Prof. Dr. Petra Černe Oven
Petra Černe Oven is a designer, teacher, theoretician and author with a special interest in typography, information design and visual communications design.
Černe Oven received a Typographic Excellence Award from the Type Directors Club of New York, was the recipient of the Most Beautiful Slovene Book award (2011, 2017, 2018) and many other awards. She won the contest for designing the visual identity for the UNESCO event Ljubljana – World Book Capital 2010. She also won several awards for the best-designed Slovenian book (2011, 2017, 2018) and Slovene Designer’s Association awards.
Černe Oven completed her PhD at the Department of Typography and Graphic Communication at the University of Reading (UK) in the area of history, typography and language. She became research fellow and worked with professor Paul Stiff on the project “The Optimism of Modernity: Recovering Modern Reasoning in Typography”, for which, among other things, she curated an exhibition on the British artist and typographer Edward Wright and edited the companion book Edward Wright: Readings, Writings (Hyphen Press, 2007).
In 2009, she developed the concept for the international lecture series “Information Design 2009/2010”, which was organized in collaboration with the Slovene Museum of Architecture and Design and the Pekinpah Association. In 2011, she collaborated on an extensive research project on the Slovene designer Miljenko Licul, which culminated in an exhibition at the National Gallery of Slovenia in Ljubljana, for which she edited the accompanying book on the designer.
Since 2010, Černe Oven has teamed up with her colleague, Barbara Predan, to edit the collection entitled 42 (published by the Pekinpah Association), which publishes books on the subject of design theory. Up until now, 20 books have been published in the series. The books are always part of larger projects, seminars, workshops, and exhibitions. In 2012, she and Barbara Predan developed the project “Designing an Agenda, or, How to Avoid Solving Problems That Aren’t” (Pekinpah Association and the Regional Development Agency of the Ljubljana Urban Region), which looked at the fields of service and information design in both theoretical and practical terms. In 2013 they published a scholarly monograph under the same title. In 2014, Černe Oven and Predan were invited to contribute a text to the Information design: research and practice (Routledge 2017). In the same year they finished a project Death in Design (various workshops in 4 countries, book, exhibition) which examines the advantages and disadvantages of a world without death, and offers pointers on how to detect, depict, explain, kill, and survive death.
Černe Oven has also published professional and scholarly articles in Eye magazine, Typography Papers, Baseline, 2+3D, Emzin, Typomag, Hyphen, Oris, Likovne besede and other magazines and academic journals.
Černe Oven is a founding member and a member of the supervisory board of The Brumen Foundation, head of the section for information design of the Pekinpah Association, and co-founder of Institute of Design, a scientific research organization. She is the Slovenian representative and a board member at worldwide Association Typographique Internationale (ATypI).
Černe Oven is a member of several boards of international conferences (International Conference on Typography & Visual Communication, Cyprus, Greece; CIDI: Information Design International Conference, Brazil; Information+ conference, Vancouver, Berlin; ATypI, Antwerpen, Tokio) and regular peer reviewer for scholarly journals (Information Design Journal, Design Principles and Practices Research Network, AR Journal). In 2021 she was a member of the European Design Awards jury.
Under the auspices of various institutions and events in Slovenia, Černe Oven and Predan have hosted over thirty world-renowned experts in the field of design. Černe Oven regularly lectures at symposia and academic conferences at home and abroad. She teaches a course in the history and theory of design at the Department of Visual Communication Design at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design, University of Ljubljana and serves as a Vice-Dean for International Cooperation.
Website: linkedin.com/in/petracerneoven
Bibliography: on request