Romanian creatives Raul Gheba and Karla Georgescu selected to join European creative elite

The Creative Express programme will this year be hosted at Pi Campus in Rome. The event, organized by the Art Directors Club for Europe (ADCE) in collaboration with Pi Campus, takes place May 18-19 2017. A true tour of Europe, previous Creative Express stops have included Helsinki, Munich and Vienna. Every edition brings together the continent’s best young art directors, copywriters and designers to tackle a real-world business challenge in a classroom like no other.

The Creative Express Rome will be the first to focus on startups: Pi Campus is a startup district and a venture fund that invests in global talent. The young creatives will be hosted at its HQ in Eur green area of Rome.

We love state-of-the-art technology applied to disrupt big slow moving industries. Artificial Intelligence is in our DNA but we love founders that add design and art to bring emotions into technology products. We invest in startups designed to be global. Italy is where our heart is,” said Marco Trombetti, Pi Campus founder.

Together with Creative Express director HP Albrecht, Trombetti will challenge 28 young creatives to develop a communication campaign aimed at inspiring designers around the world to found a startup over just two days. The final projects will be presented to a daunting audience of 100 people from the industry.

The group, split into five teams, will be mentored by an array of high profile Creative Directors. These include Ricardo Wolff, Creative Director at DDB Berlin (DE), Samuel López, Creative Director at Sr. y Sra. Wilson (ES) and Hannes Böker, Creative Director at Team Robert Rottensteiner (AT).

The up-and-coming stars have been selected from 14 European countries, nominated by their respective ADCE member clubs. To be included, they must be under 28 years of age, English speaking, and have a minimum of 2 years of professional experience. The 2017 cohort is:

Austria – Thomas Strobl, Manuel Haring

Czech Republic – Ivan Nevrela, Adam Trojak

Finland – Marina Veziko, Matti Vesanen

Germany – Karin Reineke, Jan Bröker

Iceland – Rakel Tomasdottir, Viktor Weisshappel

Italy – Giulia Mandalà, Eugenio De Riso

Portugal – Sebastião de la Guardia Ribeiro Ferreira, Maria Sá Carvalho

Romania – Raul Gheba, Karla Georgescu

Slovakia – Maroš Hamorský

Slovenia – Gregor Vuk

Spain – Ángela Serna, Guillermo Blanco, Natalia Gruñeiro, Oriol Castellar

Switzerland – Anne Langer, Diego Martínez

Ukraine – Illia Anufriienko, Kateryna Melnyk

United Kingdom – Polina Hohonova, Tom Manning

The diverse and international group will take their learnings back to agencies in their respective countries. Co-funded by Creative Europe Programme – created by the European Commission to fund development of the creative and cultural sectors – the event forms a key milestone in the ADCE’s remit to provide professional training and to promote young European creatives.

The Art Directors Club of Europe (ADCE) is a not-for-profit association headquartered in Barcelona comprised of 20 professional clubs and associations of graphic design and advertising from 19 European countries: Austria, Cyprus, Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Georgia, Iceland, Italy, Portugal, Russia, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Switzerland, United Kingdom and Ukraine. Founded in 1990, the ADCE strives to foster excellence in graphic design and advertising creativity at a European scale. The association represents more than 5,000 professionals from the field and internationally spotlights the best works accomplished at a local scale through its annual European awards.