Alice Czarnowska

Raised to be a pianist, Alice Czarnowska chose to become a visual communicator. She joined the Royal College of Art in 2012 as a visual identity designer and evolved into an experience designer. Alice’s previous experience is in territorial branding projects, which gives her a practical approach and unique perspective as a designer, enabling her to empathise with people and their surroundings. These methods and approaches inform Alice’s design when working towards defining the personality of a place at a local and national level. Each branding project was a result of a complex research process: based on qualitative and quantitative data that informed the visual creation. Additionally, she worked on complex industrial projects involving packaging and labelling systems.

During the two years of studying Information Experience Design, Alice has been able to hone her skills, develop new skills and work out an unique approach to data representation, with social issues, sustainability and new technologies being a key focus in her projects. Her design is 'design for good'; it’s a contribution to improving people's lives by creating more meaningful experiences. Recently she took a more critical approach to design, which can be seen in her final Sounds Good? project. Alice is interested in 'transhumanism', which promotes an interdisciplinary approach to understanding and evaluating the opportunities for enhancing the human condition by the advancement of technology. She is also fascinated by sound, which plays a significant role in the majority of her projects. Early musical education taught her how to listen rather than just hearing sounds. In a world dominated by images, people need to be reminded of the existence of sound, this background noise, sidekick of the visible. It's the sound that alerts our brains first though, before the vision. 

At the Royal College of Art Alice took every opportunity to engage in collaborative projects led by the Helen Hamlyn Centre – leader in inclusive design – and SustainRCA. Her 'Cultural Interfaces' project applied digital technology to bridge generations and celebrate Hindu culture with 'Show and Tell Companion' – elderly-friendly multimedia device (watch here). 'Effectricity' in respond to 'Seeing Things' brief focused on home energy use. Alice also developed 'Smiling Socket' project, inspired by Imperial College scientists dealing with future energy demand problems and behavioural change of energy consumers. With this idea she had the privilege to join the InnovationRCA summer school. In response to the 'Sound Object' brief, Alice and her team created the 'Default language' project as a metaphorical examination of people's relationship with the technology and the sound as an information constantly alerting us with default sounds produced by personal devices (watch here).