Francesca Uttaro

Hi, my name is Francesca Uttaro, I’m a designer and I currently own a small design studio in Rome, Italy, called Philab Studio. I’m 54 years old and I’m anglo/Italian.
I’ve always lived in an international environment, I was born and raised in Rome but I studied at a British International school in Rome. I then moved to London where I completed a BA (Hons) course in Graphic Design at Camberwell College, UAL.
At Camberwell College I really enjoyed trying out new media, I experimented with making mobile sculptures, making videos and animations and trying out different printing techniques.
After college I went back to Rome where I worked as a graphic designer in the print department of Orbit, a digital satellite TV and radio network, transmitting in North Africa and the Middle East. I worked for the company’s brand identity assets, their advertising and also their monthly magazine. It was a very large company with over 600 employees, since the main spoken language was English it attracted lots of young professionals from all over the world, so it was a lot of fun, but the graphic design work gradually became a bit repetitive and boring.
So in 1999, after working at orbit for almost 5 years, the web was beginning to take shape and I became very curious in this new media so I changed job and became a web designer at one of Italy’s first web agencies, gradually working my way up through the years to become senior Art Director. The work load was frantic and after a few years of designing websites a new opportunity came up: the agency I worked for started to produce DVD’s and being curious by nature I was immediately attracted to this, partly also because I had enjoyed working on video and animation back in my college days, so I also started working on animations and designing interactive interfaces.
In 2003 I felt the time was ripe for me to open my own little design agency. I co-founded Fabulab together with a collegue and in our little agency we worked for many different kinds of clients, for projects that ranged from websites, to DVD animation and interactive design, to print (film poster design, DVD packaging and brand identity assets). In 2014 I funded Philab, which is my current position. Philab is a multi-disciplinary small design studio where most of the work is carried out by me, so for most projects I’m mainly a freelance designer, but when I get commissioned larger projects I work as Creative Director with a team of other freelancers. Primary focus is: Front-End design and development, designing and developing online advertising assets, motion graphics, poster design, and brand identity assets (Brand Design, corporate books and brochures).