If you’re living in Central & Eastern Europe, you’ve probably seen them or at least head about them. If you travelled to Poland, Ukraine or similar and took your time to look deeper into the folk culture, you might have seen them too.
Wycinanki are very strong element of local folk culture in Poland and Ukraine and are especially visible when you take a trip to the countryside, away from the smog and noise of the city. What are those? In very brief description, one can say that they are state-of-the-art, intricate floral motifs cut in colored paper that are being glued to paper or wood for decoration. As simple as that. In some regions of Eastern Europe, the art of creating them has been taken to a whole new level and local designers and artists often use them as inspiration. Maybe they can inspire you, too? Get ready to get bombed with local culture inspiration and inspired designs, to get that creativity flowing.
Wycinanki
Wycinanki-inspired designs
You can see wycinanki-inspired designs everywhere and not even know what was the inspiration. The most visible place where the inspiration can be seen is fashion and interior design — it took me just a while to find designs around the interwebs. Here are some fashion designs:
…and probably the most known wycinanki-inspired design, brand identity for Euro 2012!
…and the whole story behind the Euro 2012 branding, as a Vimeo video prepared by the agency that made the identity:
That’s about it. I hope you found journey through wycinanki and design inspired by them as much fun as I had while browsing web in search of material for the post. As usual, if you have any comments or opinions – you know what to do!
These are beautiful. Until this post I never heard of Wycinanki, though I have seen traces of the motif in fashion as well. Thanks for sharing.
No problem mate, I will share more eastern/central european folk motives in design, if I find more. :)
The most inpiring wycinanki I’ve ever seen are these from Kaszuby (northern part of Poland, near Gdańsk). Very colorful and simple :)
Hi.
Great job.
and there is more interesting things:
http://zsah.blox.pl/2008/10/trendy-w-designie-filc.html
Dzieki!
Twoja strona jest piekna i czysta i tak sie ciesze, ze jestes Polski + grafik.
Niestety mialam problem z wyslaniem wiadomosci przez contact ( nie czytalo mi zdjecia literek jak sadze).
Pozdrawiam goraco i zycze cudownego kreatywnego zycia.
Marta
Zapisuje sie na RSS.
Sorry everyone, but this message was kind of personal ;-)
@jarsem thanks for pointing that out, will look into your link for more inspiration :)
@Marta dzięki :)
Piękne! Kolega podesłał mi dziś link do artykułu o historii polskiego plakatu, gdzie w komentarzach trafiłam z kolei na namiary do niniejszego postu. It made my day, jak mówią tubylcy :)
Próbowałam niedawno zrobić coś podobnego i ile te kwieciste, symetryczne wzory można dość łatwo opanować, to okręgi stanowią mistrzostwo. Fajnie, że ogłaszasz światu, jakie w Polsce są ciekawe rzeczy!
Movie with wycinanki in use: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QojmY1GZ29Y ;)
@zx: whoever made that movie, should stop taking this stuff or at least lower the dosage by a half.