Petra - descriptions

Art Fair 7

Visual identity for Art Fair 7 (Velesajam kulture 7) was a low budget commissioned work made in collaboration with Katarina Zlatec and Niko Mihaljevic in 2011. Art fair 7 was communicated through several mediums: billboard, teaser posters, common program billboard, individual posters and program booklets. All the elements of Art Fair’s visual identity were made of A4 sheets of paper in 6 colors. Sheets were printed with a b/w laser printer. The billboard contained basic information “VELESAJAM KULTURE 7”, “STUDENTSKI CENTAR”, “20.-23.01.2011.” and was made out of hand-pasted A4 sheets in 6 random colors which were sorted so that each letter would fit on 4 A4 sheets. Pieces of the billboard, individual A4 sheets, were used as teasers and pasted all over the city. Since each of them had only 1/4 of one letter from the billboard, they were unclear and abstract. Additional information was stamped on the poster. Singular posters were used in three diferent ways. Each performer/artist got his own A4 poster, which he could use freely as a single poster for his own promotion. Those posters were also used for the modularly assambeled common program billboard. Also, the posters were pasted as single posters depending on the location in the Student Centre where the particular event was held, so they made a colorful composition on the entrances of several buildings in the Student Centre. Booklet covers were also made out of A4 pieces of billboard (bent to the size of A6) and stamped with additional information. Each of them was unique.


The Art Fair is a festival held every year in the Student Centre, Zagreb, Croatia. It is a place where various artists, designers, musicians, performers, etc. are presenting their work. Since we had to make one visual identity for the whole festival, and the festival was actually compounded of more than a hundred very different and very inividual artist, we decided to make it as individual as it is common. The concept was to make an individual poster for artist, which functioned as a whole when put together with another posters. After assembling the billboard, we had some leftover sheets of paper which we didn’t want to throw away, so we used them as teaser posters. The other thing which shaped the visual identity of the 7th Art Fair ware the severe budget cuts. In order to make it as cheaper as possible, we decided to use already colored A4 sheets of paper, and to print the content, rather than pressing it. Also, we used only black ink and did the whole work by ourselves To simplify the managing in the festival’s program we decided to assign one color to each of the art field presented on the festival.


All the promo materials for the festival were made by hand. The billboard was hand-pasted on a white canvas using the wallpaper glue. Program booklets were folded two times and stamped manually. All the teaser posters and program billboard posters were pasted by ourselves. Each of the A4 sheets was printed by a black/white A4 laser printer. The leftover pieces of the billboard were used as teasers and the basic information was stamped with a with a changeable-letter stamp. The added text was applied so that it would make the best possible composition with the partial letterform from the billboard letters.

Collaborative Setting

Collaborative Setting is a system of remote exhibition setup made specifically for "D Day", a 3 day festival of design for young designers that takes place at an abandoned factory in Zagreb every year. A setup is created through a collaboration between the visitors, organizers, volunteers and other participants of the festival (in Zagreb) and me, the author (in Rotterdam). The exhibition setup (3 panels, 1 desk and 2 chairs) and the description 'posters' were also created and assembled on the spot through the instructions given to one of the volunteers. Instead of using only the 3 by 3 meters of exhibition space given to each participant, the entire space of the festival becomes potential exhibition space. In 3 days I chatted with more than 40 people, and successfully exhibited around 30 pieces.

Since this year I couldn't be present in Zagreb I decided to design an exhibition that I could manage and handle from Rotterdam. Since I didn't want to exhibit my work in a traditional manner I decided to make a site and situation specific project. The idea was to make a DIY chat programe that would enable me (us) to produce the exhibit while talking about it and in this way make pieces that would be self-explanatory - the form becomes its own explanation. The exhibition was reduced to the process of making the exhibition itself.

The communication takes place through a chat program where the setup and location of each exhibit are being discussed. While the content of each chat discussion (i.e. its printouts) becomes the actual exhibit, each piece of the exhibition is actually its own explanatione. After the completion of each chat, the content is being printed out and set on the agreed spot. After that a picture is taken for the exhibition catalog requirements.