Karolina Jonc Buczek is a Polish illustrator and graphic designer based in South London. In her practice, she mostly works with themes of body positivity, mental health, Polish culture and often provides a visual commentary on current social and political situations.
Having a good experience with Adobe Creative Suite and Procreate, Karolina's artwork is mostly produced digitally but having her background in fine art education, she is also skilled in traditional media such as drawing, painting and sculpting. She recently started animating her illustrations and creating motion graphics such as GIFs.
Karolina is passionate about promoting different body types, women empowerment and feminist agenda, and raising awareness of mental health issues through her personal experiences. Whilst tackling serious subjects, she works with bright colours and often uses humour in her illustrations.
Karolina’s aesthetic is inspired by 90’s/00’s cartoons, pop culture and mainstream fantasy.
Projects
- Illustrations for Snag Tights / commissionThese illustrations were made for a superb company - Snag Tights. For this project, I have followed the company's core values, including inclusivity of different body types and created depictions of plus-size women, who are still underrepresented in the mainstream fashion industry.
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Work history
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IllustratorCentrala
Birmingham, United KingdomFreelance
#CEEHealth is a health and safety campaign by Centrala Community aimed at Central and Eastern European diaspora in the UK. The campaign aims to help these communities to protect their health and stop the spread of COVID-19. Each of the illustrations is accompanied by a translated statement and a national flag element. To raise awareness in social media, the visuals were animated and are available to use as stickers or GIFs.
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Illustrator and Graphic DesignerOur Streets Now
London, United KingdomFreelance
Our Streets now is a national campaign to end public sexual harassment featured on the BBC, The Guardian and The Times, with over 200,000 supporters on our Change.org petition.
Started by two sisters, Gemma and Maya Tutton, the campaign is demanding the right of women and girls to be safe in public space. The campaign works to #EndPSH through both cultural change and legislative solutions.
Responsibilities:
- producing artwork that promotes the campaign's agenda, aiming to end the public sexual harassment
- researching, analysing and carefully interpreting the issue of public sexual harassment through a visual language that will help to raise the awareness of the problem
- working in creative team; collaborating with other artists and campaigners
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Skills
- Illustration
- Graphic Design
- Adobe Creative Suite
- Adobe Illustrator
- Poster Design
- Vector Illustration
- Fine Art
- Digital Illustration
- Customer Service
Education
BA (hons) IllustrationUniversity of The Arts London (UAL)
- London, United Kingdom
Final Year Diploma Project: 'Matka Polka' (transl. Mother Pole)
Meaning: an archetype of a woman, a mother, trying to raise her children in values and traditions of Poland.
Author's personal attempt to re-discover her Polish nationality and to re-evaluate and distil the
characteristic of the country and its nation through illustration.
The artist aim was to choose the tokens of her own Polish identity and depict them through humour and
irony. She found most of them in her memories of a childhood in the 90ʼs Poland and her familyʼs stories
about communist times and the perks of living the Polish Peopleʼs Republic. A guide to understanding (or maybe not) the absurdity of Poland.
The form of this flag is inspired by a form of memoir given to the Polish soldiers after their compulsory army service.
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High School DiplomaSecondary School of Fine Arts
- Katowice, Poland