Valentina Ciuffi | Studio Vedèt Founder & Alcova Co-founder
- Tuna Mert
- Dec 6
- 8 min read
Creative director and curator Valentina Ciuffi moves fluidly between ideas, disciplines, and geographies. As the founder of Studio Vedèt and co-founder of the itinerant design platform Alcova, her practice sits at the crossroads of branding, strategy, visual culture, and contemporary design discourse. Rather than following a linear career path, Ciuffi’s journey has been shaped by curiosity, research, and a constant openness to transformation.
At the core of Ciuffi’s work lies a belief in design as a tool for questioning systems, creating connections, and opening space for new voices—always driven by curiosity, movement, and an enduring appetite for what’s next.
Interview: Tuna Mert Topuz
Who is Valentina Ciuffi? Can you briefly introduce yourself?
Today I am a creative director and curator, founder of the agency Studio Vedèt, which works on branding, strategy, visual identities, and digital projects for a wide range of clients, and co-founder of the itinerant design platform Alcova. In general, I’m an incredibly curious person, a tireless traveler, always thirsty for novelty and knowledge. My path hasn’t been linear; unlike many of my classmates, I didn’t enter university knowing what I wanted to become. I was quite lucky to attend the Communication Sciences department (a public university program with limited enrollment) that Umberto Eco opened in Bologna in the ’90s. I graduated in Semiotics of architecture and art, and I began writing about these two subjects, as well as about design, as a journalist. I worked as a journalist for many publications and then spent seven years on the editorial staff of the design magazine Abitare (under the direction of architect Stefano Boeri and, later brilliant graphic designer Mario Piazza).In years when publishing began showing increasingly clear signs of collapse—at least in Italy—I took the leap to work independently, first with Studio Vedèt and then, shortly after, with Alcova.
Your work sits between creative direction, graphic design, and communication. What inspired you to start Studio Vedèt?
I’ve always loved writing, and being a journalist satisfied my thirst for travel and knowledge. During my years in journalism, I met many important people and built a professional network that became crucial for my future career. I was a rather unusual journalist; I remember Bjarke Ingels, during the year I spent following him to create an Abitare monograph on his work, often told me jokingly that I was one of the strangest journalists he had ever met. Probably, beyond my desire to ask questions and have others explain their work, he saw in me (as a friend he later became) the restless urge to create something of my own.
Studio Vedèt was born from digging back into my skill set—skills beyond writing: semiotics, the discipline I studied, is a highly effective and very special analytical tool. From a careful analysis of the world (starting from texts, and extending to art, architecture, and design), one can search for the tools to communicate things better. But always after equipping oneself with a deep knowledge of the field one is working in. After many years of design journalism, beyond knowing many people in the field, I also knew a lot of things up close—not only products and objects, but also festivals and fairs. I had a sufficiently broad toolkit to begin working as a strategist and creative in the communication of many of the people I had interviewed or met as a journalist, but also enough knowledge to curate exhibitions and events.
I built a team by immediately collaborating with exceptionally talented graphic designers, excellent developers (Vedèt also does a lot of web work), and copywriters like myself. Vedèt quickly found its footing in the design world and later expanded its creative work into many other fields. Today, we still have many clients in design and architecture, but we also work in art and fashion, hospitality, and beauty.
What was your initial vision when you started the studio? How did Studio Vedèt come to life?
This is a difficult question. Since 2016, we’ve worked on so many projects in design and art that it’s hard to pinpoint a single episode. Each project has brought its own challenges and, in turn, new opportunities, contacts, and new projects—equally complex, equally interesting, and fertile ground for further connections.
Perhaps I can answer by telling you what the opportunities are for those who work with Vedèt, especially in the field of design and, in particular, for new studios, designers, or organizations entering this world for the first time—or for those who have been part of it for a long time but lack the skills to communicate and express their identity. I would say that, when it comes to carving out a space in this field, our studio has a rather unique value: we are graphic designers and web developers, of course, but we are also curators, producers, and strategists of cultural events—both our own and those of internationally renowned galleries and institutions. We have been journalists, and we have an extremely dense network of contacts. We aren’t PR agents, but coming to us to build one’s identity in this field guarantees a comprehensive and highly positioning form of consultancy.
Working with clients in the art and design field must be unique. Can you share a challenge you’ve faced, and how it also became an opportunity?
Since I am also a curator and creator of cultural events, it’s very natural and stimulating for me and my team to work on similar projects: from the beginning we’ve created the identity of the fantastic fair Nomad; we work with the art festival Desert X, as well as with the Brompton Design District; with the agency UNA–UNLESS we work on projects that are culturally important but also environmentally significant.
However, I don’t like to think—or to convey to my team—that there are first-class projects and second-class ones. Communicative effectiveness—as semiotics teaches—is what we aim for and what we achieve in every field, whether cultural or commercial. Things that we know well and that we ourselves create (not only as graphic designers but also as directors of the entire event) may be easier and faster to work on, but every project, commercial or not, is an interesting challenge for us. We approach each one with care and the same determined will to analyze and go deep before crafting the most suitable visual identity and the best strategy to communicate it to the world.
How does your approach differ when shaping identities for a cultural event versus a commercial brand?
Another complex question—because I truly believe that every project we take on represents us, even when it belongs to fields far from design. If I have to name a few, I’d say that for the new collectible design project Delvis Unlimited, we carried out truly all-round consultancy: we act as curators, talent scouts, we help with strategy for international events (their main space is now in Milan), we redesigned their identity and their website, we work on their storytelling and social media, on photographic campaigns and visual output in general. I believe that in less than a year, since the last Milan Design Week, we’ve managed to position them on the international design map.
To mention another, we are very proud of the project Voice of Common, curated by UNA–UNLESS, which debuted at the last Venice Biennale. In this case, beyond the identity, we created a very articulated digital platform capable of hosting and making accessible the many contents of UNA–UNLESS’s research on global commons. We’ve been working with them for years with great satisfaction, supporting their impactful work in the environmental field.
Among your latest projects, which one do you feel best represents Studio Vedèt’s approach to design and storytelling?
We’ve also worked with the Nomad festival since its beginnings, and last year’s challenge was to accompany it to new destinations such as Abu Dhabi—recently concluded with great success—and the Hamptons next June, with a new communication campaign. For platforms like the magazine Koozarch, beyond identity, we support and accompany the evolution of an increasingly strong and effective online information platform. Still within the world of design but also fashion, we continue fruitful collaborations with the studio Older, and with The Great Design Disaster, which has just launched its new space in Milan. Hospitality and food service are other sectors in which we’re moving with pleasure and agility: we began with the identity of Milan’s historic Bar Basso, and today we support contemporary food projects such as the new restaurant Vasiliki Kantina, recently opened in our city, or Greenburg Café, recently inaugurated in New York and designed by Objects of Common Interest.
You co-founded Alcova, which has become one of the most influential and unconventional platforms of Milan Design Week. How did the idea of Alcova come to life?
The idea for Alcova was born in 2017 in a bar in Eindhoven, from a long conversation with Joseph about what we were missing compared to the “Fuori Salone” of about ten years earlier. In the early 2000s, we both worked in publishing, and both attended Milan Design Week with great personal and professional interest.
By 2017, it seemed that independent designers—many of them our friends—had lost the opportunity to exhibit during a week increasingly full of events and increasingly unaffordable. Or perhaps the possibility was still there, but what was missing was the chance to be truly visible to the many industry players who populate the city during that week. Alcova offered a platform to give a voice to all these experimental and research-based realities, which, united under our “umbrella” and within incredible spaces, gained the opportunity to communicate together with an unprecedented, unique strength.
Studio Vedèt plays a key role in shaping Alcova’s curatorial and communication identity. How do you build a narrative around a site before bringing designers in?
Studio Vedèt has worked from the very beginning on the naming, visual identity, website, wayfinding, and, in general, all graphics and communication for Alcova. Studio Vedèt responds to both Joseph and me as curators of the event and works edition after edition to maintain and evolve a strong identity that always remains current and, each time, dialogues with the particularities of the new locations or destinations. For the Miami edition opening these days, for example, we explored new colors and distinctive tones, but also carried out specific work on reportage images and sought visual rhythms better suited to a city very different from Milan. Among the most important projects by Studio Vedèt for Alcova this year was the complete redesign and development of a new online platform, which has greatly strengthened our web presence and will soon be enriched with new features.
Alcova has grown from an experimental platform in Milan to an international reference point. What do you think makes it resonate so strongly with today’s design community?
Alcova crossed Milan’s borders several years ago. We are now at the third edition in Miami, and we’re exploring other possible destinations and formats. For the past two years, we have been consultants for the Frankfurt fair Heimtextil, and we curate a large portion of their spaces dedicated to experimentation and research.
I believe our strength lies, among other things, in our ability to offer a fairly accurate snapshot of the new directions design is taking—both current and future ones. Joseph and I have strong, often complementary networks in the design world, and we’re able to represent it with impact through experiences that seem to resonate strongly with both industry insiders and the general public.
Are you excited about the future? What plans do you have ahead?
So many plans. With Alcova, the imminent Miami edition and also the next Milan edition in unprecedented and unique spaces like Villa Pestarini.For Vedèt, many international projects across different sectors. We are working extensively in India, in the United States, and beginning interesting collaborations in Turkey as well! We’re always attracted to different approaches and cultures.
From January begins a typically intense period for the Studio, as we work on the identity of many projects launching for the Salone, curate exhibitions in galleries, and put online websites for emerging and established figures in the design world. By the end of the year, we already know we’ll have to roll up our sleeves, but we love our work—and keeping the adrenaline high!
