CROATIAN DESIGN
Croatia, a rather young political state, started life in capitalism only fifteen years ago, but instead of developing its own products, made its capitalist everyday life mostly about anxiously awaiting new products imported from the West. One of the factors of fascination with those products was (and still is) their design. That word was imported into Croatian dictionaries at the same speed that designed imported products filled the shelves of Croatian stores.
Design soon became the center topic of everyday discussions on
what's aesthetically acceptable, and was imposed onto every (imported,
of course) product in the market as the new number one criterion to
determine what is and what isn't desirable. In the early 1990s, the
Croatian products that survived, entered the visual combat with the
vibrantly varied design of imported brands fully unprepared and design
reaffirmed itself as a trendy, foreign, non-Croatian word. The word
became something of a synonym for every product that looked as if it
was imported from at least, Graz.
It was about
the same time that local designers put their heads together to affirm
their profession in the academic circles and Croatia got its first ever
Design Studies at the University of Zagreb; essential for the formation
of the new generation of designers and the professional high of design
in the 1990s. Those studies enabled professional formation of young
designers and soon after they started the market they became
overwhelmed with a critical mass of new designers eager to apply their
professional status. Following every transition rule, pioneer works of
those young, student designer forces spanned from corporate projects
for banks (some of which are now long out of business) to experimental
CD covers for cool Croatian musicians and techno parties.
The
yearly production of Croatian designers soon became bigger than ever
before, as did the number of professional designers, and it became
clear that further qualitative evaluation of that production was
necessary. The Croatian Designer Association, the only association of
professional designers in Croatia, realized it was necessary to
restructure the newly formed situation in design, to assemble all new
designer works and appraise them according to professional criteria.
Young designers were invited to join the profession in the first Annual
Design Exhibition, which in 1999 for the first time brought together
affirmed designers of older and mid-generations and the newly graduated
young professionals.
The exhibition gave a clear
picture of the situation in the Croatian design concerning the profile
of designers and more importantly, the profile of their clients. The
clients of the Croatian designers turned out to be mostly non-profit
organizations, culture organizations, smaller companies, theatres,
magazines with small circulation and with even a smaller number of
pages, belletristic publishers and so on. Only several designers have
made the short excursion into the world of the Croatian economy, which
was the original target of the design and which really needs it badly.
After
the exhibition showed, the profession has concluded that the finest
Croatian design and its creators are marginalized by the client profile
and circulation. Designers, instead of taking part in the creation of
new Croatian brands, supporting development of domestic products and
creating the nation's visual identity and visual culture, stay aside in
key moments of defining the country's market identity, creating high
quality designer products that are offered to only a few, instead of
being mass-manufactured and presented in the mass media. The following
year's exhibition held in spring 2001, repeated the success of the
first one. Gathered works of almost the entire designer scene,
confirmed the new generation of designers and even differentiated
certain stylistic features of Croatian design, but again presented one
conclusion, the state and the business branch still were not major
clients.
Consequently, the Croatian Designer
Association, that in these last few years has mostly been involved in
the affirmation of the profession and establishing criteria for the
appraisal of the profession, as well as in giving design the place it
deserves in the Croatia's cultural heritage. The association decided to
take a radical step in establishing a relationship between the business
branch and the designers, creating the Design center's foundation. The
primary task of the design center would be to establish deeper contacts
and cooperation with state structures, potential clients and the
society in general, to conceive and realize projects that would help
educate people on advantages and possibilities of investing in design
and make the state structures, economy and culture understand and use
design as a means of development and practical transformation of their
everyday business. The Croatian Designer Association has been
developing this program for several years now and to make sure it gets
realized, they have appointed a professional manager specialized for
design to manage the Association and the future of the Center).
After
several years, during which the Association was managed solely by
enthusiastic volunteer members, the first design specialist,
professional manager, Tatjana Jallard, has already begun concentrated
work on the realization of the Design Center and is looking for
solutions for current problems facing the design profession. Her first
and biggest task is dealing with the Design Center offices / building /
space and together with the Association's current board members
including president Boris Ljubicic, she is considering the Design
Center housing solution from the point of the view of the state and
city's need to create an institution to service design in general. The
Design Center would offer educational programs for both designers and
businessmen, an exhibition space and a database where potential clients
could find information on designers. Their ideal location for the
future center would be the museum and Gallery Center Gradec, designed
by architect Igor Emili and built in early 1980. It's a building whose
full potential has not been profited from for years now and whose
aesthetics were the topic of numerous discussions.
Evidently,
the designers have chosen that very building for a reason, believing
that such an object should be given to those who can fully appreciate
the value of its aesthetics and understand its stylistic traits of the
period in which the building was designed. Connecting Gradec and design
could put an end to two separate stories of devastation. The designers
have discussed the idea of the Design Center and its possible location
with President Mesic, who expressed his support and also agreed to be
the sponsor of the greatest designer event in Zagreb since 2001, the
third Annual Croatian Exhibition of Croatian design. It opened on
October 21st this year in the Glyptotheque of Zagreb.
The
third Annual Exhibition of Croatian design has once again brought
attention to the finest examples of design in categories of product
design, graphic design, illustration and new media design, but also to
the still open question of design in Croatian products. That problem is
mostly visible in the category of product design, which is based on
production itself. From the 130 exhibited works, only 16 have been
presented in the product design category, which signals an overall lack
of production capability. Cooperation between the designers and the
business branch could result in the creation of authentic Croatian
products for which design could definitely be a motivating force for
scarce domestic production potential.
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About this article
This article was published in the winter issue of Croatia Airlines' in-flight magazine called 'Croatia.'