Student artbooks
On the first day of the Nobody Reads This: Art Book Fair, on Friday 22 May 2026 at 3:00 p.m., Artur Frankowski, lecturer at the Faculty of Design of the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, will talk about artbooks designed at the Visual Communication and Typography Design Studio.
How are books designed at art schools today? Where does the publication end and the object, narrative, or visual experiment begin? A guided tour of the exhibition of student artbooks will provide an opportunity to discuss the book as a design and artistic medium. During the session, Artur Frankowski will discuss the presented publications, the process of their creation, and the relationship between image, text, material, and book form. The starting point will be the students' work, developed at the intersection of graphic design, photography, visual narrative, and publishing experimentation. The tour will also explore the studio's workflow and the questions the contemporary artbook poses for design and visual culture.
- Prof. Artur Frankowski, PhD
- Designer, visual artist and curator of exhibitions devoted to graphic design. Professor at the Faculty of Design at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, where he runs the Studio of Visual Communication and Typography. His main fields of interest are the theory and practice of graphic design, in particular: typography, type design and book design. An alumnus of the postgraduate course “Expert Class Type Design” at the Plantin Insitute of Typography in Antwerp (2015). In 2013 he defended his habilitation thesis on the relationship between lettering and typography in urban space and the workshop of the contemporary designer. In 2021, he received the title of a Professor of fine arts. Speaker at design conferences, among others: ATypI in Helsinki, Brighton and Warsaw, the BODW (Business of Design Week) design conference in Hong Kong and the International Book Design Conference in Shenzen. In 2004, together with Magdalena Frankowska, he founded FONTARTE design studio, operating on the border of visual arts and graphic design. The studio has completed projects for, among others: Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, Zachęta – National Gallery of Art, National Museum in Warsaw, Muzeum Sztuki in Łódź, BWA Wrocław, Cricoteka, Contemporary Museum Wrocław, 49 Nord 6 Est – Frac Lorraine, Museo Reina Sofía Madrid, Moderna Museet Malmö and Van Abbemuseum. Author of books: Design as a programme (2020), Typespotting. Warszawa (2010) and Henryk Berlewi (together with Magdalena Frankowska). Co-curator of exhibitions devoted to graphic design: Enfant Terrible in Brussels (2013) and CARTEL PL in Bolivia (2013), Eye on Poland in China, Japan, South Korea and India (2010–2016) and Brazil (2017).
