Two Lectures from Poland: Historical Type for the Blind and Branding for Culture
The Department for Visual Communication at AFAD invites you to the Satelit Design Gallery for two lectures by the Polish designers Viktoriya Grabowska and Filip Zagórski. The event is brought to you in cooperation with the Polish Design Week and Slovak Design Center.
New Life for Forgotten Typeface: A Tactile Alphabet in the Education of the Blind
Viktoriya Grabowska
The starting point for the research was Wilhelm Klein’s typeface designed more than 200 years ago for people with vision loss or impairment. Relief is the base of the idea, and later Braille substituted it since it is more effective concerning, for example, speed or reading. However, Klein’s typeface can still be instrumental for educational purposes. The goal of the revival project is producing a system of digital fonts and testing it according to users’ needs in reading by touch, and for the possibilities of reproducing techniques.
Viktoriya Grabowska is a typographer, researcher, and lecturer. Born in Simferopol in the Crimea, Viktoriya now lives and works in Poznań, Poland. Viktoriya cooperates with various typography houses including Cornel Windlin Studio, Lineto, Darden Studio, Studio Norm, Rosetta, and Sorkin Type. She lectures at the University of Arts and the School of Form in Poznań.
Branding for Culture: How to Work with/for the Institutions
Filip Zagórski (Type2)
Design for Culture in Polish Context. Rationalism vs Romanticism.
Paradoxes can describe the graphic design in Poland: West / East, rigour and the need for autonomy, systematic approach and polish rebellious soul, rationalism and romanticism. This abundance of opposing characteristics produces a creative tension in which we (Polish designers) continuously try to fight the omnipresent visual chaos.
Type2 is a Warsaw-based design office founded by Rafał Benedek and Filip Zagórski. They specialise in designing complex visual identity systems. Type2 deliver idea-based, content-driven design solutions with typographic sensibility. They have been lecturing on design-related subjects in China, India, and Mexico. Currently, Type2 are teaching at the School of Form (Poznań) and SWPS University (Warsaw). In 2018, Type2 founded (together with Rene Wawrzkiewicz) the Warsaw Design LAB – a new independent school of visual communication.
