Palach — Our Conscience
Visual campaign and identity for the Faculty of Arts at Charles University commemorating 50th anniversary of Jan Palach’s self–immolation. 

Complementary city plan with the programme and important locations marked

Jan Palach — Our Conscience is a visual campaign created to honour and commemorate student Jan Palach and the 50th anniversary of his tragic self–sacrifice. The main design features slightly modified Czech tricolour scheme to reflect our national pride and respect and the section from Palach’s portrait used on the banners displayed on front of the National Museum in Prague.  

The idea behind the portrait was to modestly and minimalistically capture young Jan Palach stepping out from the darkness while watching and remembering his own act — displaying the young student who managed to become ethernal sadly by dying too soon. I’ve drawn a couple of portraits from a scratch before finally realising the negative colour scheme and hints of the shadow play were the right choice. I then digitally traced the artwork and used it throughout the whole campaign in every way possible — from posters and maps posted at all faculties of the Charles University, through the social media, to the digital screen presentations used in Prague city libraries. I really tried to do my best — I was, and to this day I still am truly honoured and thankful to be involved in this.

Client
Faculty of Arts at Charles University
Discipline
Campaign, Illustration, Poster Design, Visual Identity
Respective authors of photographs used in motion graphic
Jiří Palach, Dagmar Hochová, Miloň Novotný, Miloš Schmiedberger, Pavel Štěcha, Jiří Všetečka, Dana Kyndrová 
Completed
2019