Nikolaus Hafermaas - Berlin Unplugged: Design, Education, and the Courage to Disrupt

Nikolaus Hafermaas is a designer, educator, artist, and lifelong experimenter whose career moves fluidly between practice and pedagogy, Europe and the United States, the analogue and the digital. A self-described classic car romantic and spirited driver, his work is grounded in physical experience, curiosity, and resistance to comfort—values that shape both how he designs and how he teaches.

Growing up in Kassel, Hafermaas encountered art early as a source of awe rather than instruction. With a father who was an early computer engineer and a mother who worked as an illustration artist, his formative years unfolded between technology and craft. Childhood beach holidays spent building improvised objects from flotsam and jetsam laid the foundations for a mindset rooted in making, hacking, and learning by doing.

At eighteen, he left Kassel for Berlin to study Visual Communication at UdK, choosing breadth over specialisation at a time when design education favoured narrow paths. Alongside his studies, he became a partner at the emerging agency Triad Berlin, later working on cultural exhibitions, expo pavilions, and large-scale brand experiences for institutions and global companies. These spatial and narrative projects informed his conviction that graphic design cannot be confined to surfaces or screens.

Teaching emerged organically through talks, workshops, and his involvement in Berlin’s Young Creative Industries during the city’s “poor but sexy” era. In 2002, he became a professor in Bremen, embracing an integrated design approach shaped by trial, error, and what he calls productive ignorance. This trajectory culminated at ArtCenter College of Design, where he reimagined the Graphic Design programme as Transmedia Design, an education in orchestrating graphics, motion, interaction and space into holistic experiences.

Across institutions in Europe, the U.S., and Mexico, Hafermaas has championed fearlessness, collaboration, and critical engagement with technology. He challenges students to leave their comfort zones, distrust convenience, and resist tools that promise speed without depth. For him, design education is not about producing specialists for a market, but designers able to navigate complexity, uncertainty, and responsibility with courage and empathy.

A mentor who insists that experimentation and play are necessities rather than luxuries, Nikolaus Hafermaas continues to push design education beyond screens, silos, and safe answers, toward learning that remains restless, human, and alive.

Since its inception in 2019, Design Education Talks podcast has served as a dynamic platform for the exchange of insights and ideas within the realm of art and design education. This initiative sprang from a culmination of nearly a decade of extensive research conducted by Lefteris Heretakis. His rich background, intertwining academia, industry, and student engagement, laid the foundation for a podcast that goes beyond the conventional boundaries of educational discourse.

See all of our work on on https://linktr.ee/thenewartschool
Follow us on twitter at @newartschool
Read our latest articles at https://newartschool.education/
and https://heretakis.medium.com/

Equipment used to produce the podcast:
Rodcaster pro II
Rode NT1 5th generation
Elgato Low profile Microphone Arm
Monster Prolink Studio Pro microphone cable

The rest of the equipment is here 👉https://kit.co/heretakis/podcasting