Jacek Utko is a newspaper, magazine and website designer and consultant. Saving newspapers with design and digital transformation.
Five of the newspapers he redesigned–Poland’s Puls Biznesu, Estonia’s Aripaev, Belgium’s De Morgen and recently Holland’s Het Parool (2017, 2018 – twice!) – were named ‘World’s Best Designed Newspaper’ by the Society for News Design.
Three newspapers he recently redesigned were recognized as European Newspaper of the Year in 2015, 2016 and 2019. Many other redesigns (Singapore, South Africa, Bulgaria, Austria, Lithuania, Russia) were awarded in international competitions. He received more than 50 awards in various design competitions.
He is working all over the world as a media consultant.
He redesigned dozens of newspapers, magazines and websites in Poland, Sweden, Holland, Denmark, Belgium, Norway, Finland, Austria, Russia, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Slovenia, Bulgaria, Croatia, Singapore, South Africa, USA, Australia and Pakistan. He was a design director at Bonnier Business Press International, responsible for publications in Central Europe, Scandinavia and Russia. Then moved his career towards independent media consultant. But press is not his only area of interest, some of his other projects include the redesign of the Lonely Planet travel guide in Australia.
He likes to work with big media publishers.
Working for the biggest publisher in Scandinavia – Bonnier;
the biggest publisher in South East Asia – Singapore Press Holdings;
the biggest publisher in Africa – Naspers;
the biggest publisher in Belgium and Holland – De Persgroep;
the biggest publisher in USA – Gannett, helping to reshape the largest network of local newspapers in America.
He was a speaker at the conferences in 41 countries around the world,
like Adobe Max, Online Publishers Forum, Icograda, Typo Berlin, World Newspaper Congress by WAN, Publish Asia, AOP London, Festival of Journalism in Peruggia, SND, and many more.
In 2009 he was a speaker at the TED conference in Long Beach with his famous talk: ‘Can Good Design Save Newspapers’. This video hit almost 1,5 million views in total.
He is recently working a lot on website design, focusing on the digital transformation of media companies, UX design and improving brands and products with design thinking. His recent web designs include: demorgen.be in Belgium, parool.nl and topics.nl in Holland, pb.pl in Poland, dagensmedicin.se and va.se in Sweden, pb.pl in Poland, helixbiopharma.com in Canada.
His approach to each project is very content-driven and business-driven. For almost 30 years of experience of working in so many countries, different cultures, he learned that you can achieve success only when the design is in line with your strategy and content. He believes design is a business process, not just making beautiful pages.
Please email me with any questions or inquires: jacekutko@gmail.com