English edition of the most anticipated Polish design title in 2011! A panorama of a lost world – Polish graphic design in the thirty year period between 1919 and 1949, with achievements that are outstanding for their innovation and radical concept. The story of how visual language evolved in Poland as the country entered the modern age. A portrait of everyday life in that fascinating, though sometimes peculiar country that was the Second Republic, the Poland of World War Two and the first few years following.

Against All Odds is a painstakingly reconstructed universe of graphic design – for everything from book covers, posters, flyers, packaging (did you know how pre-war condoms were wrapped?) and periodicals to postage stamps; it reviews all aspects of that bygone world’s social, economic and cultural life: from the works of the leftist propagandists to the advertising used by various trades and industries (“Sugar fortifies”!) and on to such amazing curiosities as the photomontage book cover for poems by Polish fascists. Against All Odds also provides an articulate guide to the main currents running through artistic design and documents the creation of the modern age: the experiments of the futurists and the achievements of functionalism and constructivism.