Works in progress

The preliminary course, an apprenticeship at the Young & Rubicam advertising agency, design training including drawing skills with Hans Schwarzenbach at the Bern School of Art and Design, and studies at the Institute for Illustration and Book Design at the State Academy of Fine Arts in Stuttgart – with Kurt Weidemann, among others – are the stages of Stephan Bundi's education before he opened his studio in Bern in 1975. He has designed countless posters, such as the 1985 "Stop Torture" poster for Amnesty International, a long-running series for the Theater Biel Solothurn, including a variable logo and typography system, and thus a striking visual identity. He creates book illustrations, logotypes, publications, websites, and entire corporate designs.

His signature style is characterized by the intensification of the message through visual dramatization with poetic, subtle visual humor, intertwined with typography. For him as a visual communicator, creative means and methods, theory and practice are integral, interdependent phases and elements of the work process: from the idea to the technical implementation.

From 1980, he taught at the schools of design in Bern and Biel, and from 1999 to 2014 at the Bern University of the Arts (HKB). Since 2008, he has been teaching at the School of Design, Nanjing Arts Institute, and is active worldwide as a visiting professor, speaker, and jury member. His posters can be found in the design collection of MoMA, New York, the German Poster Museum, Essen, the Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris, and the 21st Century Foundation of the Hermitage, St. Petersburg. He has received numerous international awards, including gold medals in Mons (Belgium), Chicago, New York, Mexico, and Vienna, several Swiss Poster Awards, the ICOGRADA Award at the Poster Biennale in Warsaw, and the Grand Prize at the 7th International Triennial of Stage Posters in Sofia.