Felix Pfäffli is a Swiss graphic designer, type designer, illustrator, artist, and educator. Born in 1986 and raised in Lucerne, he was shaped by a creative family environment: both parents were teachers, his father also a graphic designer and artist, and his mother a philosopher. Even before his formal education, he was involved in the local cultural and music scene, designing posters for events and festivals, which he often screen-printed himself.

Erich Brechbühl, a renowned poster designer from Lucerne, played a pivotal role in shaping Pfäffli’s early interest in graphic design. While still in high school, Pfäffli encountered him during a project for a local cultural center. Through this collaboration, Brechbühl introduced him to the fundamentals of graphic design and print production, sparking his enduring passion for poster art.

Felix Pfäffl later studied graphic design at the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts, known for its strong emphasis on craftsmanship. Despite this connection to analog techniques, he was fascinated early on by all things digital – programming, the possibilities of 3D software, and animation. This led him to experiment with generative design and animated posters, long before digital screens in public spaces became an established medium for such work.

In 2009, he interrupted his studies before the final year to delve deeper into his own design questions. During this time, he founded his own studio under his nickname «Feixen» and began working professionally. By the time he graduated with a bachelor's degree, he was already fully immersed in client projects and, just a year later, was appointed as a teacher at the «Fachklasse Grafik» in Lucerne, where he still teaches today.

As a young teacher with no formal pedagogical training, he adopted unconventional methods: He began lessons without a fixed guidelines, allowing the students' interests to shape the curriculum. He organized ambitious group projects, such as creating typographic experiments from found objects in their environment, and introduced students to programming logic by having them translate analog designs into step-by-step rules.

Nationally, Felix Pfäffli gained recognition for innovative graphic solutions for cultural institutions, such as a three-dimensional hidden-object image for the youth radio station 3fach. All the billboards in the fictional cityscape were sold to sponsors, making the campaign both a fundraising initiative and a nationwide advertising project. In 2012, his work was featured in 100 Years of Swiss Graphic Design at the Museum für Gestaltung in Zürich, placing him among the renowned names of Swiss graphic history.

In 2013, Felix Pfäffli became the youngest-ever member of the Alliance Graphique Internationale «AGI», an exclusive group of the world’s leading graphic designers. A year later, he won the TDC Prize in Tokyo, which marked his first trip abroad to Japan. Over the following years, he gave lectures and workshops at some of the most renowned design schools worldwide. From Europe to Russia, Lebanon, and China, as well as Japan, South Korea, the USA, and South America.

Pfäffli’s international breakthrough came with the poster series for the Südpol a multi-cultural center in Lucerne. Between 2010 and 2015, he designed over 100 posters, celebrated for their visual diversity, radical typography, and vibrant use of color.

The series was exhibited internation-ally, including two simultaneous solo exhibitions in France in 2014: In Le Havre on the northern coast, the original posters were displayed, while in Chaumont further inland, over 500 sketches revealed the creative process behind the work.

As projects became increasingly diverse and demanding, the studio expanded in 2015 and was renamed «Studio Feixen». Despite its growth, the studio remained intentionally small – never employing more than four people at a time. The focus was consistently on quality and creative ambition rather than growth.

In subsequent years, Felix and the studio developed graphic concepts and campaigns for clients such as Apple, Dropbox, Nike, Chanel, and Hermès. One of their most notable and controversial works came in 2017 with the launch of the Samsung Galaxy S8. They redesigned Switzerland’s most-read newspaper 20 Minuten, for a single day, covering all its content with colorful brushstrokes and turning the entire issue into an advertisement. That same year, the studio received the prestigious Swiss Design Award for its experimental approach.

While Pfäffli led the studio both operationally and creatively, its work was deeply influenced by the talents and interests of its long-standing team members. Until 2021, Pfäffli worked closely with Raphael Leutenegger, whose passion for gastronomy led to unique projects such as an edible exhibition in China and the opening of the pizzeria Da Marcello, now renowned as the best pizzeria in central Switzerland. Alice Poma brought her publishing expertise and sensitivity for microtypography, introducing innovative approaches to publication design.

Robin Eberwein, whose talent for typography and complex design projects became evident early on, started as an intern at Studio Feixen and continues to collaborate with Felix Pfäffli on various projects. Their initial experiments with the emerging format of variable fonts led to the founding of the type foundry Studio Feixen Fonts in 2019. The foundry's technically sophisticated typefaces are now used worldwide in design projects.

Beyond his creative practice, Pfäffli has always been driven by the question of how creative work can be taught and passed on. Together with Tobias Klauser, head of the Fachklasse Grafik, he spent four years developing the Graphic Design Workflow, a two-meter-long leporello that visually maps the design process and details every step. First published in German in 2022, it was translated into several languages the following year and is now used in design education worldwide.

Felix Pfäffli's work unites contrasts: rooted in the tradition of Swiss graphic design, it consciously defies its neutrality and restraint. His colorful, often technically sophisticated designs speak an abstract yet emotional language, often cleverly concealing their origins. Collaboration is central to his practice, allowing him to push disciplinary boundaries and explore new fields. From interactive posters to animated covers to murals to large-scale animations and, most recently, furniture design with the Crocodile Chair, released in 2024, whose form surprises and compels a smile.


Felix Pfäffli lives and works in Lucerne, Switzerland.

For more insights, listen to Felix’s interview on the German podcast Ohne den Hype.