CGD

"I've always emphasized responsibility. Well-educated graphic designers are thin on the ground, and it is their duty to work with the utmost respect for the users at whom posters, logos or visual styles are aimed. An illegible poster is no 'author's shenanigan'; it is merely an expression of his or her immaturity and bloated ego." Rostislav Vaněk

Artist and Professor Rostislav Vaněk (b. October 31, 1945) undoubtedly ranks among the figures that have played a formative role in a particular discipline in the Czech lands. In his case, it is the fields of graphic design and visual communication. Vaněk's significance lles not only in his own creative systematic work, through which he has been fundamentally refining the local visual culture of public spaces since the 1970s, but also in his intrinsic fervor capable of interlinking generations and initiating the energy of mutual cooperation, while steering the latter towards positive results with much diplomatic talent and despite obstacles of all possible kinds.

Amicably called "Rosta" by those who know him, he was present at the 1974 establishment of the association Typo& which, during the infamous era of normalization in, what was then, the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic, maintained awareness of the agnificance of graphic design in contemporary culture. la 1995, he initiated the establishment of the inter generational TypoDesignClub aimed at presenting the works of the most outstanding Czech designers via publication and exhibition activities during the era of social transformation. He has also chaired the International Biennale of Graphic Design in Brno for the past several years. He became part of a wider public cognizance as the designer of the information system for the Prague underground and, during the 1990s, as the author of the first extensive corporate visual identity manuals for Czech Airlines, the Commercial Bank and the assembly of the International Monetary Fund. 

Vaněk's works are characteristic of clearly recognizable graphic morphology, systematic complex interpretation, visual perfectionism and purity, all of which are inseparable in his outstanding posters. logotypes and book designs. His competence in sensitively leading others was utilized to the maximum in his lecturing at the Prague Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design, where he headed the studio Graphic Design and Visual Communication. between 2001 and 2004. His students could not only thrive on his professional, creative and conceptual methods, but also on his ability to get a precise sense of the clients' needs and to present one's own work, as well as the continuous necessity to broaden one's horizons of knowledge and sensitivity through traveling and art. In 2008, Rostislav Vaněk founded the studio Signature Type Foundry, which produced numerous modern scripts of classic harmony.

This new "arrival" to the Hall of Fame of Czech design is thus a strong personality, to whom devoted service for the sake of positive developments in the field of graphic design is a matter of course, his own work a maximum personal responsibility, and openness to cultural tendencies being a basic precondition of the exhilarating energy of life and work.

Iva Knobloch