I design books, series and special editions for publishers. I’ve been doing it for more than twenty years, working on hundreds of titles for some of Poland’s largest publishing houses.
Since 2008 I’ve also been running Karakter, an independent publishing house I co-founded in Kraków. We publish around twenty books a year, and I design almost all of them. Literary fiction, essays, reportage, books on architecture, design and art: enough variety to prevent me from settling into one particular style.
Being both a designer and a publisher has probably shaped the way I work more than anything else. I know what happens to a book after the cover leaves my screen. I think about series and backlists, printing and materials, budgets, the shelf, and whether a design can survive several years and another ten books. Sometimes the right answer is a beautifully printed object. Sometimes it is three colours on inexpensive stock.
I have a soft spot for American book design, old and new: Alvin Lustig, Elaine Lustig Cohen and Paul Rand, but also Peter Mendelsund, Paul Sahre, Oliver Munday and Rodrigo Corral. At the same time, I’m very partial to the restraint of Swiss and German designers such as Willy Fleckhaus and Jost Hochuli. My own work probably sits somewhere between the two. I like books to be visible, bold and occasionally a little strange, but I also believe a designer should know when to stop.
I live and work in Kraków, Poland.
PS. My name is pronounced more or less [pshemek]. Almost nobody outside Poland gets it right. Czechs usually do. Perks of being a Slav.
