HIGHLIGHTS | The magical circle

The circle is one of the most ancient symbols, a true jolly joker, something you simply can’t go wrong with: as one of the four basic geometric forms, it symbolizes perfection and completeness. The circular line is a token of all things divine, ethereal and spiritual: something we can only strive for, but never reach. While being a perfect and closed form, it is also open in a sense: it offers a plethora of opportunities and it’s only up to the designer which face of this endlessly variable yet still very simple form they want to show.

Thinking about it in a Hungarian context, the first thing that popped into our minds is the calendar collection of DOT for You – the brand has been using the circle since 2015: the symbol appears on the covers of notebooks sometimes as the sun bringing light, at other times in the form of hot foil stamps evoking cat’s eyes. And of course there’s our evergreen Örkény one minute story, and the drawing going hand in hand with it: „Ezt a kis testi hibával született kört ki vigasztalja meg?”.

Owing to their round shape, circles make us feel safe and comfortable, while they outline and close in. They can be tiny and fit into anywhere, but can also take up a larger space, or even the entire planet called Earth – which is, just like the drawing mentioned above, not perfect either, as it is a bit flattened near the poles, but we still like to think of it as something round. We checked out all the visual forms circles can take in the world, from Kraków to Sydney.

Kitti Mayer
design theorist

Pactics | Sydney, Australia
Martin Isaac

Big Drop | New York, USA / Kharkiv, Ukraine
Anna Kuts
Motion Design School

AltoStack – branding | Kraków/ Poznan, Poland
Netguru Team
Aga Jucha

Inaro Architects | Helsinki, Finland / Budapest, Hungary
Werklig 🦄
Lili Köves

Quicko | São Paulo, Brazil
iN – Consultoria de marcas
Felipe Takashi
Caio Campana

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