Critical Daily    Critical practice in graphic design

Part of NGO Open Design Studios project Visible data_financing culture brings up together topics on visual communication, design, technology, new media and culture politics. By using efficient tools of information design and visualization language it makes budget for culture structures more visible. This particular workshop was about financing culture in Bratislava, Slovakia.

In Slovakia, many people complain about poor quality and lack of culture. At first sight, it seems that Bratislava gives sufficient funds, but the money go mostly to institutions – so called “cultural houses” in city districts which are a kind of socialistic relic. Despite it’s quality they continue to survive because of these public subsidies while Bratislava has no real cultural center. While analyzing these data, we have also discovered that it is not easy to find out how much culture in these institutions objectively is. We want the audience itself to think whether activities such as language courses, exhibition of minerals or tea at five are adequate cultural activity worth city representation or they are more suitable for a community centers. Therefore we decided to show information about financing of these activities with help of pictograms which are the universal language of infographics. Each program activity of selected “culture houses” in Bratislava was assigned a particular pictogram. We created a map out of which we “cut” out 27 pictograms to keep them looking like a set and afterwards there was typeface made.

To pictograms we have added information about how much money particular center is receiving a certain year, and it resulted with the poster that explains with simple visual language how much money goes to the implementation of activities called “culture” in a particular centers.

Poster was a collaboration between three designers: Hana Hudáková (SK), Gergely Hangyás (HU) and Alicja Masiukiewicz (PL) and was exhibitied at numerous international exhibition and published at various magazines.