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Goffredo Puccetti is a graphic designer and Associate Professor of Practice at NYU Abu Dhabi; as the first faculty of Visual Design at NYUAD he has designed 8 classes on a broad range of topics in Visual Communications, from Type Design and Calligraphy to Branding, Wayfinding and Universal Design.
His research interests span from visual communication to policy making with a special attention to inclusive design and cross-cultural visual communication.
He received his education in Rome, Italy at Università La Sapienza and CentroStudi Comunicazione Enrico Cogno & Associati. Prior to join NYUAD in 2011, he has been working in Italy, UK and France for blue chip multinational clients and institutions all around the world such as:
Axa Insurance France, CNR Italia, CNRS France, Mars España, Moto Guzzi, NTT Europe, Paris Descartes University, Pirelli, Pyrex, Musée du Louvre, Samick Music Corporation.
He has received international accolades for logo design such as Wolda World of Logos Awards, MarCom Awards, B2BEurope Awards.
His students have designed award winning visual identities for prestigious MENA and UAE institutions such as Abu Dhabi Art, WWF/UAE, AlSadeem Astronomy, Arab Women in Computing, and many others for various NYUAD Centers, Laboratories and Departments.
As part of the ongoing research with the philosopher of cognition Roberto Casati (Institut Nicod, Paris), Goffredo has brought students to the top of the Burj Khalifa in Dubai to conduct a pioneering experiment to visualize earth's rotation.
Goffredo has also collaborated intensively with professor Nizar Habash at CameLab NYUAD on the design interface of the TOIA (Time Offset Interaction Application) project.
As a designer deeply invested in the emerging design scene in the UAE, he has an interest in the research around contemporary Arabic Calligraphy: he has written essays and foreword to the catalogues of the calligrapher Wissam Shawkat’s show at Mestaria Art Gallery, Dubai in 2021 and 2023; and has mentored the NYUAD 2021 alumna Tobbi Vu as she created the first digital arabic calligraphy manual online.
Goffredo has been an invited lecturer in design conferences and schools in Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Sharjah and has been featured on local (Yalla, The National, Gulf News, etc) and international press (La Repubblica, Espresso, Grafica Magazine, Passenger). He has co-curated the first show of the world renowned calligrapher Luca Barcellona in the UAE in 2014. Under the impulsion of the Italian Embassy he curated the show Italian Logo Design at NYUAD Arts Center in 2015.
As a visual artist, his work has been featured in various collective Faculty Art shows at NYUAD and at Dubai Alserkal Avenue.
His students have been admitted to best Design graduate schools around the world and started successful careers from USA to Vietnam, from Japan to the UAE. They have won prestigious UAE awards and commissions: an essential overviews of his contributions to design at NYUAD can be found here.
While teaching at NYUAD, Goffredo engaged in continuing education by enrolling in top tier Design Programs such as: P98 LetterPress Workshop with Erik Spiekermann in Berlin, 2014; Type@Paris, a five-week program led by Jean François Porchez in Paris, 2015; Kerning Faenza Letterpress and Calligraphy Workshops in Faenza, 2018 and 2019; In the UAE Goffredo attended various Arabic Calligraphy classes with artists such as Wissam Shawkat and Mohammed Mandi.
He is the author, designer and editor of the seminal book ‘Moto Guzzi, quando le Moto hanno l’anima” published in Italy by Mondadori in 2007.
Goffredo is fluent in French, English and Italian (mother-tongue) and has a passive knowledge of Spanish and Arabic which is constantly improving. He enjoys playing electric guitar and he positively sounds better in pictures.
Francesca Bizzarri is an Italian actress living in Abu Dhabi. For over a decade living in Paris, she worked in theatre, television and cinema.
A twenty-year collaboration with the Teatro delle Briciole and Cà Luogo D'arte in Parma, has seen her on stage in various international theatres from Madrid to Moscow, from Lisbon to Abu Dhabi.
She has conducted workshops on the masks and clown theater in Italy, France, Kenya and the United Arab Emirates.
She collaborated with prestigious UAE universities such as Zayed University, where she has been repeatedly invited to design workshops and with NYU Abu Dhabi where she taught her class 'Unmasking the Actor' as an Artist in Residence in 2018 and 2019.
While mainly focused on theater, her acting career involved television and cinema with roles spanning from Les Histoires Extraordinaires by Pierre Bellemare for France Television in French, to Yellow Bus by Wendy Bednarz in 2023 in English.
When Covid put all the world stages to a halt, she co-wrote and performed in the “Campagne Letterarie”, a web series devoted to the Italian Language.
She participated in Dubai Expo 2020 and at the Sharjah International Book Fair 2022 with a traveling theater and puppet performance. In October 2023 her bilingual show La Lezione di Teatro / The Acting Class debuted at The Junction in Dubai. In September 2024 the show got four nominations at The Junction Awards and won the award for best regional play and Francesca for Best Actress. The 'Lezione' is touring in the UAE and Europe in the Fall 2024.
Francesca is fluent in Italian, French and English and her Arabic is good enough to allow her to get the best deals in the Souq.
Francesca also holds a Major in Mathematics but that was before she came to her senses.
And she married Goffredo so she is not perfect after all.
