Luca Scarpellini is an Italy-based Creative Director and Project Manager working across brand identity, graphic design, editorial design, web experiences, and creative direction. In this interview, Luca Scarpellini reflects on aesthetics and functionality, the evolution of design in the AI era, and why transparency, dialogue, and intellectual honesty remain essential in creative work. The conversation explores his multidisciplinary approach to design, shaped by art, engineering, scenography, and decades of hands-on creative experience.
“The real innovation isn’t that we don’t know what the future holds - it’s that this future is literally tomorrow.”
What drew you into design as a discipline, and what keeps you engaged in it today?
I’ve always been fascinated by “beauty” — not as a measure of personal taste, but as the delicate balance between aesthetics and functionality. A balance you find as much in graphic design as in art. Every artistic expression carries a message: in graphic design, that message is tightly bound to function, and effectiveness defines the result; in art — which has no intrinsic function — the message itself becomes the function, while effectiveness turns subjective and becomes emotion.
Ever since I was a child, I felt the need to bring order to chaos. I did it in my father’s garage, in my mother’s drawers, with my own things, all arranged by colour, height, shape, and function. Over time, I turned that small obsession into a job that, thirty years on, still manages to surprise me.
Design is curiosity, courage, and the ability to question yourself constantly. It’s about staying a little bit of a child in a world that, as it grows up, dries out. To be a designer you have to be ready to push yourself hard, to move stubbornly against the grain — against society, but also against yourself. That’s what still keeps me glued to my chair every day, and what makes me think that, maybe, it was worth it.
When working on a project, what signals tell you that a design is doing its job well?
It doesn’t always happen the same way. Sometimes the first intuition already hints at a good outcome; other times the bin fills with discarded paper and it takes weeks for the right idea to take shape. There are cases where the right idea simply never arrives, and you’re left with craft and theory to fall back on: you start composing elements by the rules. Sometimes the project stays within the “well-made”; other times, when you manage to break the grid, something extraordinary emerges.
After thirty years in the trade I’ve developed a certain instinct for sensing in advance whether a project will work. Effectiveness depends a lot on the client and on how much they believe in the project. I firmly believe the client is a fundamental part of the creative process, and contributes a good 60% to the final result. Proactivity, listening, dialogue, and dedication are the key ingredients — without them, it’s hard to get past going through the motions.
Every project, then, has its own nature. A website, a catalogue, a book, a social media kit speak different languages and answer to different goals and rules — they each demand a different approach. Sometimes you’re free to roam creatively; other times you design within significant constraints: SEO and GEO positioning for a website, the technical limits of a product catalogue, social media formats. Every constraint is an incredible opportunity.
Which part of your workflow tends to slow you down the most, and why?
I’m a perfectionist, and that’s my biggest flaw: I tend to burn a lot of energy and time in the very first phase of design. I start with an idea and try to develop it; if it ages quickly and starts boring me, I throw everything out and begin again. I’m demanding, especially with myself, and until I’m sure I’ve found the right direction, I don’t sleep at night. The good news is that the moment I finally see it all click, 70% of the work is already done.
Another thing that slows me down is my inability to stop at a preliminary sketch. I just can’t — it’s stronger than me: if the draft isn’t balanced, complete, and in colour, I can’t bring myself to show it to the client. That makes the first phase the most delicate one. The flip side is that when I do arrive at the client with the finished project, the feedback is almost always positive, and the work moves fast from there.
When designing for attention, how do you decide what deserves the most visual priority?
There’s no single answer: it depends on the goals of the project. A website built to convert or generate leads will put the emphasis on the buttons that lead to direct contact, with an engaging look and a recognisable stylistic signature. For more layered sites, I sometimes design two kinds of buttons: one for primary actions, more prominent, and a more neutral one for less important links.
For sites belonging to artists, photographers, artisans, and art galleries, the conversation changes. The visual has to step into the background so it doesn’t steal the scene from the content: the layout will be clean, free of decorative flourishes, accent colours, or recurring graphic elements, with generous, airy space that lets the work breathe.
A personal brand website with no ambition for structured positioning, finally, will focus the user’s attention on the keywords and the brand philosophy. That’s the typical case where the container takes on an unexpected, unique form, able to carry the client’s value proposition and tone of voice. It’s the kind of site I prefer as a designer: with no technical constraints, it’s a blank sheet from which a truly one-of-a-kind project can emerge.
Can you share an example of a design decision that didn’t perform as expected? What did you learn from it?
Failure is part of the process. The skill a good designer develops over the years is noticing it as the project unfolds, and correcting course in time. That takes two qualities, essentially: the first is seeing early on where the project is heading; the second is being able to talk with suppliers and clients to find, together, the best path forward — sometimes one that’s even better than what you’d originally planned.
I can give the example of an Italian tour operator I’ve been working with for many years on the design of their travel catalogues. The publications are built around original illustrations, whose style, subjects, and concept evolve year by year. After six years, I decided to change the illustration style, moving from hand-drawn work to collage. The decision came from two reasons: it was time to refresh the cover approach, also in light of major changes inside the company; and the illustrator we’d worked with for those six years had limited availability.
I picked a new illustrator who got down to work. Unfortunately the initial concept turned out to be unsuitable, and from the first sketches it was already clear that the client wasn’t satisfied — and neither was I, as art director. The new illustrator, moreover, didn’t show much interest in the project and pushed back on requests to revise the concept. The atmosphere was heating up and the relationship with the client was wavering.
So I made a drastic decision: reset everything and start from scratch, two weeks from the agreed delivery date. It was a risky move to change illustrators at the last minute, but in a few weeks, working hand-in-hand at a relentless pace, we managed to produce a set of creative pieces that satisfied both us and the client.
What did I learn? Well, this year I sent the contract to the client three months earlier than last year ;-). Joking aside, the most important lesson — confirmed once again — is that intellectual honesty and transparency, with collaborators and clients alike, are usually repaid with respect and lasting trust.
What changes in tools, technology, or user behaviour do you think will redefine design in the near future?
A question like this, in the middle of the AI era, would deserve an essay of its own. In the last three years — six, really, because Covid-19 sparked attention toward new technologies like no event before — a lot has changed.
Tools have changed, first of all, and that’s plain for everyone to see. What’s changed even more is the speed at which we jump from one tool to another: that’s perhaps the most radical shift, at least for someone like me, a child of an analogue generation. Today we use the Adobe suite, tomorrow we move to Affinity, and the day after we’re back in Adobe because — in the meantime — the integration with Claude lets us work inside Adobe through chat. Freepik used to be the bogeyman for designers; the recent integration of AI tools has turned it into a bottomless source of assets. On the flip side, stock image banks like Getty Images, 123 Photos, Pixabay, and Pexels have lost their appeal. The real innovation isn’t that we don’t know what the future holds — it’s that this future is literally tomorrow.
Clients have changed too. Their perception of our work has shifted — not always for the worse, to be clear. Today the client has tools in their hands that make them more proactive. We designers have had to accept that the skills gap between us and the average client has narrowed, and with it our power to push a project, a stylistic signature, a copy, a strategy. The person we’re talking to is more aware than ever: we can no longer present ourselves as outside consultants who point the way, but as advisers who choose that way together with the client and walk alongside them on the journey.
Finally, the users who experience our work have changed. The same point applies as with clients: people today are more aware, less swayed by classic aggressive marketing tactics, and increasingly drawn to authentic, transparent brands that speak in a friendly voice. On top of that, digital tools let anyone translate any web or print page with a single click: this loss of control over the actual form of the message is demanding an enormous effort from us. Never before has layout, colour, and visual language — especially in the mare magnum of poorly AI-generated images — mattered as much in carrying a message through.
What will the future hold? I don’t know, but we’ll probably find out tomorrow morning.
What mindset or habit has been the most valuable in your growth as a designer?
As I’ve already hinted between the lines of the previous answers: transparency. As a person — and as a professional — I’ve never compromised on intellectual honesty and sincerity. I don’t like artificial communication, I don’t like people in suits and ties, I don’t like it when someone thinks they sit on a higher rung than mine (on a human level, that is).
This mindset hasn’t made life easy, either personally or professionally. It’s cost me important contracts over the years, but it’s preserved my human side, and that’s the most important achievement I’ve ever made. It’s helped me grow as a professional alongside my clients and my collaborators. It’s built solid relationships and taught me a great deal.
If today I can speak different languages, from art to programming; if I can hold a conversation about the SEO writing of an article as comfortably as I can debate a moodboard for an editorial series, I owe it to this. On my brand new website, I insisted on including a Manifesto page, a true statement of intent, inspired by the central thesis of the Cluetrain Manifesto, which I’ve always felt close to: markets are conversations.
Key Facts
- Name: Luca Scarpellini
- Location: Rome, Italy
- Specialties: Creative Direction, Brand Identity, Editorial Design, Web Design, Art Direction
- Focus Areas: Visual Communication, Project Management, Brand Development, Packaging
- Background: Mechanical Engineering, Scenography, Graphic Design
- Experience: 25+ years across creative direction, entertainment, design, and production
- Approach: Combining artistic sensitivity with structured, strategic thinking
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