Students from the Department of Book, Illustration, Printed Graphics participated in a workshop on book design using typography at Lycée Bréquigny in Rennes, France

2026.03.30

Students from the Department of Book, Illustration, Printed Graphics demonstrated their artistic and design abilities during a specialised typography workshop at the Lycée Bréquigny in Rennes, France, organised by the Swiss design studio BalmerHählen. The students Viktoriya Ivanova, Kaloyan Kamenopolski, Tina Mihaylova (3rd year), Gabriela Zemyarska and Marina Ivanova (4th year), and Stefka Lozeva (Master's degree programme in Illustration), selected by the teaching team at the Department, presented the National Academy of Art, under the leadership of Assoc. Prof. Kapka Kaneva, PhD, and Ch. Asst. Prof. Boyana Pavlova, PhD. The workshop was attended by students from all over the world, along with representatives of art universities from France, the Czech Republic, Poland and Bulgaria.

The workshop theme "Alice in Wonderland", inspired by the same-named novel by Lewis Carroll, posed a challenge to the participants to express themselves specifically in the field of typographic experiment. Under the leadership of Priscilla Balmer and Ivo Halen, divided into 12 mixed teams, the young artists visually interpreted the 12 chapters of the emblematic literary work by Caroll. They not only demonstrated their skills, but also created together (with the other members on their team formed on site) a unique book body, which they printed using the risographic technique, a print run of 60 hand-binded copies. Every participant in the workshop and every represented university received a copy. The team also included the lecturers Agnieszka Zhemishevska (Poland) and Radoslava Boor (Czech Republic), herself a graduate of the Department of Book, Illustration, Printed Graphics, at whose invitation the representatives of the National Academy of Art participated in the workshop.

The students and lecturers from the National Academy of Art participated in the forum with the financial support of the Erasmus+ Programme.