CGD

The graphic designer Veronika Rút Nováková addressed the Brno-Center city hall in 2015, as soon as she finished her diploma on the subject "visual smog regulation" at the Faculty of Multimedia Communication of the Tomas Bata University in Zlín. Nováková, the initiator of the entire project, was, so to say, "in the right place at the right time": she simply offered her service to the city hall, and things started rolling. The principles defined in her document began to be successfully implemented into practice already during the origination of the document. Its final version was published in June 2018 after three years of strenuous interdisciplinary cooperation (theoreticians, designers, marketing experts, architects, preservationists and other administrative officials working at the city hall). The manual has enjoyed immensely positive response from both the professional community and other local authorities. Although it is tailored for the City of Brno, it can equally well serve as an important source of inspiration for other cities and districts. There had been several initiatives focusing on visual smog, which were critical to the subject. Unfortunately, this was only happening among members of rather enclosed professional bubbles who merely kept complaining about the poor aesthetic quality of visual communication without offering a solution fit to address wide public. Nováková, on the contrary, managed to exceed the limits of her discipline and found a language capable of convincing officials, traders and other involved parties. Leaving the aesthetic as well as the subjective assessment of advertising messages behind, she focused on visual communication in the context of architecture. Thus, the manual is only restrictive from the point of situating the advertising messages and not in the issue of aesthetics. It contains a body of recommendations and tips as to how to hire a designer and how to think along a marketing line, and it employs a simple form in explaining the elementary principles of visual communication, based on the "less is more" principle. Nováková is not only behind the graphic design of the manual, but also behind its text and its overall concept. The project is undoubtedly contributive to the visual smog subject, and it draws attention to how local city authorities can open up to the public if they "design" their services lucidly and comprehensibly. The project moreover exemplifies an engaged position of a designer who does not only face problems following from a client's assignment but seeks problems on his/her own, actively draws attention to them and offers their practical solution.

Kateřina Přidalová