Book and Digital Publishing Design Studio
Graphic Art Department
Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw
(public university of arts)
prof. Maciej Buszewicz
assistant Paulina Derecka
(Grażka Lange was the assistant since the beginning of the studio til year 2007 when she started her own Illustration Studio. Daniel Mizieliński was the assistant til year 2013 - he is responsible for GUI design part of the studio. Next the assistants were: Mateusz Kowalski and Rafał Buchner)
About the website:
Website was created by Magda Zelezik and Paulina Derecka and based on 2009 flash website designed by Daniel Mizielinski.
AT BUSZ(EWICZ)'S
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One word is enough – the rest is chatter
Stanislaw Jerzy Lec
What accounts for the phenomenon of Maciej Buszewicz’s Book Design Studio?
Above all, his studio is about reclaiming letter as an image. It extends beyond an exercise in quark or a choice of fonts – it is about building a typographic consciousness. A typography that returns to the roots of the picture in the relationship between picture and literature. Only at that level, is “work against the grain of words” meaningful. It requires a particular sensitivity and visual hearing. The most important processes in book design happen at the borderlands of seeing and hearing. For Buszewicz, book design is a unique and timeless process.
In his own words: “Each artistic creation, each graphic design is an object to communicate with another person without the need for direct contact. It is an object to transmit information, thoughts, moods and many other things. The author is contacted through an object of his/her creation. If we reach for a book published in the 1930s, the people who created it are long gone, but our close relation with them remains through the object they created. This applies to any art object, be it a painting in the museum or an altarpiece in the church. The intimate relationship between humans is carried through objects that have almost magical properties to enable such contact and thought exchange.” (Book Alchemy [Alchemia książki], Vidart nr 12/2004, interview by Andrzej Tuka).
The solemnity and intensity Buszewicz has in relation to books carries into relations with his students who venture into the book’s architecture, history and technology in search of innovative ways to connect words and pictures. My Illustration Studio and Buszewicz’s Book Design Studio are part of the same department. How we differ Buszewicz describes in the above-cited interview: “The text that Januszewski uses for his studio projects is just an excuse to play with a picture. A picture in a sense of an illustration. In my studio the gravity falls on text which is not necessarily ordinary and simple. A good example of this approach may be Agnieszka Borucka’s design for the Letters to Milena by Franz Kafka. What you see is not a bad copy of the book. It is not the result of manual typeset, although she managed to get the proof effect. The design is revealed by turning the pages in the book and witnessing the progressing and intensifying disease that affects the letters. The image is built consciously through tension of the text; the image is never clear. From a formal point of view, the book resembles classic typography and the effects appear to be results of some mistakes in the process. Text is the focus of the book but the text is not just a typeset. Text is also not just an illustration; the form and use of letters is consequential.” What matters to Busz(ewicz) is a departure from obvious associations and a search for a complex vision of an entire book which unifies the text and the project.
Buszewicz’s long-term collaboration with Grażka Lange, now continued with Daniel Mizieliński, put a mark of his approach on a whole generation of young designers. They continue to develop their own vision for unconventionally designed books that appeal to adults and books for children. Grażka, Daniel Mizieliński and his Hipopotam Studio, along with others, participated in the Caution! Earthmovers! New Polish Illustration (Uwaga! Spychacze! Młoda polska ilustracja) exhibit organized by the Illustration Studio in May 2009 as part of the Animaliter project. The exhibit catalog was prepared by Monika Hanulak of the Illustration Studio who, since 2004, is a member of an informal art group CMYK (Grażka Lange, Małgorzata Gurowska, Monika Hanulak) that designs unconventional books, organizes illustration exhibits and art shows dedicated to books designed by a single artist. This unity in contradictions has its roots in the synergies of the artistic academic education.
Buszewicz’s current studio continues on the trajectory of distinctive developments in book design at the Graphic Arts Department of the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. Some of its features come from the Typography Studio of Lech Majewski (diploma under Henryk Tomaszewski) who along with Buszewicz (diploma under Halina Chrostowska) had fun running that studio. I notice this sense of continuity in Maciej’s words (interview with Monika Małkowska, Sweet pictures are bad for teeth [Od słodkich rysunków psują się zęby], Rzeczpospolita 12.02.2008) that closely resonate with me – “There are two things I forbid my students: to imitate children and to illustrate the words. A picture in a book must complement the words! One has to create what is not in the text. One must work against the grain of words.”
Zygmunt Januszewski
Illustration Studio
ARISTOCRACY? YES.
Oh Lord, won’t you buy me a Mercedes Benz?
My friends all drive Porsches, I must make amends.
Worked hard all my lifetime, no help from my friends,
So Lord, won’t you buy me a Mercedes Benz?
The sharp voice of ‘the boss’ -- Jennis Joplin – woke me up around four in the morning on the day we traveled together to America in 1990. The PanAm flight was taking off from Okęcie airport at 6 or 7 in the morning. Oh Lord, it was so long ago. We were 19 years younger. We had a nice start in the late 1980s but were still at the beginning. The Beginning of the New Time for Poland and for us. When we returned changed a year later, we began to build from scratch. Buszewicz received the title, Prince.
Aristocracy (derived from the Greek aristokratia – aristos ‘the best’ and kratoi ‘the strongest’) is the highest social strata. The term was most probably introduced by the Sophists and made common by Aristotle to distinguish aristocracy from oligarchy.
More than forty years ago, perhaps in 1965 or 1966, a play Horserace in the Palace (Derby w pałacu) by Jarosław Abramow was showing at Stary Theater in Kraków. Applause erupted when the Count said to the horse-farm Director, a son of his former coachman: “You respect horse’s blue blood, but not the human’s blue blood (quoted from memory).“
But this story is not about the traditional aristocracy but about the graphic designers‘ aristocracy. One made of people with the highest imagination, design skills and knowledge. Every country has few princes. Maciej Buszewicz is one of them in Poland.
It might be easy to read this I essay in jest or as tease. I am not sure if I can (or should) write these words. But I am not up to writing analytical opinions. I wrote two reviews of Buszewicz when he received tenure and professorship. This essay must be different. Everyone knows we are friends. Regardless of how well I know him, I am setting the tone. I am writing this essay fully aware of that, although –in full disclosure—I have on hand a bottle of Lagavulin I got from Buszewicz (PROFESSOR or Busio for friends) who taught me how to spot a good one.
PROFESSOR B – is one of the most prominent Polish graphic designers, an author of numerous layouts, picture albums, books, publications, posters and in earlier times LP album covers (with Lech Majewski), postage stamps and theatre programs. His commitment to work is monumental.
Buszewicz’s work is designed for a sophisticated viewer.
He designs for a selective audience, for people who are educated, have a sense of aesthetic, simply put, people who are intelligent. Buszewicz’s works are for those who, luckily, have not succombed to the deluge of junk. Looking at Buszewicz’s work we know that we see objects created by a cultured man.
Buszewicz is also an excellent teacher who revives the language of book design. Every other year, when I watch the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts diploma show during the Poster Biennale, I am amazed by the work he has accomplished with his students. Buszewicz has more than a program for his studio; he has a concept that shows off his great teaching talent. And he has been directing students‘ diploma work only since 2000.
Buszewicz promotes creativity in the choice of topics, offers detailed critical analysis in reviews, applies his ironic sense of reality and encourages social references in the works of his students to showcase their ingenuity and intellect. References to the absurd poetry, so dear to me, are humorously and graphically interpreted in students‘ projects. Buszewicz challenges students who signed up for his Book Design Studio at the Graphic Arts Department by frequent topic changes and making them sweat to stimulate thinking. I am not sure if the students are fully aware what they are getting into when they choose Buszewicz’s studio, but I am sure that by the graduation time they become independent and intelligent designers. And this brings the most satisfaction. I witnessed a lot of interest in his achievements by the European designers at the diploma exhibition.
I wanted to be the first one to showcase his studio. I did not happen. However, I am very happy that PROFESSOR is showing a fraction of his students‘ achievements in Kraków. It is wonderful that the New Art Foundation ZNACZY SIĘ opened a new gallery and is showing Busio’s studio as one of its first exhibits.
In life we ought to know how to make the best of it. Buszewicz knows it even if I think sometimes that he works too much. Because life is simply too short.
Professor, Busio, Maciek – I am openly jealous of how you run your studio. Congratulations! Cheers!
Piotr Kunce
Poster Studio
Academy of Fine Arts, Kraków
Krakowskie Przedmieście 5
00-068 Warsaw
Email to studio:
pracownia@buszmeni.pl
Contact to professor Maciej Buszewicz:
buszewicz@vp.pl
Classes are held on mondays and wednesdays from 10 am to 2 pm in studio nr 33.
Silesian fairy tales
2023
Państwo. Początek księgi siódmej
Midnight Summer Dream
The man had naught
London Bridge
Essays
Publishing series of Kurt Vonnegut
Peter Pan's song
Piosenka Nany. Piotruś Pan
Mr Crocodile
Two objects
Dwa przedmioty
Niżej
2022
The Blind
Makbet
Makbeth
Psalmy Wszystkie
2021
Ślepcy
String instruments
Wind instruments
Magdalena Abakanowicz
children's poem
Mrożek 20
Winston Churchill
Publishing series of Olga Tokarczuk books
Dancing mice
Paulo Uccello
wedding in Atomice
The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat
Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
Seria wydawnicza : Ameryka, Proces, Przemiana
Rain dogs
The book of imaginary beings
Zoologia Fantastyczna
The Card Index
Martin Luther King
Rosalind Franklin
The alphabet
Two Michaels were dancing
Pstryk
Ptasie plotki
Słownik miejsc wyobrażonych
Susan Sontag – wybór esejów
2020
Haiku
2019
About love of two masters
Professor Tutka about different views
Professor Tutka was a journalist
Burza
The Taylor
Professor `Unrat
Tristes Tropiques
The Tempest
The Bald Soprano
Miłość i gniew
Fables for Robots
Wind the bobbin up
pozdrawiam Paulina Derecka Pracownia projektowania książki
Pussycat pussycat
If on a winter\'s night a traveler
Body drawings
Małpie historie
Long and wasted years
Life: A User\'s Manual
2018
Bacteria
Błony umysłu
The Nutcracker and the Mouse King
2017
Death in Venice
Krawiec
Oda do typografii
Mefisto
Rak
Pat a cake – Mother Goose Rhymes
Dramas
2016
The Ego and Its Own
The Street of Crocodiles
Boundaries, identity and territory
Emigrants
The accuracy in science
Creator
Rain
The Threepenny Opera
Millenium Trilogy
Kidnapped
Millenium Trylogy
Proverb
Character
Caroller
10 birds with which we live in the city
2015
Zły
Strange city - Arts & Entertainment in multinational Lodz in the years 1821-1939
Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World
Nineteen Eighty-Four
I, Pencil
Naked Lunch
Wits Hat
Cover Series
Lust's Dominion
Chicken farm
Cover series
Short Stories
Colours
Shapes
Evening
Colors
The Witch of Edmonton
Peter, Peter pumpkin eater,
Stolen Jewel
Four-and-twenty tailors went to kill a snail
Murder with the best company
Peter, Peter pumpkin eater
Strange Kidnapping
Blocks
Strange Mystery
Earthworm
Daughter
A Wise Old Owl
Two Objects
Homonim
One Thousand and One Nights
2014
Jacques the Fatalist
Stories
A History of Six Ideas
Book of Imaginary Beings
Diario minimo
Project of King's novels series and movie posters
Counting-out game
Clean kitty
Staś
Project of King's novels series
Counting-out Game
Sick kitty
Little skinflint
Mother Goose Tales
Der Struwwelpeter
50 mathematical puzzles
2013
Start time
The Name of the Rose
The Most Beautiful Woman in Town
Lalek
Tailor
Locomotive
Lokomotywa
On a Stall
Ciappellettos Confession
Calandrinos Love Affair
Husband Confessor
Double kidnapping
Saladyns and Torells incidents
Lover's Generosity
Alatiel, the bride of King Algarbii
Pilgrim
Stolen pig
Andreuccio from Perugia
Cipollo's Brother
Enchanted pear
Proof of Nobility
Proof of nobility
Project of Fredro's plays series.
Tiger
Parrot
Crocodile
Panther
Reindeer
Flood
Deserted Island
The Lost skeleton
On Rikikis board
Johanns Sebastians Faun Afternoon
Green hood
Subtle Killer
Green baby
Cupid's arrow
Finally alone
Stuck on a spike
The Island of Doctor Moreau
The Life of Charles Wilkes
Four Roses for Lucienne
2012
The Catcher in the Rye
In Cold Blood
short stories
Around the World in Eighty Days
Series of Shakespeare plays
Grześ goes through the village
Happy marriage
Memory
Dog rushed into the kitchen
NIKOTYNA
Salvation Army concert
Two Poles
Essay
Warm Maciej
Kitten climbed the fence
Z notatnika nerwowca
Lilies
How to initiate, conduct and resolve family disagreements
young shaver
Miracle in Lublin
Men's ambition
Się
2011
Stars and Mushrooms in Folk Tales
Little Flowers of St. Francis
Tower
The Time Machine
New Warsaw Legends
Dead Man
Adam and Eve
Unstable Stuff / The Instruction Manual
Little Red Riding Hood
japanese tales
Waits
The Marriage
polish proverbs
A Streetcar Named Desire
The Wedding
He left
Opera Ball
Lázarillo de Tormes
The Book of Tea
2010
Franio
Ptolemy
Ernestynka
Johannes Hevelius
Albert Einstein
Arden of Faversham
Arden of Feversham
101 philosophical games
Discourse on the Method
Endgame
Fly
Key
It is burning
The Smile at the Foot of the Ladder
They
The Pit and the Pendulum
The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus
2009
The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui
Silk
Le Paysan de Paris
Bird hunting
Le Panama ou les aventures de mes sept oncles
Słowo o Jakubie Szeli
Dziady
Like Water for Chocolate
Mr. Cherry Kitchen
two thousand ten
This? The worst magazine
Bedtime stories
2008
My Water Cure
The Life & Opinions of Zacharias Lichter
2007
You Kissed Lilly
Matka odchodzi
Tales about sun
Ómnibus
No se culpe a nadie
Robot Tales
Donosy rzeczywistości
Fyrtøiet
Snow White
2006
Piggy Tales
Piety
Neli monoloogi Püha Jüri asjus
Leaf Storm
The Bourgeois Gentlemen
Pętla
Inferno
Find me
2005
Listy z fiołkiem 1947
360
Moscow to the End of the Line
A Clockwork Orange
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
Dream diary
Paweł i Gaweł
2004
The Metamorphosis
Memoirs
Wyrok śmierci na konia Faraona
2003
Creation according to Genesis
Chicken soup
Tales of Pirx the Pilot
2002
Stabat Mater
Stasia
2001
Letters to Milena
2000
O traktowaniu przestrzeni
Sarna, albo rozmowa Szatana z chłopcem, aniołem i Lucyferem