It’s Thursday again. Having been here for over a week and a half, we strut down these cobblestones with a growing confidence, and at times we practically feel like locals in this Roman neighborhood. So much so that we found ourselves doling out advice to tourists on the subject of affogatos. Throughout this week, we’ve each been discovering Rome through a unique lens, based on our individual project topics: for some it’s local street signs and Roman architecture, for others it’s the vantage point of ecclesiastical fashion or Italian filmmaking or food packaging.

This afternoon we met with Cristina Chiappini, a graphic and media designer who runs her own studio and also teaches design at several universities in Italy. She walked us through a wide range of her latest work: an exhibition design on physics and the body, branding and packaging for Lazzari pasta sauces, and stamps for San Marino celebrating fertility.

In each case, she showed a variety of starting points for ideas, from vintage brands to cultural tales to old movie clips. This has been an implicit theme of the workshop: looking beyond our peer work and design communities to source inspiration from historical references and the environment around us.

How does Cristina think about the process of design in her studio? “There is no single method,” she said. “When we start a project, we never know where we’ll end up.” That’s approximately how we’ve felt about our workshop projects too, and we’ll be pounding affogatos until the finish line Saturday.