Artistic Publications

The project "Czech Heroines" was created from the initiative of Renáta Fučíková, M.F.A. Under her guidance over the course of three semesters, students at the Didactic Illustration Studio illustrated more than one hundred portraits of important female personalities from Czech history and present. The project includes the publication of the book "Heroines" and related exhibition activity with global dimensions.

The book "Heroines" was published by Euromedia in 2020 and won the national Golden Ribbon Award in 2021. It was inspired by the 100th anniversary of the enactment of equal suffrage for Czechoslovak women in 1920. It is a joint project of the Ladislav Sutnar Faculty of Design and Art, Czech Centres and Prague International Radio. The publication has had a total of nine reprints, and 20,000 copies have been printed to date. A "Czech Heroines" exhibition was also created, consisting of 50 portraits accompanied by brief biographies. The exhibition has been translated into 18 languages. Since 2020, it has been presented at more than 60 exhibitions around the world – in Israel, Luxembourg, Italy, the Netherlands, Finland, Georgia, France, Germany, Poland, Romania, Hungary, Greece, Portugal, Kosovo, Slovakia, Ukraine, Egypt, the USA, South Korea, Hong Kong, Pakistan and Nigeria.

The project began as original student research, in which the illustrators explored feminine themes such as health and mental or physical illness, but also issues of appearance.

International social significance: thanks to the exhibitions, the publication has inspired numerous books around the world. Six similar books have been written in different countries, for example in Nigeria (Czech and Nigerian Heroines) and Pakistan (Czech and Pakistani Heroines - with portraits of Pakistani heroines under the direction of Professor and Vice-Chancellor of the National College of Arts, Murtaza Jafri).

IOGI is a comic book, which is the result of the creative activity and research of artists from FDA under the direction of Václav Šlajch. The content and final form of the publication is the result of the artistic rendering of the traditional Japanese style of drawing by Czech artists, who have mastered it to the extent that they were able to succeed in the competition among local Japanese illustrators. The book won the prestigious Japan International Manga Award in 2021, making it the first Czech book awarded in this competition. The current Japanese Ambassador to the Czech Republic, Hideo Suzuki, presented the award to the authors in person in May 2022 at FDA in Pilsen. The book was presented at four exhibitions in Japan and five exhibitions in the Czech Republic. In 2023, the book was the winner of the Muriel Award in the Best Screenplay category.

The book contains eleven illustrated comic stories about the everyday life of people in Japan in the residential area of Suginami around IOGI train station on the outskirts of Tokyo. The book avoids the common stereotypes and typical images Europeans have of Japanese life. It contributes to the positive formation of national and cultural identity. It aims to offer an unbiased view of Japan, invites mutual understanding of cultures and creates true images of life beyond the borders of the Czech Republic.

The book is supported by sociological research. Japanese sociologist Naoko Takeda of Waseda University in Tokyo provided advice for the proposals.

The book's preface was written by Jean-Gaspard Páleníček and the author of the afterword is Pavel Kořínek, a prominent historian and researcher at the Institute for Czech Literature of the Czech Academy of Sciences.

Long before the advent of the Internet, information in analog form needed to be organized in a way that was readable and accessible. One of the designers who revolutionized the presentation of printed information was the modernist pioneer Ladislav Sutnar (1897-1976). In 1950, Sutnar, together with architect K. Lönberg-Holm, published Catalog Design Progress, a guide to modernizing printed design through typographic simplicity, compositional inventiveness, and navigational aids that signal the logical flow of information. This carefully crafted facsimile of the original book illustrates and embodies Sutnar’s ideas and clearly demonstrates their enduring influence on graphic design.

Authors: Ladislav Sutnar, K. Lönberg-Holm, Steven Heller

Published: 2022, MIT Press