Critical Daily    Critical practice in graphic design

This project deals with current issues of wild color solutions of facades of prefabricated houses within the thermal insulation process in Bratislava and other Slovak cities. More precisely, I have serious concerns about the absence of a procedure under which the color and style are been determined. I think that It is necessary to enforce the law concession-competent people in this field (architects, designers) to pay attention to this issue from a professional point of view. Since I was only a student of graphic design at the time when my project started, and there was no legislation set for such issues, I decided to appeal to people in my flat house first with help of graphic design tools.

I divided the project into two phases. The first was about the handing out leaflets (through personal contact from door to door) to residents of my block of flats in Karlova Ves, where I live. I've asked the residents of the house to colour the plans to suit their taste. Just as they liked and want. The plans contained different instructions and recommendations about the possibility of using the grid that a panel facade has to offer and how to fill them.

After the participation of my neighbours I collected the outputs /coloured plans/. It was a colorful collection of several dozen crazy paintings, some of them with children style, some of them with flower patterns or typography. I packed the whole collection and sent to the municipal office in Karlova Ves. The package contained also a letter with a text informing the mayor of the city about the intention of my project. I was summarizing the whole event and its possible consequences in the future. After all, how would it look like if people really designed the facades by themselves in such a manner? Hopefully my shipment to the town hall did not go unnoticed.

The project 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. The course foucuses on practicing and developing individual or collaborative critical projects.