Pavel Choma’s Past, Present and Future

Pavel Choma (b. 1950) is a Slovak graphic designer, exhibition architect, and educator. His most significant works are primarily in the fields of exhibition design, cultural posters, and book graphics. He recently celebrated his 75th birthday. It is, therefore, appropriate to attempt
to chronologically summarise the development of Choma’s extensive work according to his credo, which always helps him to tidy up his mind
and life: past — present — future.

After graduating from the Secondary Industrial School of Construction in Žilina, Pavel Choma studied from 1969 to 1975 at the Department  of Applied Graphics and Cartoons at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bratislava under the guidance of Professor Jozef Chovan. Initially, however, he was accepted into his desired field of illustration and free graphics, but he was subsequently transferred to utility graphics due to capacity  reasons, which was initially a great disappointment for him. In the end, however, thanks to his classmates, he acclimatized and was one of the very gifted and mature students, which was reflected in both the content and technological aspects of his work. In addition to school assignments (such as posters, promotional materials, book covers, and branding), he often worked on his own open-ended topics.

From the very beginning, Pavel Choma’s graphic design work has focused primarily on the essence of the assignment, i.e., conveying the
information effectively, ensuring readability, selecting the right typeface, creating proportional text layouts, working with images, and achieving a harmonious arrange ment of all elements.

He is not afraid to use the power of an empty space, which in many of his works even outweighs a full, active space. Choma is also characterized by the use of yellow shades in combination with black and white. He applied all these visual principles in his diploma thesis, an author’s triptych of posters for three American films: Midnight Cowboy (1969, directed by John Schlesinger), The Incident (1967, directed by  Larry Peerce), and They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? (1969, directed by Sydney Pollack). Thus, he successfully graduated from the Academy of  Fine Arts in 1975.

After completing his studies, Pavel Choma began working as a freelancer in his native Žilina. Initially, he created within the region, but his work gradually expanded to Bratislava and the entire Slovakia. He focuses primarily on the field of culture, designing theatre posters and bulletins, as well as film and exhibition posters and book graphics. Additionally, he connects visual communication with architecture within exhibition design and orientation and navigation systems.