Design that inspire people

With the rise of digitalization, the opportunities incline to access information and education from all parts of the world. This opens new horizons of learning skills online and created famously new waves of entrepreneurship. The concept is generally, that you autonomously educate yourself, learn and perfect a skill to finally sell your services to a targeted group. This doesn’t only offer opportunities to people who can’t or don’t want to learn in a formal educational way but is also making entrepreneurship a household name. It encourages innovation but it also fuels the economy by providing job opportunities and careers for people of different ages as well as from varying social and economic backgrounds.

An example for this is Filip Antovski, who is an 18-year-old self-taught graphic designer from Skopje visiting middle school “Vasil Antevski – Dren” in fourth year. Last year, in December 2022 he won the first prize in the designing competition “High schoolers for clean Skopje “ – project created by Volunteers Center Skopje in collaboration with City of Skopje. He designed a concept for one of the buses driving through the city, creating a poster which at the same time moves and reminds people to be more eco-conscious in their day-to-day life but also brightens up the city with innovative art of an upcoming designer.

From primary school on Filip has been talented at drawing but found his first inspirations for graphic design in YouTube videos that later have taught him his skills. He explains that, “I got into graphic design two years ago when everything was locked up because of the virus. I had no experience with graphic design before, so I used the internet to explore and learn about it.”. Youtubers like Intuitive Design, Abi Connick or Brandon Shepherd inspire and motivate as they provide an approach for selflearners to the work field. Intuitive Design, for example, reflects in his videos on previous and upcoming trends or provides tutorials on how to design scifi monkeys in Photoshop. Filip uses them and their videos as example’s and as designing practice to enhances his skills and to “reach that level of art”. Тhe skills of the high school student may already be impressive but he plans to head further. In near future, he considers applying for scholarships for graphic design studies in Slovenia and connecting informal with formal education. At the same time, he will continue promoting himself to reach bigger companies, he plans to work for when he finishes his education. Projects like “High schoolers for clean Skopje” offer a great opportunity and platform to broadcast his skills to a larger audience. With his contribution to the project, it is important to him to spread a good message, “I want people to also consider the message behind the design”.

For him a graphic designer is defined by certain attributes, “the person must be creative and open-minded in order to be any type of designer” and this is what makes him stand out. He tells us: “My view on graphic designing is what makes my interest a profession and allows me to create impressive designs that impact people”.

At the moment, the 18-year-old is designing T-Shirts for his friend’s brand flantega and is working on their upcoming collection. Additionally, he runs an Instagram Business account offering logo design and more. For each request he receives he follows a procedure to offer the best possible design to his costumers, “The first thing is the communication with the customer or research about the objective I’m designing for.” Secondly, he’s planning the concept, more specifically which colours and fonts he wants to use and more details. “After that it’s good to deal with the ideas that I get and select the one that performs best”. He then starts to design, before he finalises the design by reworking and improving it.

Soon you will be able to purchase his designs and clothing but until then you can support the young, upcoming artist on Instagram! You can find both accounts as @logodesign.mk and flantega, go check them out.

Marie Kiel Angelina Berndt