Polish Traditions

After living in London for 10 years, I realised I had forgotten to perform a lot of my traditions from back home. From that, I wanted to create a book full of polish traditions and to educate and explain to people from other countries what they mean to me. It was important for me to remind other immigrants to reconnect with their backgrounds as I am trying to.

It is written in both Polish and English. Polish is the mother tongue getting pushed aside by my second language English. Whilst living and working in England I find myself unable to fully embrace my polish roots. The culture is completely different here, without the customs I was used to in Poland. The book is a reminder to you to re start your traditions and connect with your heritage whilst being present in a completely different country. All the images in the book are taken from my family albums, so it’s full of nostalgia and completely personal to me. It’s about my journey reconnecting to my traditions and the aim is to inspire that into other people like me missing their country.

The design is very bold and simple; the cover is dramatic and monochromatic. The type I chose in particular is very important because it’s a polish design for polish letters. There are not many types that fit well with the polish language because of the sheer volume of abbreviations and letters in our alphabet. Inspired by the work of Barbara Kruger, I wanted to incorporate strong lettering, condensed text and imagery whilst using the themes of identity and self.