Peter Biľak

Writing

I have written for Eye (international review of graphic design), Emigre magazine, Abitare (Design and architecture magazine), Items (Dutch design magazine), Financial Times Magazine, Print (A Quarterly Journal of the Graphic Arts), magazines I co-founded Dot Dot Dot, Works That Work, and many other books and magazine.

Reclusive Designers — Redefining Success in the Internet Era

Some designers eschew social media, networking and awards hunting, and choose other priorities. Can one maintain a professional design practice and be a recluse?

Essays, 2019
The Importance of Play

In the world driven by utility and performance, is there a room for open-ended typographic play system, that allows to discover something that was not entirely planned, something that the system hoped to allow, but could not guarantee?

Essays, 2020
Experimental typography. Whatever that means.

An epistemology of the word ‘experimental’ as it applies to design and type, contrasted with its scientific connotations. Examples of past and current design, type and reading/language, as well as scientific experiment, are taken into account.

Essays, 2005
Little Ambassadors of the Country

How Bhutan where so much is governed by tradition became known (at least to stamp collectors) as a country of wildly groundbreaking innovation.

Essays, 2018
Conceptual Type?

In November 2010 Peter Biľak was invited to give a talk at a one-day conference Conceptual Type – Type led by ideas in Copenhagen about the underlying ideas behind typefaces. This lecture questions the possibility of conceptual type and compares type to other disciplines.

Essays, 2011
In the Name Of the Father (or the troubles with L-caron)

A real-life situation that forced a type designer to evaluate his profession. One small typographic detail (an incorrect version of the diacritic over the letter L) caused troubles with the authorities. With a happy end.

Essays, 2010
Graphic Design in the White Cube

Essay accompanying the exhibition Graphic Design in the White Cube during the 22nd International Biennale of Graphic Design Brno 2006. Nineteen designers and collectives were commissioned to design posters for the design exhibition in which they were to participate. Instead of bringing work from the outside to the gallery, the work is made for the gallery. Instead of recreating the context for the exhibition, gallery conditions are the context for the work.

Essays, 2006