Designers in Seoul
Designers in Tokyo
Designers in Taipei
Column Four

Light Installations
Ksawery Kirklewski is creative coding and new media artist.
Author of interactive light installations, music videos, generative animations, phygital sculptures, and realizations in public space. In his activities, he uses new technologies, programming and advertising media, focusing mostly on the digital and generative art field.
His most recent projects include: interactive light installations FLUX (Miami Art Week 2022, Signal Festival Prague 2023, Vilnius Light Festival 2024), ENTER (NXT Museum Amsterdam, Khroma New Media Museum in Berlin) and LOTUS (LOTUS brand store on Paris Fashion Week 2023); music video Symphony in Acid (Max Cooper); collectible phygital sculptures CTRL_DAT (Kate Vass Gallerie in Zurich), Digital/Analog Mirror, and BANNERS.

I think that Polish design is mainly associated with the Polish school of posters – and this is definitely superficial, because we had very good illustrators and an extremely interesting history of typography and the geopolitical changes that influenced its development.

People from other countries might not know that the design culture in Poland is deeply rooted in both tradition and innovation. The iconic Polish School of Poster, which emerged in the mid-20th century, remains influential, known for its unique blend of surrealism, symbolism, and minimalism. Another lesser-known aspect is the role of graphic design. While Polish posters have gained international recognition, graphic design, including elements like logos, packaging, and printed materials, has only recently been rediscovered and appreciated. Polish graphic design icons such as Karol Śliwka, Jerzy Treutler, and Roman Duszek are behind these influential works.

In Poland, design is still in the development phase and there is currently no one specific dominant style characteristic only of our country. Until recently, we were trying to design correctly, and now we are looking at how to design incorrectly.

Polish design culture is deeply rooted in a rich tradition of poster art, known as the "Polish School of Poster Art," a movement that combined bold graphics and a strong sense of symbolism to convey complex messages with minimal resources. Contemporary Polish design often draws inspiration from this heritage, including "designing by hand", while blending it with a modern, digital aesthetic.