Petty Type Crimes is the cheeky moniker of Karolina Lach’s ceramic practice.
Looking for my design work? Head over to karolinalach.com
Why the name? When you attend design school, you learn about things that should not be done to type; things like stretching words to fit, using primes instead of proper quotation marks, and the like. But what if you take a little, inventive typographic liberty, and get away with it? That’s petty type crime ;)
Find me on instagram: @pettytypecrimes
Send me an email karolina . lach @ gmail . com
Karolina Lach is a digital designer and ceramic artist born in Warsaw, Poland. She holds a BFA from The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art (NY) and an MA in Typeface Design from The University of Reading (UK). Her extensive design experience spans everything from user interfaces, wayfinding, and branding, to logotypes and typefaces.
She began taking ceramics classes in 2015 and immediately looked for ways to incorporate her interest in letterforms into her explorations in the medium. Frustrated with the limitations of wheel-thrown forms and superficial surface decoration, she moved onto handbuilding and began incorporating three-dimensional typographic elements into the structure of the pieces. She continues to evolve her ceramic practice alongside her design and teaching work.
Her typeface design work has been exhibited in the United Kingdom, Poland, and the United States, and her ceramics have earned a Certificate of Typographic Excellence from the Type Directors Club.
After having spent many years in New York City, she has recently relocated to and is currently based in Pittsburgh, PA.
My ceramic practice lies at the paradoxical intersection of the ancient art of pottery with the contemporary linguistic landscape. I take snippets of social media posts, slang phrases, and memes, which I elevate with highly stylized lettering, and then immortalize in high-fire ceramic form. In this, I draw on my graphic design background and the rich well of historical letterforms, including but not limited to calligraphy, neon signage, stone carving and sign painting to inform my designs. Using both subtractive and additive methods, I carve and attach words, phrases and flourishes onto plate and vessel surfaces, then strategically apply and wipe away glaze to further enhance the contrast between the figure and ground for a full 360 degree tactile experience. The work is a study of contrasts: the ancient craft of pottery suffused with ephemerality of colloquial turns of phrase; letters freed from flatness of the page, made dimensional and touchable; monumental signage rendered onto a domestic object.