“I believe that beautiful things are also good things. I believe that creation is a transfer of energy. That’s why it’s very important for the creator to put energy into their work through the touch of their hands, through manual labour. I believe the highest value a work of art can contain is the emission of positive energy. And I also stick to a simple guideline: even the design should be made as if it were about life (and really, life is at stake here).” László Rostoka

László Rostoka, graphic designer: book artist, poster designer, stamp designer, typographer, illustrator. He uses a wide range of techniques in his diverse work. He is skilled in posters, illustrations, stamps, logotypes, bookplates, advertisements and all kinds of ephemera, yet despite his qualifications he considers himself self-taught, because he is always learning something new as he creates.

His work is one of the core values of graphic design today. He became one of the key figures of 20th century Slovak graphic design and a defining figure of his generation. He brought a new impetus to the profession after graduating from college. He was the first to give intellectual content to the concept of graphic design.

He studied at the Secondary School of Applied Arts in Bratislava and later at the Academy of Fine Arts, where he was invited back to teach monumental painting. In addition to half a hundred solo exhibitions, he has participated in 650 group exhibitions around the world.

Two seminal generational exhibitions have brought him into the art world. The first was in 1979 and the second in 1981, for which he created the iconic poster and which toured the major graphic design magazines of the world at the time. This image foreshadowed Rostoka’s engagement with lettering. For him, the letter is also an illustrative element. He organised his solo exhibitions under the name Tipografika (Typography).

He is the author of 400 cultural posters, 1,100 books and catalogues and, of course, numerous stamps. He has won 80 awards abroad (including the 1998 Budapest DOPP Prize and the 2019 MMA Design Award), and has been awarded the Most Beautiful Book in Czechoslovakia 24 times and the Most Beautiful Book in Slovakia 30 times. His most important award in Hungary is the Cultural Value Award, which he won in 2017, but he also received an award for his membership of the Alliance Graphique Internationale and for his inclusion in Taschen’s representative volume “The History of Graphic Design”.

Though he has worked in all areas of graphic design, his work in books is the most influential. His illustrations are composed of complex, intricate letter and image structures, with all the little elements in place at the micro-typographic level, and are painstaking and time-consuming to produce. In addition to his creative work, László Rostoka also does important work in organisation. The Bratislava Children’s Book Illustration Biennial, known as BIB, and the Poster Triennial in Trnava are both associated with him. But let’s start at the beginning.

Getting started: developing your interests, an inspiring family environment

He was born in Gbelce in Slovakia to a Hungarian family. The wonderful family environment of his childhood gave him a lifelong sense of direction and inspiration. Gbelce is situated at the foot of the Pilis Mountains. In the 10th century it belonged to the estate of King St Stephen. Between 1938 and 1945 the area again formed part of Hungary. The Hungarian names of the villages nearby, Sárkány, Muzsla, Vad and Mocsa, and further away Béla, Nána and Búcs, provided an inspiration to the artist at a young age. In his village, the Páriszi stream created a large marshy area, which in winter, when the marsh was frozen over, was suitable for ice hockey. The nearby large brickworks, whose sand quarries have been used to unearth the remains of huge marine prehistoric creatures, were also a wonderful environment for little László.

He comes from an intellectual family, his mother was a librarian and his father a teacher. He grew up surrounded by books and culture. His maternal grandfather, Károly Player, was the defining figure in his life, and he gave him the guidance to “always look towards Budapest in your life and work, and seek your challenges there”. His grandfather had amassed a large library, and it was the most beloved place in the house of his birth for the child. Perhaps it was here, among the books, that he later formulated his basic principle that text, multiplied on printed pages, must support graphics with aesthetic and semantic weight.

This large library was also important for the child because of its typographic forms (it was here that he first encountered Kassák’s MA journal in rectangular format, published in 1925) and it was also from these books that he could perfect his Hungarian language and grammar, as Rostoka attended Slovak schools.

As a child, he was always drawing, often with his father, even in the books he had picked out from his grandfather’s library. Recognising his good drawing skills, he often received colouring books, sketchbooks, beautifully illustrated books and paints for Christmas, and drawing became his passion. Her father was also a tourist guide in Hungary on weekends, so – also at her grandfather’s urging – he knew about all the exhibitions and openings in Budapest from his teenage years, visiting galleries in the capital city almost every weekend. Although he did not receive formal training, he became interested in the form of letters in primary school: he helped his mother in the local library and was fascinated by the visual appearance of books. It was at this time that he became intensively involved in calligraphy.

In 1963, at the age of 15, he enrolled at the Bratislava School of Art, where he arrived with a large suitcase full of drawings, paintings and works using various techniques (ink, chalk, watercolour, tempera, oil, linocut), including portraits of very elaborate (almost hyper-realistic to today’s eyes) artists (Mihály Munkácsy, Lajos Kassák). The school, which taught according to the Bauhaus pedagogical principles, was already dealing programmatically with the history, structure and morphology of the letter. He produced his first printed poster during his studies in 1966, for an exhibition by Professor István Schwartz. He drew the full text of the poster by hand in ink at a scale of 1:1. From this template, a galvanised plate was made and letterpress printed. The first payment of his life for this work came in the form of an art book: he chose Max Ernst’s monograph from the professor’s library, which he still has.

Spreading his wings, college years, and its impact

In his last years of secondary school, he prepared for the entrance exam – where he had to draw a realistic portrait in red chalk based on a live model, a colour still life in tempera and a figurative composition in free technique – by going to the Museum of Fine Arts every Saturday to make copies. In 1967 he was admitted to the Graphic Art Department of the Bratislava College of Fine Arts. He graduated in graphic arts and painting. He stayed in Bratislava but followed the work of his fellow students at the Academy of Fine Arts in Budapest, such as József Árendás, Kati Káldor, András Felvidéki and István Bányai. As early as 1963, he intensively studied the work of László Moholy-Nagy, Lajos Kassák and Victor Vasarely. The practical part of his 1973 thesis consisted of a 10 x 5 m aluminium relief of 120 segments, which had to be realised in 1:1 scale. He erected it in his home village. The theoretical part of the diploma was a 100-page study on the work of Victor Vasarely, published in 3 copies. The idea was inspired by a 1965 Vasarely exhibition of graphic art in Prague, the catalogue reproductions of which were screen-printed in gold and black. When the large-scale Vasarely exhibition opened at the Műcsarnok (Kunsthalle) in 1969, he prepared a draft of his theoretical thesis, “Hommage à Vasarely”, which the French painter and sculptor welcomed and provided supporting materials, and invited László Rostoka to Paris as a token of his appreciation. Their ten-year master-collaborator relationship ended in 1979 because of an elderly painter who was an informer for the Czechoslovak secret police. Unfortunately, the thesis did not survive because it was stolen from a Vasarely exhibition in Piešťany in 2016, together with a signed catalogue of Vasarely’s 1969 exhibition at the Kunsthalle.

The young artist

“We are lifelong students, our vocation is our true university.” László Rostoka

After graduating from college, he worked for three years as a teaching assistant at the Academy of Fine Arts. Unwilling to take part in political training, he left teaching in 1976 and after a year in the army worked as a freelance graphic artist until 1991. At that time he founded the graphic design studio Rabbit & Solution, where he was artistic director until 2006. In 2007, he founded a one-man studio called Rostoka Graphic Atelier, where he has been working mainly on books and postage stamps ever since. He is committed to lifelong learning and self-employment. He considers himself self-taught and believes that graphic design is the most evolving profession in the world. He creates by regularly looking back at the history of graphic design and its predecessors. He says: “We can only achieve new graphic design victories by standing on the shoulders of our predecessors.” He is committed to the responsibility of creators, not least to defend the public’s right to quality graphic design, created by designers whose social commitment overrides their profit.

Active working years

“I believe that this ability, which requires a high degree of patience, is a gift that allows me to respond to the present, accelerated by the stress of everyday life, and to step out of the hectic environment that forces many designers to process ideas in a superficial way.” László Rostoka

His working methods are precise, systematic and orderly. He has set a very high standard of quality and professionalism, whether he is working with copperplate or drawing. Committed to resisting the digital conquest of artificial intelligence, he has recognised that contemporary digital design does not communicate with its viewers, and therefore seems to have lost touch with people. And Rostoka counts on the viewer. He addresses the public with the primary element of book design. For him, it is important to adopt and model the norms developed by the old masters, the authorities that generations have come to respect, and the ethics of the profession. He creates in the knowledge that each work is also his own self-portrait, revealing fundamental things about him, his personality, his destiny, his past and his future. He believes that turning to the past, exploring new variations and combinations of old solutions, is perhaps the most viable and natural way for any creator to make his work coherent, relatable and intimate. The basis of his work is to represent the material and human elements of the world, the real forms. His aim is to draw reality at a natural pace, through his own eyes, as he sees the world. “I would like my compositions of silhouettes of forms to create a kind of puppet theatre of the world, theatre in which intimate chatter is heard, and a playful intertwining of signs and meanings, a constructive social critique, but all the while always with some endearing funny message. I take the Claudian quote as my own: “The world is a stage: you come in, you play, you go out.” I like to play with typography. In my worldly life I have been sensitive to letters and symbols. I like things to be honestly put down and thought through to the smallest detail – chiselled, I might say. Typography workshop work demands this, without it I don’t think the profession could exist. I would like the book, which includes typography, to be like a sculpture in space,” he confesses.

Posters

A poster is a combination of image and text, a visually eye-catching, large-scale outdoor advertisement, reproduced in print, using graphic and typographic elements. In Hungary, its appearance can be traced back to the inter-war period, since from the 10s and 20s onwards, war posters became the subject of international exchange exhibitions. From the beginning, the Hungarian poster was a separate genre, not a by-product of fine art. And the fact that it could be quickly reproduced and easily distributed helped it to reach a wider audience. The poster is one of the most flamboyant of all art forms: it stops, it pushes, it is loud and it is brash. It is perhaps surprising, therefore, that László Rostoka, legendarily modest and unassuming, intellectual and secretive, should have been recognised by Hungarian graphic designers as a poster designer. He was a founding member of the Hungarian Poster Society, established in 2004, and made an indelible mark on the art world with his posters of Czechoslovakia and Slovakia, Cistka, Hamlet and Tóték (The Tót Family), which are well known in Hungary too.

In his poster paintings, he aspires to create drawings that can turn a simple form into a hyper-expressive one, endowing it with a meaning never before conceived, creating anatomies out of letterforms full of unprecedented emotion, extending the meaning of everyday objects and finding their hidden faces. With these sometimes ironic anthropomorphisms (for example, paradoxes of clothespins, butterflies or blades), he creates a concentrated, grotesque world of forms.

István Orosz says of the poster artist Rostoka: “If we think of the half-century of dictatorship that bound our countries together, we could hardly be more accurate in our vision than the poster Cistka. It would be difficult to express the tension of this repressed drama more succinctly than the emblematic drawing of Hamlet. Could the painful vulnerability of poster art to the moment alone be more vividly portrayed than Rostoka’s metaphor of the beautiful dragonfly?”

Anyone who sees the posters of László Rostoka will realise that he does not only give a picture of the here and now, as the poster is meant to do. These posters become universal, independent of time and place. It is no longer important what event they once advertised, but the personality behind them. It is Rostoka’s personality that makes them all credible. The images abandon their original function as applied art and move into the world of independent fine art. They become spacious, dimensional, translucent. We can look at them as if we were looking into a clear and flawless mirror. László Rostoka has been a poster designer since 1965. Political, economic and technological changes have rewritten the face of graphic design, just as successive stylistic waves in the visual arts have periodically renewed it. The artist keeps pace with these changes, renewing himself and not giving an iota of his own values, style, artistic philosophy and ethics. He combines the playfulness and personality of freehand drawing with the naturalness of computer graphics and the regular, geometric objectivity of the technique. His concise, emblematic works are influenced by the Czech, Slovak and Hungarian artistic traditions, especially Constructivist tendencies. One could even say that his motto is “to say a lot with a little”. The pure rules of geometry prevail in the majority of his works. Rostoka makes conscious use of the axioms of geometry, and the constant reinterpretation of these truths, and enriches them with ancient content. His work as a poster designer was greatly influenced by the retrospective exhibition of the poster designer György Konecsni (1908-1970), which was exhibited at the Kunsthalle in 1968, and by the 100+1 éves a magyar plakát. A magyar plakátművészet története 1886-1986 (100+1 years of the Hungarian poster – The History of Hungarian Poster Art 1886-1986), also in the Kunsthalle.

Typography

“First and foremost, typography should have a catalytic energy to irradiate the lives of present generations. This can only happen if the designer is an equal partner of the client and not just a means to fulfil his wishes.” László Rostoka

His first exhibition of graphic design, Tipografika (Typography), was held in Bratislava in 1978 and was followed by 47 more. For each of them a poster was made, the surface of which is regularly dominated by a large T-letter. Rostoka is a graphic book designer with a European dimension. From the very beginning he was attracted to drawing on paper, for him hand-drawing is a means of sustained attention. He understands the world through drawing. In his way of working, the creative process is deeply and intimately linked to understanding, to inventing solutions. To draw is to understand. He has kept a visual diary from a young age, and from the 1990s onwards he made intensive use of A5 Moleskine notebooks, originally intended as a kind of cookbook, with written and drawn visual recipes. These notes have had a strong influence on his design work. He adopts the idea of the famous Hungarian-born American poster artist Milton Glaser about hand-drawing: “Drawing is the most fundamental commitment of a designer”.

Rostoka has played a key role in the rehabilitation of design in the 20th and 21st centuries. His work is characterised by an inexhaustible harmony of typographic ideas and laconic drawings. László Rostoka seeks the meaning of existence in secluded solitude, immersed in work. Physically almost invisible to the public, he is also known as a hermit. He literally communicates visually with his viewers.

Miroslav Cipár, illustrator and graphic designer, says of Rostoka: “His graphic and typographic work has clear, unmistakable authorial features. He can use humour, fabrications and fictions in the solid construction of planes; he can make jokes with aphoristic conciseness and consistent graphicness. His letter combinations are unprecedented, he allows himself risky size relationships and the use of grey, or the nuances of colour in a block of text. We find in them a painterly sensibility.” Rostoka has presented the work of designer, illustrator, draughtsman, graphic artist, painter and sculptor Miroslav Cipár in a monumental volume of 536 pages and 2,501 images.

The art historian Fedor Kriška summarised the essence of his typography as follows: “Rostoka’s work absolutely fulfils the meaning of the phrase ‘Numquam vera species ab utilitate dividitur’, that is, ’true beauty can never be separated from utility’, as Quintilian, the ancient Roman orator, used to say. A prerequisite for the creation of a beautiful book is the free definition of the designer’s task: the aim is always to create a surprising and original text, to transform sentences, paragraphs and entire pages in a unique way. And the usefulness of his beautiful books, which unobtrusively decorate our everyday life, lies in the concept of a sophisticated design, a complex typographic solution, which still has its own fixed Gutenberg laws, concerning the rhythm of typesetting, the positioning of images and the masterly interplay of blank and filled spaces. All coordinated by the designer. It is as if there were more than one creator living in Rostoka, people who have enriched the history of mankind with their sacred mission: the ancient engraver of cuneiform, the scribe of Egyptian papyri, the poet-engraver of Chinese calligraphy and the creator of illuminated codices in the scriptorium of a medieval monastery...”

Some of Rostoka’s posters use irregularly shaped sheets of paper, as if cut from a template. The cutting on Vachálek’s exhibition poster is done in such a way that each copy is aligned to create an infinitely repeating poster with a 3D effect. Such repeating posters are a departure from the traditional rectangle of the classic poster.

He was also given the opportunity to design Polish theatre posters (Poland is still a major poster power).

Between 1995 and 2015, he designed nearly 100 square posters for the BIB, the Bratislava Biennale of Illustration, which consisted of ten biennial exhibitions.

We would like to mention some of his many works.

The monograph István Orosz 2023: Color Book / Black Book is an attempt to present in one volume the contrasting genres of the artist’s posters, illustrations and films, on the one hand, and the fascinating inventions of black and white graphics, anamorphosis and dechametry, on the other. The book is therefore divided into two parts, one in colour and one in black: the first half of the body of the book is in the normal position, the second half is opened upside down; the viewer need only turn the book to explore both worlds.

In 2021, Dóra Keresztes wrote a book entitled Virágnak világa, világnak virága (The World of Flowers, the Flowers of the World). The title itself hints at the emotionality of the individual, original work on the pages.

2021 saw a monograph on the colourful poster world of József Árendás, which aims to convey the elemental, ironic, raw power of the artist’s posters. The book’s robust typographic concept also aims to underline this.

The 2016 book Typo 1 is the first part of the ABCs of graphic design, and it traces the evolution of visual culture in the 20th century world through the work of 26 graphic designers.

In the 1988 book Hosszabbak egy fejnél (Longer than a Head), the title of the book started the illustration game with the letter “O”. Although the publication is dominated by paraphrases of the letter “O”, he also tried to include the other letters of the ABC in the typography game.

As the book Kamil Peteraj: Szövegek (Lyrics) contains lyrics, the use of the 5 lines of music was the basis for the design of the structure of the pages. The book was also awarded a prize by the jury of the World’s Most Beautiful Books competition. This book was a nice design exercise for the artist. The concept of the Boris Filan: Kóbor kutya (Stray Dog) publication, the form of the illustrations, was derived from the author’s name, which begins with the letter “F”. He therefore tried to play with the letter “F”, deforming its shape, adding drawn interventions. The abstract shapes of the letter are also the dominant element in the design of the logotypes. The logo with the letter “K” was designed for a restaurant which translates into English as Small Horse.

In the logo designed for the Slovak Design Center, he combined the initials S – C – D to evoke a waveform. With the logo for the Architecture Awards, a Slovak architecture competition, he wanted to create a spatial, 3D illusion. He was always interested in the close relationship between letter and drawing in illustration.

Forums with fellow artists

Ever since his youth, László Rostoka had been interested in the work of Lajos Kassák, born in Nové Zámky, and was present at the opening of Kassák’s exhibition entitled “Kassák’s Architectures of Images” in 1967, which was his last exhibition during his lifetime. He followed the work of his Hungarian colleagues intensively through the magazines he subscribed to, Művészet (Art) and Magyar grafika (Hungarian Graphic Art). In February 1979, he was invited to join the jury of the Most Beautiful German Poster in Berlin. There he met in person a Hungarian jury member, the distinguished Hungarian graphic artist Gábor Papp, whose work he had seen before. Among other exhibitions, he organised the “Papp Group” exhibitions at the Dorottya Street Exhibition Hall: Emblématervek (Emblem Designs, 1969), Grafika (Graphic Art, 1971), Kiállítás (Exhibition, 1972), 70x100 (1974), Hétköznap (Weekday, 1975), Poster (1976), Kalligráfia és tipográfia (Calligraphy and Typography, 1977), Falrahányt borsó (Peas on the Wall, 1978). In 1983, he organised a posthumous exhibition at the Budapesti Történeti Múzeum (Budapest History Museum) in honour of Gábor Papp. It was here that he met Ernő Sára, graphic artist and organiser of the exhibition.

In 1981, he was admitted to the AGI (Alliance Graphique Internationale). This was the most important graphic design association in the world, of which he was the youngest member. His laudation was delivered by a world-renowned Dutch graphic artist, Wim Crouwel. The political situation in Czechoslovakia at the time prevented him from going abroad for the society’s annual meetings, but the increased mailings from abroad brought him to the attention of the secret police.

He was, however, in permanent contact with his Hungarian colleagues, such as István Orosz, József Árendás, Péter Pócs, István Bányai, Sándor Pinczehelyi and Gábor Gyárfás. He was a jury member of the Békéscsabai Országos Alkalmazott Grafikai Biennálé (National Biennial of Applied Graphic Design) in Békéscsaba for the first time in 1990 (and again in 2002, 2004 and 2006), where he had the opportunity to personally meet representatives of the older generation of graphic designers. In 1990, he met graphic artist and illustrator János Kass in the jury for the “Most Beautiful Hungarian Book”, with whom he later met several times in Bratislava on the occasion of the BIB illustration biennale.

After the change of regime, an important period began for the artist: he had the opportunity to visit the studios of many colleagues and friends, such as Károly Schmal, István Faragó, Krzysztof Ducki, Péter Pócs (Kecskemét) and Sándor Pinczehelyi (Pécs).

In 1998, he gave the opening speech at the last exhibition of the legendary DOPP group (Ducki, Orosz, Pócs, Pinczehelyi) in the Vigadó Gallery. The last decade of the twentieth century was thus full of hectic collaboration. And the most important events of the beginning of the new millennium were the founding of the Hungarian Poster Society in 2004 and his membership of the Hungarian Academy of Arts in 2005.

Monographs, illustrations

Rostoka has produced more than 1,200 books and catalogues, including many voluminous monographs, but of all these, he clearly considers three small-format books to be key: Kamil Peteraj = Szövegek (Texts, 1985), Boris Filan = Kóbor kutya (Stray Dog, 1987), and Jozef Čertík = Hosszabbak egy fejjel (Longer by a Head, 1988), with the letter form “T”, the letter “F”, and the letter “O”, respectively, acting as protagonist in the above works. “I am never satisfied with my work, but from the perspective of recent times, I can see that in these cases I may have come close to satisfaction. With God’s help, in zero hurry, I am obsessed with a kind of striving for perfection, and I never give up until I am close to the result I was striving for.”

“During the illustration and design of these books, I also became convinced that the author’s identification code in this chaotic world can only be his personal manuscript, his own style. Here I have also realised the exciting game with the dichotomy of saturation and absence. I have tried to demonstrate that the perpetual duel of the two opposites, the clash of black and white, positive and negative, can be not only dramatic but also a joyful game.”

“It was also then that I realised that designing books is not a routine job, every square millimetre has to be fought for again and again, from the beginning. For example, the quality of the paper, its smell, texture, smoothness, are all factors that not only influence the reader, but can be a key element of the design. In these books, I have summarised what I have known and created so far, creating a more solid basis for further work.”

“Because time is running: ’tempus fugit’ – times are changing fast and so are we, with them. Here I have already come to the conclusion that by creating books, by creating books, man can stay ‘alive’ not only physically but also spiritually. I believe that in the creation, in the activity, there is redemption. And in these works I have also tried to put into practice the words of Paul Rand, the American graphic artist: ‘Good typography can be high art’. Here I have confirmed my conviction that I do not want to move away from the ordinary (human) notion of aesthetics and beauty just for the sake of a kind of cool, trendy, extravagant creation. My belief that I don’t want to be in the cool shoes of those artists who ‘delight’ this world with their crazy paintings, weird sculptures, unlistenable musical compositions, extravagant buildings and illegible typography. In short: I value harmony of soul and line more than avant-garde mastery.”

Exhibitions abroad

He has participated in nearly 650 collective exhibitions and has organised 48 solo exhibitions worldwide. Perhaps the most important of these was in 1998. “For my 50th birthday, the Pécs Gallery organised a truly grand retrospective exhibition of more than 300 of my works, at the invitation of Sándor Pinczehelyi, Director of the Pécs Gallery, with an opening speech by István Orosz. It was the first time that I could see a selection of my major works from 1967 – 1997 in one place: books, illustrations, bibliophiles, catalogues and annual reports of companies, posters, logotypes and calendar designs.”

He is currently preparing a double monograph for the graphic artists László Káldor (1905-1963) and Kati Káldor (1948). The work of the father and daughter graphic artist team is presented in one volume. He is currently designing postage stamps, covers and seals for the Slovak Post, including a circular stamp of Peter Pellegrini, President of the Slovak Republic, published in 2024. He is working on a Christmas stamp and a stamp design for the 30th BIB – Biennale of Illustration in Bratislava. He reconstructs the most important works of the old stamps of the 1960s, of which only designs have survived. He intends to complete his book design work with a summary monograph. In the words of K. F. Mather: “We do not live in our universe by chance or whim, but by the laws and order of God, whose organization is wholly rational, a wonderful project of nature, and worthy of the highest respect.”

László Rostoka’s artistic credo

“I have adopted the definition of graphic design as a vocation and a mission, not a money-making activity. After university, from the very beginning, I tried to formulate and systematically develop (according to the standards I felt) my own aesthetic canon (the play of letters, lines and colour forms) that could evoke a strong aesthetic experience in the viewer. Because I believe that personal handwriting (own style) is the author’s identification code, a very important element in the matter of distinction in the chaos of the dictates of global trends.”

“I wanted to present a certain universally creative and aesthetically beautiful idea to people during the existence and functioning of the work created. I wanted my work to always be solid enough to last as long as possible. I always strived for perfection and precision in the execution of the design, and avoided as much as possible the strange game of party that takes place in winning contracts, full of compromises and false concessions. I concentrated on those areas of graphic design that could guarantee the pleasure of the work and, above all, leave the designer with a clear conscience. For me, these were the areas of book illustration, typography and cultural posters. Because culture, art and especially books were, and still are, a serious opponent of the limits of man under the communist regime. Because for me, the book, together with the wheel, the alphabet, the sail, bread and wine, is the greatest discovery of mankind. That is why I decided at that time to make the development of the art of the book the first priority in my life. The book is the dear teacher of all men, who teach without shouting and without anger. A teacher who never sleeps – available day and night. When we ask questions and make mistakes, he does not mock us.”

“My entire professional practice and experience with the book was based on the idea of including and recording as much valuable information as possible. In an effort to support the status of the book as the unsurpassed way of preserving information. This approach – to make the book visually as well as content-wise interesting – has always been something I have found very necessary. For me, the book is, along with the wheel, the alphabet, the sail, bread and wine, the greatest discovery of mankind. For me, the book is an insurmountable phenomenon, a great lesson and a source of spiritual joy, giving people ideas. I revere it as a sacred object, just like the Holy Bible. ’the written language is sacred and has wings,’ Plato once said.”

“This has always been very important to me, because anyone who is even partially aware of the conditions under which the designer works (for example, in the last century) registers the painful fact that the graphic designer is at the mercy of bad taste, which the client, wrapped up in fine words, presents in unverifiable claims and assertions, which eclipse the artist’s individuality and interests and encourage the creation of a grey average that almost approaches the level of amateur DIY.”

“I've always said that without dreams, I’ve achieved very little that really matters. I know that I have to put my head down with my hat on, otherwise I won’t get anywhere. Dreams always worry me: how do I make what is logical, harmonious and clear in my imagination into reality? I believe that even the mere formulation of a dream or wish is taken into account somewhere up there, and sometimes it will be fulfilled in some form in three-dimensional reality.”

“The current minimalist (simple, ‘clean’) graphic design trend, which the young generation fiercely and arrogantly promotes and enforces, is not close to my heart, it is not pleasing to the eye, to the soul, it just becomes endlessly boring. After all, there is a lack of ideas, thought and humour here. In my opinion, minimalism is a dead end, its future potential is severely limited because it can be exhausted very easily. I had an increasing feeling, and gradually became convinced, that behind minimalist solutions (which I find convenient), there is hiding someone who has nothing to offer. They are working under the motto ‘the graphic designer should not show everything he knows, should be inconspicuous, should be in the background.’ So why does a graphic designer know something, why is he trained if he doesn’t want to show it? How do we know he knows something? Minimalist boredom has gradually destroyed creativity and caused a levelling out of international typographic style. So I am a perfectionist. In imagination, in belief and in practice. For me, it is more important to be noticeable than to be inconspicuous in this harsh, abstract, unconcentrated, hectic present, in which rules are absolutely absent. I have never tried to get caught up in the merry-go-round of ever-changing trends, which once again radically contradict the previous opinion.”

“I prefer sensuality and fantasy. An honest sculpture, thousands of years old, says infinitely more to me than conceptual pieces of paper scattered on the ground. Graphic designers argue that they point to the emptiness of our world through their deliberately empty work. Why not fight it with imagination, beauty and talent? They are unmistakably contributing to a greater frustration than ever before in the visual arts today, and as a result there is now more aesthetic devaluation than ever before. One hand in hand with the ambiguity of the insane chaos of civilisational progress, controlled by artificial intelligence, and the dictatorship of media enclaves.”

“From the beginning, I always presented only one plan to the client. Multiple designs unnecessarily dissipate the concentration and energy needed to create the best one. Of course, for myself, I have always studied the possibilities of the presented design in detail and have created many versions (e.g. when creating a logo, I create more than 1000 designs).”

“I have always sought to counter the growing tendencies and manifestations of human manipulation, as opposed to the spread of the multicultural lie that seeks to erase the diversity of art and unite it in a universal, global style. I am against this ‘alienated’ culture of the digital age, I do not accept ready-made software solutions. I prefer and value a design that is distinct in its individual style. I believe that the essential intelligence base of the true creators of the present includes learning from the work of past personalities and not forgetting the roots.”

“In typographic art (as in nature) there are no shortcuts. It is impossible to exist there without inspiration and imagination. But all inspiration would be useless without long, honest work, which must necessarily be slow, deliberate, conscientious and patient. A hectic rush cannot bring good results. In other words – a graphic designer (and all artists) must be an ‘iron bottom’. (My examples are Leonardo – it is well known that he worked 20 hours a day for many years, so of course he had some results. Bodoni – the creator of typefaces created 209 alphabets of the highest level. Each contains more than 100 stickers or letters.) I suppose that the profession of typography is similar to that of an architectural designer or theatre director, who determines the concept and interpretation of a dramatic work. The point is in the precisely articulated system. A precisely articulated system, simplicity, authentic expression and vivid tension. In an order that gives me certainty. I believe that this is how the hidden web of inner laws works. Typography, although it speaks a universal language, is also a barometer of the cultural climate of a country.”

“In my opinion, a poster in a community of artistic types should evoke something like a loud noise or a scream in the silence of the night. My path to it, however, is completely divorced from the commercial noise of fashionable graphic elements, the destructive chaos of superficiality and the glittering present of civilisation. I am heading towards the scream through a deliberate limitation of my possibilities. By attempting to exclude randomness from the process of creation, I seek to achieve a quiet simplicity of expression. I believe that in today’s days of aesthetic confusion, of total inflation of ideas and spiritual values, this silence can have the effect of a scream.”

“My working method is very simple: I am guided by a kind of subconscious attraction to a systematised order, an instinct that is coded into me. I have tried to make sure that my work is not just a splash in the water, that one leaves a trace in the dust of eternity. I lived and worked under the pressure of the past and the pull of the future. In other words, I knew the work of our ancestors, of past generations, and I respected and valued it. I always associated my aspirations with the future. Today’s generations are in a special situation – they despise the past and have no need to know it at all. They look only to the future. And as for the future: I have no idea whether we will ever succeed in persuading humanity to agree to its own survival.”

[2024]

László Rostoka

Selection of works