that has been done by someone else before. Because human beings always surprise us, we are happy to see new ways of doing something that we have seen many times, but this time it's different, with a new “zest” (cooking, art, movies, books, etc.).

About the Speaker

Felipe Taborda is a graphic designer based in Rio de Janeiro. A graduate of the London International Film School and the School of Visual Arts in New York, he has headed his own independent studio since 1990. Specializing in cultural and music-related projects, he is recognized as one of the leading authorities on Latin American visual culture.