KAROLINA SATKOWSKA
Contents.
About me.
GRAPHIC DESIGNER AND ILLUSTRATOR.
Creative and detail-oriented Graphic Designer with over a year of professional experience in a marketing agency, complemented by a BA in Architecture from the University of Westminster and ongoing Graphic Design studies at Akademia Sztuk Pięknych w Warszawie. Proficient in Adobe Creative Suite, Canva, and traditional printmaking techniques (linocut, aquatint), with a passion for typography, branding, and marketing design. Eager to develop my skills and broaden my horizons in graphic design, particularly in creating impactful visuals for industries like food and hospitality. Excels in collaborative environments, delivering visually compelling solutions tailored to project goals.
ADDRESS:
Warsaw, Poland
CONTACT: 4/33
Phone : +48508060465 / +447873769718
Email : karolina.sat.w@gmail.com
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/karolinasat
Instagram: @sketchedbykaro
Karolina Satkowska.
EDUCATION
University of Westminster
2018-2022
- Regularly presented architectural projects in front of large audiences, refining public speaking and presentation skills.
- Collaborated in various student projects, fostering effective teamwork and adaptability in dynamic environments.
- Demonstrated proficiency in visual communication, translating complex architectural concepts into accessible presentations.
- Accumulated extensive experience in design work, consistently delivering creative and innovative solutions.
PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE
Graphic Assistant
Marketing Agency for Real Estate Developers ‘RENDART’
March 2024 - present
Freelance hand-drawn visualisation services
“Sketchedbykaro”
Feb 2023 - Aug 2023
SKILLS
Computer Skills:
- Adobe Creative Suite (Illustrator, Photoshop, Indesign)
- Rhino 3D
- Sketchup
- Canva
- Midjourney
Other Skills:
- Drawing, Painting
- Time management gained throughout 5 years of studying and working.
- Prepare detailed apartment cards for housing offers, ensuring visually appealing and accurate representations for estate listings.
- Design and build websites using templates, customizing layouts to align with client branding and functionality requirements.
- Develop and code custom SVG-based navigation systems, integrating them seamlessly into websites for enhanced user experience.
- Work closely with project managers to tailor each project to individual client needs, ensuring designs meet specific marketing and aesthetic goals.
- Website management, ensuring a user-friendly interface.
- Designed brand identity and marketing elements, including a brochure, portfolios, and catalogues, to enhance the business's visual appeal.
- Collaborated with clients primarily through remote communication channels.
- Provided hand-drawn rendering services tailored to the unique preferences and needs of interior designers, ensuring client satisfaction.
COURSES AND OTHER EXPERIENCE
Exhibition Curator University of Westminster,
June 2022
Interior Design And Illustration
ANDSHEDRAWS BIG ACADEMY by Anna Katkova
2022-2023
- Led the curation of architectural projects for a group of 18 students
- Co-designed the exhibition space for a cohesive and immersive showcase
- Responsible for designing and overseeing the production of 18 individual scrolls.
- Completed an intensive Interior Design and Illustration course, refining artistic skills.
- Explored the nuances of interior design aesthetics, incorporating principles into creative projects and design solutions.
Acquired knowledge of establishing and maintaining a compelling social media presence to showcase design work.
www.sketchedbykaro.com
As a graphic designer, I created the visual identity for Sketchedbykaro, my freelance architectural illustration service, taking on the role of both designer and client. Tasked with branding a service that delivers hand-drawn illustrations to enhance real estate marketing and spatial visualization, I designed a logo, color scheme, and typography system that balance architectural precision with creative flair. The result is a cohesive identity that reflects my dual expertise in design and illustration, brought to life through a custom-built website (sketchedbykaro.com). This project showcases my skills in crafting purposeful branding solutions, blending strategic layout design with a holistic aesthetic to establish a distinctive and professional presence.
Web Design.
www.sketchedbykaro.com
Introducing my website design project for architectural illustration services, aimed at captivating potential clients and showcasing illustrations efficiently. This visually compelling website features user-friendly navigation, immersive galleries highlighting various projects, and an intuitive layout that emphasizes the intricacies of each illustration. Through dynamic visuals and seamless presentation, the website effectively communicates the depth and quality of the architectural illustrations.
www.sketchedbykaro.com/pricingcatalog
Branding.
Brand Identity
CLIENT
Personal Project YEAR 2024
COSMETICS
Presenting Archetype Cosmetics, a personal project centered on a natural cosmetics brand. The brand identity, including the logo, name, color palette, and key graphic icons, was meticulously designed to embody timeless beauty and self-care through the exploration of ancient archetypes.
Rediscover Timeless Beauty
Nutrient Prints.
PROJECT
Nutrient Prints Collection (personal project) YEAR Feb 2025
A trio of posters celebrating nutritious foods—raw milk, honey, and pomegranate—each rendered in a striking monochrome palette (indigo, golden yellow, rose red) with a modern bitmap effect. Designed in Photoshop, these clean, minimalist pieces aim to adorn kitchens while educating viewers on the powerful benefits of each ingredient, blending aesthetic appeal with subtle storytelling.
Zine design ‘Time Conquered’
ZINE DESIGN.
‘TIME CONQUERED’
CLIENT : Academic project
DATE : Feb 2025
A conceptual zine exploring three pivotal April dates—1873’s artificial gas lighting, 1881’s milk pasteurization, and cold storage— that disrupted humanity’s natural cycles of day/night, decay, and seasons. Designed in InDesign with surreal illustrations generated via MidJourney and refined in Photoshop, this project blends historical narrative with experimental layouts to challenge perceptions of time and progress.
PROJECT: Spread from the
zine ‘Time
Conquered”
April 5, 1881
Chicago. Distance died.
Chicago Tribune:
"SWIFT'SREVOLUTIONARY REFRIGERATEDCARSDEBUT”
For centuries, the journey of meat from farm to table had been a race against time, bound by nature’s inexorable decay. Butchers worked locally, their trade restricted by summer’s heat and winter’s mercy. But in the dawn hours of April 5th, as workers packed the last blocks of ice into Swift’s patented car, these ancient limitations began to crumble.
“The design itself tells a story of human ingenuity,” writes Chief Engineer Theodore Wilson in his technical documentation. “Ten-inch walls packed with alternate layers of construction paper, wood shavings, and air spaces. Four thousand pounds of ice suspended in galvanized tanks. A complex system of air circulation that maintains a constant temperature of 34 to 36 degrees Fahrenheit. Each car is a triumph of thermal engineering, a rolling fortress against time itself.” But beyond the technical specifications lies a deeper transformation. Market reports from 1881 tell of butchers in Boston, their generations-old practices upended by the arrival of Swift’s cars. “Chicago beef, fresh as yesterday’s
slaughter, sells at half the price of local meat,” laments James Harrison, third-generation Boston butcher.
“How can we compete with industrial efficiency?” The numbers paint a stark picture of transformation. Within months of Swift’s innovation, a single refrigerated car could transport 40,000 pounds of fresh beef on a journey 1,200 miles, staying fresh for up to week. Chicago’s meat packers, once limited by local demand, now fed across the nation. The price of beef in eastern markets dropped by thirty percent.
“Meat that should be local travels thousand miles. What messages do we send to our bodies when we erase the very concept of distance and time from our sustenance?”
Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell
Local slaughterhouses began to close. Farmers and ranchers felt the change most acutely. “Once, we sold to local butchers who knew our names, knew our cattle,” wrote Illinois farmer Thomas Greene in his 1882 diary. “Now we sell to massive packing houses. The personal connection vanishes. Meat becomes a commodity, uniform and anonymous.”
By year’s end, Swift’s fleet numbered three hundred cars. Every major meat packer scrambled to develop their own refrigeration systems. The revolution, begun on that April morning, rippled through the economy, transforming not just how we transported food, but how we thought about food itself.
But as with all conquests, the victory brought both progress and loss, innovation and alienation, efficiency and disconnection.
In the end, Swift’s refrigerated car did more than preserve meat - it preserved a moment in time when humanity decided that nature’s limitations were merely suggestions, that progress meant the power to ignore rather than respect natural boundaries. The circle of local food, seasonal eating, and community connection lay broken, replaced by a new industrial rhythm that promised abundance without limitation, convenience without consequence.
On the Cumulative Effects of Industrial Progress
Dr. James Mitchell
We observe a troubling confluence of modern ailments: Sleep disorders from artificial lighting
Digestive disruptions from preserved foods
Seasonal depression from environmental disconnection
"The human cost of progress:
40% increase in chronic fatigue
65% rise in digestive complaints
70% report disrupted sleep patterns
'Our bodies remain stubbornly tied to natural rhythms, despite all attempts to break free.'"
Worker’s Health Coalition Report, 1884
Three Circles Broken: Light, Food, Season.
The circle remains unbroken - it simply grows larger to encompass our progress.
The Body Bears Witness To Each Disruption.
Book Edition.
PROJECT
Oskar & Mrs. in Rose: Book Design
CLIENT
Academic project YEAR 2025
A fully designed book edition, from cover art to sewn binding and interior layouts, created with InDesign and hand-crafted techniques. This project showcases my love for typography and narrative-driven design.
19/33
Wedding stationery.
A bespoke wedding stationery set—invitations, save-the-dates, menus, and name tags—designed, printed, cut, and assembled by hand to echo the charm of a traditional Polish manor house venue. Created with pen, edited in Illustrator and combined in InDesign, this cohesive collection married classic style with meticulous craftsmanship, reflecting my attention to detail.
Illustration.
Reel Impact.
PROJECT
Social Media Clips
CLIENT Various YEAR
2023-2024
A series of Instagram Reels documenting and marketing my illustration work, crafted to boost my online presence, with one clip hitting 78.5k views (instagram.com/p/C6v2sQMMPqE/).
Edited in Canva and mobile tools, these short videos showcase my creative process and engagement skills, amplifying my reach as a designer.
Painting.
PROJECT Oil pastel landscape painting (25cmx16cm)
PROJECT Oil painting (40cmx40cm)
PROJECT
Oil landscape painting (40cmx40cm)
27/33
PROJECT
Oil painting (50cmx70cm)
PROJECT
Oil painting (50cmx70cm)
AQUATINT PRINT.
PROJECT
‘Construction/Deconstruction’
CLIENT Coursework projcet
YEAR 2024
Titled Deconstruction/Construction, my first aquatint print captures a crumbling cityscape reborn in shadow and light. Etched with delicate tonal gradients, this piece reflects the tension between decay and renewal, blending technical precision with an evocative, dreamlike narrative.
printmaiking; linocut
LINOCUT PRINT.
PROJECT “Unreal/Supernatural”
CLIENT Coursework projcet
Titled Unreal, Supernatural, my first linocut print reimagines a Japanese landscape with ghostly waves piercing a dark sky. Inspired by traditional paintings, this bold, high-contrast piece merges cultural reverence with an otherworldly edge, marking my debut in the technique.
YEAR 2024 31/33
Thanks For Interest. For Further Information Please Contatact Me.
LINKS:
Sbk Website: https://www.sketchedbykaro.com/
Instagram Account: https://www.instagram.com/sketchedbykaro/
LinkedIn Page: www.linkedin.com/in/karolinasat
Reel: https://www.instagram.com/p/C6v2sQMMPqE/
Annimation: https://sketchedbk.wixsite.com/archi/s-projects-basic (bottom of the page)
Academic Portfolio: https://sketchedbk.wixsite.com/archi/ portfolio
Illustration Portfolio: https://issuu.com/sketchedbykaro/ docs/proposal_portfolio
Final Year Design Project: https://sketchedbk.wixsite.com/ archi/regenerative-terraced-housing