(English) The First Regional Design Conference: Skopje Poster Festival

As part of this year’s conference, the opening of which was held at Youth Cultural Center last month, for the first time the country held a regional design conference covering the topic “State of the design of the Balkans and its integration in the educational processes”. To return to the true values promoted by design and that designers shouldn’t be limited to decorators were the main conclusions of the regional conference. Design is the first visual contact with culture. From here aesthetics should be built and developed in each individual, and therefore design with bad quality should end, Balkan designers were serious about that.

“Design has time context. Design is an artifact; poster is an artifact which operates out of time and without a longitude and latitude. I’m very often led to a situation to cancel some jobs just because I feel that I don’t have enough design freedom to express myself”, said Laze Tripkov, the president of Skopje Poster Festival, adding that the inappropriate treatment by institutions, poor education about the importance of design, small financial compensation, and primarily imposed restrictions on which the designers are exposed by the customers in making their products are the key problems that representatives of the profession are complaining about.

“In the past the stakeholders respected author’s work, and the solution is to build a quality education system in the field of design. The critera are much weakened, and, firstly, the education system has to make the criteria, who are those that can deal with the design”, Macedonian artist and graphic designer Konstantin Tanchev, Dinka said.

The famous designer and also the creative director of one of the most awarded advertising agencies in the region “Bruketa&Žinić” Davor Bruketa in his lecture held within this conference emphasized that he was glad that in these digital times poster managed to survive as a reliable communication channel, which is very unusual. That is very inspiring for young artists and can be visible through the solutions sent to the competition, which are also very fresh and creative.

All that was proved by the opening ceremony of the 7th Skopje Poster where there were announced the winning posters among 2023 sent by participants from 44 countries. The first two winning posters were by participants from Turkey, and the third place went to the poster by a participant from Germany. The works were judged on the graphic design, creativity of the youth, typography, color, design.

The regional design conference is now finished, but you can still check Skopje Poster exhibition at the Youth Cultural Center gallery under the motto of “Design for Peace”, where you can see the creative works of graphic designers from around the world.

After this exhibition, the designers’ association, Plakart, opens an anniversary traveling exhibition entitled “50 best posters from 2008 to 2012” in Warsaw, Poland. The exhibition consists of 50 best posters of the first five editions of the festival themes “Tolerance”, “Power against poverty”, “Ecologic”, “HIV/AIDS” and “Free Money”.