IlariaCresci

I trained for five years at CFP Zanardelli in Edolo — hypermedia graphic operator, then graphic technician, then an IFTS specialisation in multimedia production — and I barely stood still in those years: agency placements from my second year, three weeks at a photography studio in Seville, advertising sets over the summers, and six months' apprenticeship at a communication agency building websites and dealing with clients.

Alongside that I worked on real commissions, and on research projects where I set the brief myself. Marks and visual identities for public bodies and associations, a clothing brand built from scratch through to the finished product, studio photography campaigns, a game ecosystem with two web interfaces and a character that made it to 3D print. Different in scale and audience, alike in one thing: none of them stopped at the delivered file.

What interests me is the point where a project stops living on screen and has to actually work: in print, on a physical object, in front of an audience with no time to decode it. That's where you find out whether a design decision holds or was only good-looking on the monitor. Craft gave me attention to detail, fashion gave me an eye for colour, travelling taught me to adapt fast to a place I don't know.

In Seville I spent three weeks at a photography studio, assisting the photographer on shoots. I arrived with school Spanish and came back able to work in it. Now I'm off to Valencia for three months, to work again. Working somewhere you know nobody and don't speak the language is the fastest way I've found to learn quickly.

I've used generative tools since they became useful: Midjourney and Gemini to explore visual directions before drawing, Gemini also for the research and analysis behind a project, Flow for video, Claude for web development. They help me shorten the mechanical part, not skip the part that matters. A generated image doesn't know whether a mark will work on a shop sign, doesn't know what a client means by «make it more elegant», and can't prepare a file for print. Those three things I'm still learning, at school and in the agency, and they're the reason these tools go further in my hands.

I've just finished school, so this isn't a professional's portfolio: it's what I can do so far, real commissions and exercises together, each one labelled for what it is. What interests me now is carrying on — tools I don't know yet, places I've never been, projects I don't yet know how to tackle.