Jacek Utko

Jacek Utko, Polish designer, based in Warsaw. After obtaining an architectural degree, he began his career as an architect. Feeling disappointed, he decided to venture into various fields, including interior design, set design for film production and finaly graphic design.

After a few years, he became the art director for Puls Biznesu (a newspaper run by Swedish Bonnier Business Press), and then later advanced as the design director for the whole BBP group for eight Central European countries. Despite working with small newspapers with small staffs and small budgets, he collected more than forty awards in various design competitions within a few years. Two of the papers he redesigned, Poland’s Puls Biznesu and Estonia’s Aripaev, were named “World’s Best Designed Newspaper” by Society for News Design, in the largest international design competition. Puls Biznesu (2004) became the first newspaper in Central Europe receiving such an award. He also received several other SND awards, including designs for front pages, newspaper redesigns, and individual portfolio.

His covers for Puls Biznesu were named ‘Cover of the Year’ in Poland three years in a row. He was a speaker for various seminars, including SND conference. In 2009 he was a speaker at TED conference in Long Beach. Recently he works a lot on web design.

Session Abstract

Inner Branding

Do design that is not about changing the look, but improving the product completely. Don’t start from designing. Start from thinking. Start from big strategic questions. Why do we do it and what is the business goal? It’s the designers who should ask these questions. Designers must be engaged in all aspects; the design must be coherent with strategy and content changes. Otherwise it will fail.

I have seen many ‘nice’ designs that didn’t raise the circulation. On the contrary, some of them almost killed the newspaper. Why? Because those were good designs for the wrong audiences. This is the new role of the designer; to be in the process from the very beginning, from shaping business strategy, to the very end, to micro typography. Give power to designers! Conscious designers, that is.

This kind of redesign process, which is more holistic and engages many departments, can enormously motivate all workers. And boost results. That’s why we had such growth after redesign. We call it inner branding. And be careful. Design can change not only your product, but also your workflow, branding, and your company. It can change even you.