Since Kosovo is in the news for the current renewed border conflicts with its Serbian neighbors, it is useful to know that the country is more than a hot-spot for violence. It has a thriving design community with a robust design magazine, Kosovo 2.0 (and website). Here’s what the editors say:
Kosovo 2.0 pulses with voices unfettered and unafraid. Interactive blogs, articles and multimedia bring the untold stories and views of your world and their world.
The handsomely designed (by Vanlennep, a Dutch studio) and smartly edited (by Besa Luci), magazine is published entirely in English. Content includes profiles of multidisciplinary designers as well as design-as-socio-political issue, including “Top 10 of Frustration,” a list of complications driving Kosovars lives; “Made in Kosovo,” supermarket products in the Kosovo stores; “Passports to Nowhere,” the difficulties in navigating the Kosovar travel bureaucracy; and “A Perfect Bride,” a dramatic photo essay on “what it’s like to be decorated as a bride from Lubinje” (more on this in another post).
For years most of the news on Western media presents Kosovo as a wild place besieged by warring factions. Kosovo 2.0 is proof that this is indeed a modern design center.
[L’Oreal’s ban on Friday Nightly Heller and The Cube on Saturday Daily Heller.]
