At Warsaw’s The Poster Festival, a new school of artists emerge alongside an overlooked history of graphic design - It's Nice That

Spanning the hidden Polish design pioneers of modern history, to the next generation of visual innovators, we report back from our visit to this expansive event dedicated to the humble but mighty medium of posters. It’s Nice That was invited to The Poster: Festival of Posters, Post-Poster Forms and Experimental Graphic Design (11–14 June, 2026), a one-off celebration of new and classic generations of graphic design. On the plane over, I wondered “what is a poster in the age of screens and AI?” and “how does the humble poster remain relevant today?” But most of all: “what is the Warsaw graphic design scene like?” Little did I know, I was about to step into a new world of Polish design, from propaganda to playful plagiarism, digital grunge and experiments in legibility to ink-stained dance floors and celebrations of female graphic designers across the nation. The first thing I see when I come into the exhibition is a picture of Keanu Reeves, Willem Dafoe and Meryl Streep. This is an exhibition of posters exploring the boundaries of authorship, inspiration and remix. It has a non-author. It makes it very clear to me that the author is not (wink wink) Kuba Sowiński. The works on display were created between 2017 and 2026 for the Poster Museum in Warsaw, the Kraków Film Festival and the Nówka Sztuka art fair in Kraków. The exhibition presents posters and graphic works that show how authorship and originality can be understood in contemporary design today – questions that are especially relevant in the time of the artificial intelligence revolution. There is a great variety of different styles at the exhibition, including blue-biro ink pen drawings of celebrities, which touch on how we perceive celebrities, bringing the red carpet to the poster world. As well as that, the visual references taken for the collage works range from contemporary graphic design to World War II propaganda, in some parts even remixing some of the Nazi symbology that oppressed Poland and bravely turns it into something new in the era of the remix. At London Gallery Weekend there were a great number of artists who were also touching upon the assemblage and collage of materials and artists pinching and purloining wherever they saw fit. In Poland, it’s no different. Not the Artist takes the image and makes it into its own plaque. The political undertones become overtones. The methodology is the paint. Kuba Sowiński: But It’s Not Me! (2026) Photography by Patryk Wisniewski Not the Artist's interpretations use chalk and graphite and pen to reinterpret faces we’ve seen our entire lives. As I stared into the menacing gaze of the villainous Willem Dafoe, I immediately picked up on his likeness. But there’s something playfully elementary about these drawings, like they were found in the back of a bored teenager’s maths book and brought to life through poster work, giving the impression that anyone can make a poster as long as they have a pair of scissors or pen or they simply have the means to amplify and enlarge images to the size of a poster. Perhaps the artist prefers to not be acknowledged to avoid copyright infringement malarkey. But on the other hand, the playfulness of authorship, which is constant hot topic in the graphic design world, is welcome, and the exhibition offered a reprieve from the litigious world of image and wage theft. Lovingly mocking our visual design through mock-ups, it was a fitting beginning to a festival that is fascinated by images and how we use them. “Not the Artist takes the image and makes it into its own plaque. The political undertones become overtones. The methodology is the paint.” Kuba Sowiński: But It’s Not Me! (2026) Photography by Patryk Wisniewski One of the central exhibitions to the festival, titled Polish Female Graphic Designers 1945–1989, is indebted to Alicja Kobza’s Graphic Designers: The Untold Stories of Polish Female Graphic Designers 1945–1989 – the first comprehensive study dedicated to recovering the forgotten history of female graphic designers in post-war Poland. She investigated why accomplished women were overshadowed by male colleagues, historical narratives that focused on men and how domestic responsibilities impacted women’s careers (for instance, Maria “Mucha” Ihnatowicz was her family’s main breadwinner and worked on the floor between the kitchen and dining table, while her husband occupied their studio and received all the historical recognition). The exhibition featured works by Lilian Baczewska-Lampert, Barbara Baranowska, Hanna Bodnar, Zofia Darowska and Ewa Frysztak, as well as Alicja’s diligent efforts to track down dispersed archives which resulted in discovering long-lost works by Julitta Gadomska (which were still in pristine condition thanks to her son). Among many others, the exhibition is a natural extension of Alicja’s efforts, combined with a passionate community of Polish designers who care deeply about an area of graphic design that remains to be fully seen. I met Katarzyna “Kasia” Matul, a Polish design historian and curator responsible for the international poster collection at the Poster Museum in Wilanów (2008–2010). Her book The Artistic Legitimisation of the Poster in the Polish People’s Republic 1944-1968 opens with: “few artistic phenomena from the communist period in Poland have enjoyed as much recognition, both at home and abroad, as the poster. It is most commonly associated with the ‘Polish School of Posters’, which, according to art critics and historians, is characterised by its expressive, authorial, and highly subjective approach, manifested through the immediacy of graphic gesture in both illustration and typography.” Kasia believes that the disappearance of the “poster’s commercial function as a consequence of the absence of a free market made it possible to value the medium primarily for its artistic qualities”, neutralising a utilitarian character and moving it towards personal expression (which I saw in full effect later on) – but the poster in Poland is entrenched in a fascinating history, one that has economic, political and artistic dimensions far beyond my comprehension. Luckily, the exhibitions were here to introduce me to Poland’s legacy of artistic legitimacy through the poster. Alicja Kobza: Polish Female Graphic Designers 1945–1989 (2026) Photography by Patryk Wisniewski Alicja Kobza: Polish Female Graphic Designers 1945–1989 (2026) Photography by Patryk Wisniewski Alicja Kobza: Polish Female Graphic Designers 1945–1989 (2026) Photography by Patryk Wisniewski