Department of Design
Bata's School of Art
The foundation of the detached design department in Zlín dates back to the World War II, when a school of art was opened within the Bata Company. The company realized that although it had been manufacturing high-quality, affordable shoes that sold well, it lacked attractive packages with an interesting graphic design and advertising materials. At that time, there was no artistic school or artist specialized in design and advertising in Czechoslovakia.
Vincenc Makovský
The School of Art in Zlín was the first school in the territory of the Czech Republic which systematically developed the fields of industrial design and advertising graphic design. It employed a whole range of important Czech artists and theorists. Until 1946, it was the place of work of sculptor Vincenc Makovský (1900-1966), who is rightfully considered to be the founder of Czech design. Makovský was the first Czech artist who concentrated on machine design and trained his successors in this field.
Professor Zdeněk Kovář
One of these successors was Zdeněk Kovář (1917), who graduated from the Zlín School of Art in 1943, and was then employed as a designer at the Moravian Machine Works in Zlín. In 1947, he became the head of the machine design department of the school he had studied. After 1945, the school was incorporated in the system of secondary schools, then it was nationalized and transferred to Uherské Hradiště. However, there was a continuous need to train designers at a university level.
