Jil Seidel is the founder and creative director of Jil Zander Studio, a multi-disciplinary practice focused on spatial concepts, installations, and food-driven projects across design, hospitality, and brand contexts. She began her career in event management at a variety theater in Germany, later training as an object and space designer and continuing her studies in graphic, fashion, and food design in Barcelona. This breadth of experience remains central to her work, informing a practice attentive to structure, collaboration, and how environments are experienced over time.
Your work lives in between disciplines—performance, spatial design, food, objects, atmosphere. When you begin a project, what’s the very first thing you try to understand: the space, the story, or the feeling?
It always starts with a feeling, and right after comes the story and the space. After someone presents a quick brief to us, my creative partner, Elisabeth Herzog, and I call each other instantly, and the core ideas begin during this initial brainstorm. Feelings rise up immediately; we associate materials, textures, and atmosphere. That’s why it’s important to communicate directly with the team and connect with collaborators to estimate timings, possibilities, and budgets. The storyline usually evolves through the brief, and the space follows the feeling of the conceptual ideas.
Your background spans Barcelona, Berlin, and multiple design cultures. How did living and working across different cities shape the way you think about space, ritual, and visual storytelling?
Berlin is a part of me because I grew up in Germany, so there’s a sense of familiarity. Its structure, clarity, and raw honesty shaped my early understanding of space. Barcelona is the opposite; it introduced me to warmth and openness, and to designing with a softer flow. Moving between different cultures expanded my sense of ritual and visual storytelling.
Coming from event management, object and space design, graphic design, fashion, and food, what part of your early creative history shows up in your work today in ways you never expected?
I honestly never expected that event management would be present again in my career after diving deep into design. Between all the creative and conceptual work, at the end of the day there is a lot of organization, requirements, and production challenges. I always hoped, but never thought, that textile art would be as involved. It’s such a pleasure to have studied many different fields and combine this knowledge into an experiential 360-degree experience. The most fundamental part is graphic design. I still think in grids and color schemes; visualizing each different concept brings me a lot of joy.
You’ve worked with global brands like Nike, HAY, New Balance, and Armani Beauty. Which collaboration challenged your practice in a way that changed something fundamental about how you design?
I think each brand or individual has its own challenges, as they are very distinctive and each has its own character, philosophy, and visual language. Creating a culinary experience for Nike this summer was a fundamental moment, where we succeeded in producing it together with Lexa Services in the concrete bowels of a Barcelona metro station, with no electricity. That experience made us realize that everything is possible, and that experiential design can be explored much further. Bringing an abandoned space to life reminded me of the transformation of German brutalist architecture, giving an existing building a temporary new purpose. Spotlighting custom-designed furniture, decoration, food, and beverages around it was a very wholesome act and atypical for Barcelona’s usual events.
You often create experiences that exist only for a moment. What does it take to design something meant to disappear? And how does the impermanence shape your creative decisions?
Andy Warhol once said, “I’m afraid that if you look at a thing long enough, it loses all of its meaning,” and I think there is something true about this. If something happens just one time, that you experience on a very special occasion, and that is created only to exist in that moment and celebrate it, it becomes far more interesting and long-lasting in human memory. Of course, good design is meant to last a lifetime and remain interesting, like a piece of art. That’s why I also create permanent installations, because strong experiential and spatial design that is modular and exchangeable can be interesting and sustainable, but it’s a very different approach. Redesigning existing spaces and concepts connected to gastronomy and hospitality is also a very interesting evolution. Everything changes—trends, the way we look at things, who we are, and what we celebrate. Both permanent and impermanent installations are fun; you can simply go a bit more wild creatively with ephemeral design.
You collaborate with chefs, textile artists, set builders, and craftspeople. How do you maintain a cohesive vision while giving each collaborator space to leave their signature?
My creative partner, Elisabeth Herzog, and I select our collaborations on a project-and theme-based approach. We first analyze the brand or the happening, discuss the aesthetic outcome, and then contact specific creatives and professionals we feel are the best fit. It’s a constant journey of discovery, meeting new people from around the world and respecting their crafts and styles. Our team spends a lot of time scouting, and when we see a project that matches someone’s style, we try to adapt it to our vision while staying within the brand’s aesthetics and preserving the signature of the artist. This way, we respect all sides while still following our creative direction.
You treat food less as cuisine and more as form, texture, and concept. What draws you to food as a design medium?
Food is fun, crafting with food is art, and food is functional, so it’s design. Nature gives us all the colors in the food we eat; we have countless textures and millions of ways to create and serve a dish. I see food as just another material to experiment with, connecting the design of a plate or dish with social interaction, scenography, and purpose. I love custom-designing food concepts for brands and individuals. It’s like designing a fashion collection for a certain season. Texture, form, and concept play the most important role in design, just as they do when creating a culinary concept. Everything should align with the concept, from welcoming to hosting, to music, to lighting, to scent, to the plate.
You lead a multidisciplinary studio. When you’re mentoring emerging creatives, what’s the one skill or mindset you think will matter most in the next decade of experiential design?
The future belongs to people who can translate between physical, digital, emotional, and technical structure and intuition. Being able to move between disciplines without losing your own voice allows you to redefine yourself and your creations again and again.
