Ty i Ja would not have appeared if it had not been for the thaw and the correlated admission of topics related to modern art, culture, design and consumption in the broadest sense of the term into the public debate. The magazine appeared in 1959 on the initiative of two journalists: Roman Juryś and Teresa Kuczyńska. The publisher of the monthly was the Women’s League (Liga Kobiet), thanks to which the new periodical could count on a generous paper allocation. It was a luxury magazine, aimed at educated people (both men and women), dedicated to fashion, lifestyle, culture and everyday issues such as cuisine, raising children or psychology. The creator of the graphic design of the first issue of Ty i Ja was Mieczysław Berman, the aforementioned politically involved photomontage artist. The takeover of artistic direction by the young graphic artist Roman Cieślewicz in the second issue might have been surprising if not for the fact that it was Berman himself who introduced the budding artist to the combined world of graphics and photography. Nevertheless, Cieślewicz offered a decidedly more modern style, one that was more in line with the editors’ vision. Teresa Kuczyńska recalls:
He did a project, and then we hired him straight away, granting him a status that hadn’t existed in our press: he became art director. Until then, magazines had art managers who oversaw typography and took care of our contacts with the printing studios. We entrusted the graphic designer with much more freedom and the opportunity to influence the totality of the magazine. He had a decisive voice in terms of graphic design; he was almost equal to the editor-in-chief. He was the one who made decisions on whom to collaborate with and gathered a group of the best creators around him.
Cieślewicz introduced his own photomontages and collages on the covers and inside the magazine, using old postcards, advertising prints and other retro trinkets. Another important element was photography – Ty i Ja co-operated with, among others, Tadeusz Rolke, Krzysztof Gierałtowski, Marek Holzman and Piotr Barącz – they portrayed the subjects of the articles, photographed contemporary Polish fashion or the home interiors of famous people. The whole was complemented by photographs clipped from contemporary foreign magazines such as Elle or Harper’s Bazaar. It is difficult to determine today on what basis such ‘pirate’ activity was possible.
The copyright holders were certainly aware of these Polish practices (Przekrój, for example, engaged in similar practices), but it is unclear whether they turned a blind eye for political reasons or merely out of resignation. As in the case of Poland, each cover was designed by a different master of the Polish poster school or a well-known illustrator (e.g. Henryk Tomaszewski, Julian Pałka, Daniel Mróz, Jan Lenica, Tomasz Jura). The motif that appeared on most of these compositions was the couple (reflecting the title You and Me), which also accentuated the magazine’s personal, light-hearted and casual profile.
In 1963, Cieślewicz emigrated to Paris. Soon the artistic management of Ty i Ja was taken over by Elżbieta Strzałecka and Bohdan Żochowski, who – until the magazine’s closure in 1973 – arranged its mock-ups on the floor of their flat in Warsaw’s Old Town. As Ewa Satalecka writes,
The first cover signed ‘B. Żochowski’ appears in October 1964, in issue 10(54); its editorial footer states: ‘graphic design by J. Pałka, E. Strzałecka, B. Żochowski’. And it was already in that issue that the stylistic changes became evident. The project acquired panache, the space around headlines opened up, contrasting typeface density and size were further highlighted in yellow and black, or in red, white and black. The Antykwa Półtawskiego typeface appears next to Paneuropa, Excelsior and Times, with the addition of the compact Grotesk and Cheltenham. Heading texts go off on the diagonal in loosely arranged lines. Borders are ‘trimmed’ to fit the form of the reproduction. Beautiful prints appear on 5/6 foldouts, mostly without signatures. For those times – it was pure madness.
In 1968, the designers decided to modify the headpiece. Instead of the capitalised, colourful logotype, there was a black, rounded, textual ‘you and me’ designed in pop style by Waldemar Świerzy, who used the Cooper Black typeface. Ty i Ja, with Strzałecka and Żochowski as editors, was characterised by an almost cinematic composition of pages and spreads. These dynamic compositions evolved and came one after another like film frames. The designers were also very interested in typography. They copied and intricately redrew the typefaces published abroad. Żochowski also designed his own letters – he created many headings by hand, playing around with spacing and scale.