Critical Daily    Critical practice in graphic design

Skateboarding in the capital is gradually disappearing. A fairly good skate park, which is part of the much smaller cities, in Bratislava is really missing. After the vanishing of the so-called street spots, such was the legendary Istropolis, we lost also Ružinov skatepark for financial reasons and long-corruption cases. Thus, community survives in its minority, meets in public spaces, where interfere with citizens and often comes into conflicts with legal authorities, or other subcultures.

Support from the city is the freezing point and the private sector and companies has a vague vision about their skateparks, witch is a sad part of the transformation of beauty processes in our city. But it is a long-distance race. Acute solution to this problem is called structure of so called DIY spots with minimum costs and improvised, easily constructed, often standing around the junkyards. This increasingly popular approach came finally also to our country. This is an alternative approach of the subculture, but much better than uncoordinated local approach of the official sport public or private organisation and sporting facilities. The problem with these spots, however, is often the illegal construction and subsequent non-acceptance and its extinction.

The aim of this project was to show how such spot can be constructed. I used as an example of one existing spot the Petržalka spot of the bridge Apollo. A place that originally served as a public toilet for cyclists. With such a scare spot it could be the new home for skateboarders from around Bratislava and its surroundings. Despite the higher complexity of the barriers, quite a lot of people attended this place. I created a brochure that illustrates the "content" of the individual barriers in the form of recipes, with emphasis on their low financial costs. My intention was to inspire other community members and invite them to start similar projects. I've districted the brochure on this existing spot in Petrzalka to promote such idea but there was not enough people that day so I did not target enough of my potential audience.

For this project I had only few days, so in such a short time it is really very hard to reach the target audience. Following this assessment, I quickly chose the internet as a channel of communication and information sent digitally. There was a slightly higher percentage of respondents that became interested. In the future I will certainly choose internet as a medium of communication for such issue.

This poster was created during the course Critic – Critical practice in Graphic Design at Department of Visual Communication at Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava. Tutored by Katarna Balážiková. The course foucuses on practicing and developing individual or collaborative critical projects.