Veronika Kurcinová: Design Can Also Be Approached Informally

Veronika Kurcinová (1997) was brought to notice as a graphic designer thanks to her school projects at the Visual Communication Studio at the Faculty of Arts of the Technical University in Košice. For her bachelor’s thesis Pohľad zdola about her own experience with achondroplasia, she took second place in the 2021 Czech Book in Progress competition, and in 2022, with another semester project, she took third place in the Zlín Design Week competition. Her last projects at school included the school newspaper FUTURE, which she created with design student Adam Zakucia, and it was shortlisted in the Student Design category and the Award of the Public at the 2024 Slovak Design Award. Previously, she was also a member of the Košice graphic studio BRUT.TO, completed an internship at the Wzorro design studio in Katowice and co-founded the creative project duo.jedenapól. she lives in Bratislava and works in the international collective Büro Milk.

Thanks to the FUTURE school newspaper project you created with Adam Zakucius, your work was first included in the Slovak Design Award exhibition in Bratislava. How did you feel about it?

Very good. Adam and I were at the exhibition’s opening, where there were many people. Given the many works in such a small space, I  initially felt a little cramped. But when we walked through the exhibition and suddenly saw our work, we were both very happy. It was a really good feeling to exhibit our student work among professionals. Inside, I literally screamed with joy.

How did you react when you learned that you had won the Special Award of the Public for your newspaper? Out of 2,064 votes, your project received the highest number – 408.

We were very surprised. I didn’t expect such great support from people because we were making the project at the Faculty of Arts in Košice  and not, for example, at our “home” Bratislava Academy of Fine Arts. That’s why neither Adam nor I believed at all that we could win. We are  both very grateful for it; it is a great success.

You created the newspaper as a semester project to mark the 25th anniversary of the Faculty of Arts of the Technical University in Košice.  How did this idea come about?

The initial impulse was that I enjoy working in a team. However, this form of work has not been preferred at our school for a longtime, and  all semester projects are done by students independently. That’s why I suggested to Adam that we do something together, which he favoured.

At first, however, we didn’t know exactly what we wanted to do; we just worked tentatively with the idea that it could be some magazine. At that time, the school had a semester assignment, FUTU 25, and the topic was to create work for the school’s anniversary. That’s when we  both realized that we could make a school newspaper. Later, we told our teachers, I told Professor Marian Oslisl, Adam to Samo Čarnoký,  who were also enthusiastic about it. We got together, and all four of us consulted a lot about the project until we transformed it into its  current form.