Design Concept
Design Consulting

Brand Development

ABOUT
Bio and Approach,
Skills, Experience,
and Concentration

Gabriele

Gutwirth

Communication

Design

Design Is Intelligence Made Visible.

/ ALINA WHEELER

Short Biography and

Work Approach

The Designer

Gabriele Gutwirth is a German designer who specializes in design concept, design consulting, and brand development. She is a trained expert in communication design (Dipl.-Designer [FH]/BA, University of Applied Sciences Augsburg, Germany) and has an additional qualification in the visual arts (MFA, Miami International University of Art & Design, USA). Gutwirth holds a higher education teaching university certificate.

Good Design Builds Upon Prioritization.

Gutwirth believes a target-oriented selection of data keeps business ventures uncluttered and administrative expenses manageable, provides responsible interaction with resources, and simultaneously, facilitates the exploration of advanced solutions and opportunities. Therefore, her work approach underlies a focused decision-making process which results in a well thought out summary of information presented in a purposeful and logically structured manner. Both conceptually and visually, Gutwirth puts a great emphasis on a forward-looking and accurate form of communication that creates a strong foundation for the expansion of subsequent design and organizational tasks.

Skills and Experience

A Conclusive Concept of Skills and Experience

The word ‘design’ is predominantly associated with something that can be perceived visually. However, a design can go beyond visual presence. A design is nothing else but a sophisticated structure or an elaborate system. ‘Design’ basically functions as a collective name for a subject independent from visual or non-visual attributes provided that all of its components are plausibly and ingeniously combined and lead to a solution executed in its most expedient option.

Communication design in particular is a design sector that covers a wide range of specialization possibilities which similarly exceeds visual composition practice; for instance it could include editorial work and conception, marketing, and strategy. It is a profession in which designers are trained to develop functional and cohesive systems of visual and non-visual communication elements that reveal their purpose as consistent and clear as possible.

Gutwirth’s specific work portfolio encompasses prestige projects for global leading corporations, including corporate design and branding, employer branding, design and marketing consulting, and change communication. She also has extensive knowledge in brand conception for B2B and B2C niche brands and special industries.

Her consulting expertise results from her long-term experience in managing and supervising international projects in human resources, but also from her participation in transformation processes.

Gutwirth’s concepts strongly benefit from her intercultural skills, which she has significantly refined in her additional qualification abroad. This Master of Fine Arts program, involving visual arts education, academic work, and art exhibition experience additionally increased her creative abilities of lateral and parallel thinking, analogy building and change of perspective.

Concentration

Areas of Concentration

Design Concept

The development of a design concept mainly takes place as a single task within an already elaborate brand, serving as an extension of its concept in consideration of its existing corporate identity guidelines.

Design concept measures are usually smaller in scope and often developed for an exclusive one-time occurrence for exceptional requirements or special orders.

Design Consulting

Design consulting focuses on corporate sections that provide larger amounts of information, containing complex ventures and processes, and mostly serves strategic purposes and goals within an organization such as in organizational change and organizational development projects, research and development, as well as in academic work. It sustainably fosters organizational knowledge exchange and communication, and corporate progress.

Striving for a target-oriented reduction and precise pooling of information, design consulting focuses on core messaging. These measures aim to facilitate the processing of content through restructuring, prioritization, and simplification, develop an intelligible storyline, as well as to translate some written parts into visualizations such as information graphics.

In summary, design consulting consists of well thought out editorial content development involving information design expertise and, furthermore, consulting activities such as sparring and mentoring.

Brand Development

Developing a brand means making sure that a specific venture, project or product becomes tangible and fully comprehensible to a specific group of recipients. Therefore, every brand development, small or large in scope, goes far beyond creating a visual presence. It is an intense and, depending on its mission and vision, sometimes even long-term evolutionary process.

The crucial part of brand development always lies behind the surface appearance of a brand. Independent from the size of a development project, which can be for a start-up company, a corporate brand as well as an internal project branding within an existing brand, the more conclusive and thought out a brand’s purpose and goal, the clearer its benefit and the higher its lasting impact.

Similarly to design consulting, a brand development process underlies well-grounded examination and analysis, valid research and structured conceptual work in advance in order to generate a convincing overall concept.

Science, Art and Design

The Reciprocal Relationship between Science, Art and Design

Gutwirth is interested in natural learning, educational science, support of true talent, and human identity, behavior and culture. She considers artistic activities to be useful methods for boosting creativity, intellectual growth, the ability of problem solving, as well as the improvement of critical thinking, which are essential prerequisites for the development of authentic self-confidence.

Through her education in the visual arts and her artistic examination of topics such as intellectual progress, distinction and decision making, Gutwirth perceives her training in this sector as a milestone in her personal evolution. Her precise artistic procedure, including her underlying motifs for creating a work and the following review process of explaining and defending her concept, have led her to sharpen her skills substantially and brought them to a higher level. Based on her own experience, creating art can be seen as an intrinsically motivated research methodology.

Artistic thinking’s exceptional ability to generate innovative ideas across the spectrum of human knowledge and, also, the natural overall approach of creating art, has always influenced societal development. Since the movements of Modern Art when artists intentionally broke the rules of academism to explore new topics and techniques, creating their pieces more intuitively and individually, the field of art serves as a platform for playful experimentation and investigation free of limitations. Hence, even though art mainly arises without the need for pragmatism, it often provides approaches that contain beneficial insights for wider audiences.

Artistic viewpoints can prevent one-way-thinking and initiate unexpected, out-of-the-box solutions. Considering this, idea generation in art also makes a great impact on the field of design. If an artistic project shows high potential of representing a prototype for practical utilization and its feasibility and replicability can successfully be validated by reliable (scientific) verification methods, art can turn into a functioning system: a design.

Gabriele Gutwirth

Do The Best You Can Until You Know Better. Then When You Know Better, Do Better.

/ MAYA ANGELOU

Curriculum Vitae

Experience, Responsibilities, Academic Record and Awards

2019–present

Gabriele Gutwirth Communication Design; Germany

2019

Miami International University of Art & Design, Faculty of Interior Design, Member of The Examination Commitee, appointed by Thelma Lazo-Flores (PhD), Lead Faculty, Interior Design; Miami, FL, USA

Laundromat Art Space, Artist in Residence; Little Haiti, Miami, FL, USA

Miami International University of Art & Design, MFA Visual Arts Outstanding Achievement Award for exceptional performance and portfolio; Miami, FL, USA

Miami International University of Art & Design, Graduate Course Development (course structure and evaluation): ‘The Artist Identity’; Miami, FL, USA

Miami International University of Art & Design, Teacher Training (Teaching Methodologies); Miami, FL, USA

2019–present

SHIM Art Network, Alumni Member (05/2020–present), SHIM Invitational Member Artist (–04/2020); Brooklyn, NY, USA

2018

Miami International University of Art & Design, International Student Scholarship; Miami, FL, USA

2017–2023

THE LINE MIAMI Artist Collective, Invitational Project Member (10/2017–06/2023) and Juror (–03/2020); Miami, FL, USA

2016–2019

Miami International University of Art & Design, MFA (Visual Arts), under Wes Carson (MFA), Judith Berk King (MFA), and Stephanie Laffer (PhD),

Subject of the MFA thesis: ‘Connectivity’,

CGPA 4.00 (equivalent to 1.0 according to the German Academic Grading System); Miami, FL, USA

2011–2015

AUDI AG, Audi Academy, Audi Certified Marketing Consultant, Service Market Development [Audi Service Marktbearbeitung]; Ingolstadt, Germany

2009

Friedrich-Prinz-Fonds Façade Award for the partial reconstruction of a historic residential and commercial building (Reformarchitektur, around 1900), Lederle & Gutwirth GbR; Antonsviertel, Augsburg, Germany

2008–2015

MINDCRAFTS Communications GmbH, Owner, CEO, and Creative Director, client base included leading brands such as the MAN Group, Audi, Peugeot, and Klassik Radio; Augsburg, Germany

2000–2008

MINDCRAFTS Gabriele Gutwirth, Founder, Owner, and Creative Director; Augsburg, Germany

1997

‘The Product 2010 Challenge – Innovate, Don’t Imitate’, nationwide case study initiated by Procter & Gamble, Saatchi & Saatchi, Focus, inno-tec; Team Backstage, 2nd place overall; Schwalbach am Taunus, Germany

1994–1999

University of Applied Sciences Augsburg, Diplom-Designer (FH)/BA (Communication Design), under Prof. Rainer Frost, Prof. Hans Richard Heitmann, and Prof. Joachim Palm,

Subject of the diploma [graduation] thesis: development of an interactive educational game for children, ‘The CD-ROM as children’s toy – concept, structure and illustration of a children’s CD-ROM’,

CGPA 3.70 (equivalent to 1.5 according to the German Academic Grading System); Augsburg, Germany

Studio Space

Visual Arts Experience

Art Exhibition Record

2019–2020

‘Artists Draw Their Studios’, group exhibition, Art and Culture Center Hollywood; Hollywood, FL, USA

2019

‘SHIM Invitational 7’, group exhibition, Odetta Gallery; Bushwick, Brooklyn, NY, USA

‘THE LINE MIAMI Selection’, group exhibition, Laundromat Art Space; Little Haiti, Miami, FL, USA

2018–2019

‘Connectivity’, MFA thesis exhibition, AXS art at AXS law; Wynwood, Miami, FL, USA

‘Symbiotic’, group exhibition, AXS art at AXS law; Wynwood, Miami, FL, USA

2018

aqua art Miami, THE LINE MIAMI Artist Collective in partnership with the SHIM Art Network and ArtHelix Gallery, Brooklyn, NY, USA; Miami Beach, FL, USA

‘The Wizard of Oz Contemporary Interpretations – The Educational Exhibition’, group exhibition, The Frank – Frank C. Ortis Art Gallery and Exhibit Hall in partnership with the Miami Children’s Museum; Pembroke Pines, FL, USA

‘Frank Contemporaries’, pop-up exhibition, The Frank – Frank C. Ortis Art Gallery and Exhibit Hall; Pembroke Pines, FL, USA

2017–2019

‘Connectivity Drawings and Collages’, solo exhibition, buerofuenf; Augsburg, Germany

2016–2017

‘La Isla Única’, Ocean Sotheby’s International Realty; Islamorada, FL, USA;

‘Cross Currents’, MFA exhibition, Miami International University of Art & Design; Miami, FL, USA

2016

‘Connected’, pop-up exhibition, Hogan Lovells; Miami, FL, USA

‘La Isla Única’, solo exhibition, The Treeeden Orlando; Groveland, FL, USA

‘Crossroads’, MFA exhibition, Miami International University of Art & Design; Miami, FL, USA

Art Collaborations

2019

‘Artists Draw Their Studios’, curated by Michelle Weinberg; Miami, FL, USA/Manhattan, NY, USA

2017–2023

‘THE LINE Drawing Project – A Transformative Collaborative Drawing Project’, global Exquisite Corpse, THE LINE MIAMI Artist Collective, curated by Joana Fischer; Miami, FL, USA; instagram.com/the_line_drawing_project