I write posts and essays covering contemporary culture, art history, exhibition reviews, film & animation, graphic design, advice for artists and philosophical musings. To see all posts I’ve published here, please visit the Archive. For articles on painting background, theory and techniques, please visit my other blog. Enjoy!
As soon as November comes, with its gloominess and cold, my (already big) appetite for all things dark and morbid grows even bigger. To be fair, as someone who blossoms in light and warmth, I do actually find it hard not to succumb to misery when days get significantly shorter and darker, but I try to make the most of…
Some weeks ago I had the pleasure of visiting a friend in Berlin and on a Sunday afternoon found myself in Prenzlauer Berg, sitting at a lovely place with a somewhat ironic name, given how left-wing the city is, the Kapitalist Café. I was sitting there with a glass of wine, an oldskul notebook and a head full of thoughts and…
Despite an enormous interest in music from my early childhood, I didn’t grow up watching music videos. At home we had neither MTV nor any other music channel, so it was only when I was visiting friends that I could watch videos accompanying songs I was listening to. With the arrival of YouTube, I finally had a chance to fill the gaps…
They say that good design doesn’t make itself visible, so you don’t notice it, whereas you will immediately notice bad design. I’ve been wondering if the same applies to typography in public spaces, i.e. whether the well-designed signs are indeed so invisible (the fact that the bad ones are only too visible, is something I have no doubts about. In…
Women artist don’t enjoy the kind of spotlight men often get. Kira Cochrane from the Guardian wrote 3 years ago: How many female artists featured in the top 100 auction sales, ranked by price, last year? Gemma Rolls-Bentley, an independent curator, decided to find out. One day, not long ago, she sat down with the 2012 list, “and spent a…
There’s a term I’ve always liked: cross-genre, and I’ve often used it to describe my own work. Just as I avoid pigeonhole-ing things in life, I’m attracted to works that escape genre classifications and narrow paths. I find that it’s at these intersections of styles and forms that true magic can be born. Once-upon-a-time a complete theatre-addict, these days you…
My life has recently been revolving around animation, as I’ve been working on a little animated intro for my website and finishing an old project, which is an animated music clip to Fly on the Windscreen by Depeche Mode. The latter involved getting deep into expressions, which, as every After Effects adept knows, is not an easy territory. But after…
Photo by Patrycja Mic Last weekend, I took part in a conference called Element Talks, dedicated to practical aspects of working as a designer. The event, this year in its 3rd edition (though the first one to be held in Warsaw, the previous two were in Poznań), attracted hundreds of people, including students, professionals, as well as commercial and non-profit companies…
1. Geek Girls Carrots Geek Girls Carrots is an organisation dedicated to connecting, teaching/learning and inspiring women in Tech and IT. Why carrots? Kamila Sidor, the heart and soul of GGC, explains: “Geeks and long-lasting coding are usually associated with pizza and junk food. With carrots we wanted to make sure our community was associated with a healthy lifestyle.” She thinks that…
A kiss is a lovely trick designed by nature to stop speech when words become superfluous ― Ingrid Bergman The first kiss, like a job interview, can be a thoroughly nerve-racking experience. This curious way of passing approx. 80 million bacteria from our lips to someone else’s generates so many anxieties and uncertainties that the internet is flooded with articles…
At the end of last year, I had the pleasure of seeing a wonderful exhibition at the British Library, which celebrates 150 years of the publication of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. The exhibition contains an abundance of fascinating material to read and look at. We’ve got Lewis Carroll’s original handwritten manuscript of Alice’s Adventures Under Ground, as well as his…
I love working with music. So I was very happy when Colin Z. Robertson aka Hands of Ruin asked me to design a cover for his soundtrack album to James Sibley Watson and Melville Webber’s 1933 silent film, Lot in Sodom, based on the Biblical tale of the city of Sodom and Gomorrah. Prior to Lot, Colin designed a soundtrack…
