Since 2008, Edgar Bąk has been associated with the Photomonth festival in Kraków and responsible for its visual identity – which by now has in fact become its brand. The festival’s visual materials have gained their recognizable character by means of reproducing the initial design created by Bąk – based on a circular shape, and resembling a lens shutter, a peeking hole or a viewfinder. This sign, powerful and resonant, became a template for the subsequent editions and their products. The second recurring element of the identity is the bright red colour – usually dominating the design surface and thus catching one’s attention. As the artist says, when it comes to visual materials at events like Photomonth, one of the crucial principles is for them to stand out in the city landscape – Bąk proves that it does not take too much to achieve this goal.
The way Edgar Bąk tends to approach his projects is by creating an algorithm – a system that will generate patterns almost autonomously, and also lend itself to transformations and adjustments according to the context. Bąk introduced this method in designing the visual identity for the Sinfonia Varsovia Centre (conceived in collaboration with Robert Mendel), a winning project in a competition organized by the Association of Applied Graphic Designers (Stowarzyszenie Twórców Grafiki Użytkowej), or when creating the layout for the Surowy (Raw) magazine, an impromptu result of a 2010 Art and Fashion Festival workshop. Such algorithms do not only help him to create projects in an organic way, but also make them clear and recognizable.
For Sinfonia Cracovia Centre, a site that was about to change into a multidisciplinary project, comprising music and art events, sculpture park, as well as hosting educational and research programme, the artist conceived a series of symbols that were loosely corresponding to the art mediums and activities. The collection of signs could then be picked and matched according to the context.
The basis for the Surowy magazine was a plain black square – the publication, already filled with style icons and other strong symbols, required only a subtle intervention within the layer of layout. The square outline acted as a bracket for all of the content – it had the potential to be modified in a number of ways, and thus to enrich the pages of the publication, but at the same time it constituted a consistent identity for the project.
Edgar Bąk, graphic design for MAJ magazine, 2013, image courtesy of the artist Surowy was just one of Edgar Bąk’s manifestations of his awareness of the publishing scene and its prerequisites. He has worked as an artistic director and designer at numerous lifestyle and art magazines: Pure, Futu Design Guide, WAW, KTW, MAJ (a one-of project released by the Photomonth in Kraków), Filmpro, and Monitor. Looking at all of the above, one will notice that each has a very distinct identity – which only emphasizes Bąk’s attention to the specific context, as well as the continuous revision of his own ideas.
In 2011, together with Charlotte West, he revived Projekt – a Polish magazine founded in 1955, which showcased art and design from behind the Iron Curtain, and also of the West – which was a rarity at the time. The renewal of the magazine, in the form of an art book, featured a wide selection of examples of Polish applied graphics, and acted as a review of both style and politics behind the collection.
