BACHELOR'S THESIS

PUZZLE DEVELOPMENT USING MODELING SOFTWARE AND THREE-DIMENSIONAL PRINTING TECHNOLOGY

• 3D technology
• Research and prototyping
• Cultural heritage

I completed my bachelors thesis in 2026, which has been chosen as a finalist for the Zagreb Design Week Award in the category for product design. I transformed the portrait of Srečko Kosovel by Avgust Černigoj into a digitally modelled and 3D-printed puzzle. In the thesis I explore the potentials of 3D technology in creating a new type of puzzle that doesn't rely on 2D jigsaw logic.

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GRAPHIC DESIGN

Crosswalk concept for the Municipality of Ljubljana

• Street graphics
• Guideline-compliant
• Community storytelling

Geometric characters that work on any street, tell a story unique to the community and keep the crosswalk’s function clear.

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Dental health poster campaign

• Poster series
• Provocative messaging
• Mixed media

A poster set exhibited at The exhibition that doesn't sleep in Ljubljana. Three posters that use provocation, bold imagery and rough type to nudge viewers towards a dentist visit.

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Self-made typeface and poster set

• Original typeface
• European Design Festival
• Poster set

Original typeface "Enigma" showcased through a complete character set and a 90s style film poster, selected for a faculty exhibition and the European Design Festival 2025.

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Business card for film photographer

• Business card
• Film packaging
• Print-ready

Business card in the visual language of classic film packaging, designed to make contact details instantly readable.

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B4contact brand redesign

• Brand redesign
• B2B Consulting

This company wanted their brand to communicate the importance of having a robust information system ready for a market obsessed with automation and digitalization.

3D PROJECTS

Kosovel tactile vase

• 3D modeling
• Accessibility
• 3D print

A 3D-printed vase that translates Černigoj’s portrait of Srečko Kosovel into tactile relief, allowing it to be experienced through touch as well as sight.

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Volcanic mine, low poly 3D series

• Retro aesthetic
• Environment design
• Blender

Ten-image 3D series of a mining facility inside a volcano, built in a PS2-style low-poly look.

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UI/UX

Exploding kittens inspired board game

• Card game
• Card layout design
• Game UX

A fast party card game in the style of Exploding Kittens, rebuilt around Anton Codelli with Slovenian copy and a full print-ready deck.

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"Dogaja se" events app for Ljubljana

• UX research
• Information architecture
• Prototype

Mobile app concept and prototype that helps students find events in Ljubljana fast.

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Crosswalk concept for the Municipality of Ljubljana

I led creative direction as the lead graphic designer on a small student team, shaping a crosswalk concept for the Trnovo district in Ljubljana that turns geometric shapes, usually found on crosswalks, into characters. Each site can tell a specific story while remaining fully readable and compliant with street guidelines. I carried this visual language across the district and balanced storytelling with function based on every different location.We observed everyday life in Trnovo and tailored each crosswalk so regular users feel recognized while visitors get a feel for the community. Motifs range from everyday school life along the route to school, to the district’s tradition of releasing boats on the river nearby, to the sound of instruments near the local music school.Presented to the Municipality of Ljubljana in 2025, the work was recognised for its originality, modularity, and ease of execution, especially its guideline compliance and safety, and it was selected as the preferred concept, pending rollout.

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B4contact brand redesign

Dental health poster campaign

I developed a small, provocative poster campaign for a student project in 2024, working solo from concept to execution. The idea was simple and direct: grab attention with an uncomfortable prompt, accusation even, to nudge viewers toward booking a dental appointment.I explored three visual approaches that carry the same message. One uses a spray-painted toothbrush silhouette on blue paper to create a gritty, physical texture that supports the blunt headline “You stink” in Slovenian. Another pushes saturated color and exposure shifts on a close-up portrait with the same accusation, which makes the message feel even more personal. The last resolves into a minimalist vector scene of teeth and a bright red tongue, with a single decayed tooth highlighted to land the point.Across the set I mixed analog and digital tools, from acrylic spray and scanning to posterization and texture work, all tied together by a rough typeface and a clear call to care.

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Self-made typeface and poster set

I co-designed an original typeface, Enigma, in a two-person student team and applied it across two posters. The first presents the full character set in a clean, readable layout and was selected for a faculty exhibition for its strong technical execution and visual impact.The second was created within a photography collaboration about Anton Codelli, an engineer known for bringing the first car into Slovenia and for early film production. We used Enigma in a 90s film-inspired composition with a playful nod to Pulp Fiction to connect Codelli’s role in early Slovenian cinema with a contemporary image. This poster was exhibited at the European Design Festival 2025 in Ljubljana for its typographic rigor, cohesive use of an original typeface, and the way it translates historical research into an accessible, striking poster.

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Business card for film photographer

I designed this as an independent commission in 2025, working solo from concept to print prep. The photographer shoots mostly on film and restores old cameras, so the card adopts the visual language of classic film packaging and turns it into a functional identity piece. Bold color blocks, spec lines, and utilitarian microtext define the look while keeping the contact information front and center. The layout reads at a glance, even at wallet size, stays legible under mixed lighting, and feels like a natural extension of how he works.

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Černigoj & Kosovel 3D animation

In 2024 I worked in a small team to create a coursework 3D animation that reinterprets Avgust Černigoj’s portrait of Srečko Kosovel using constructivist principles. I handled the digitalization of the source artwork, 3D modeling, scene setup, and texturing in Blender. The piece became the starting point for a public exhibition in Ljubljana, expanding into a larger installation commissioned by the University of Ljubljana with funding from EUTOPIA, an EU-funded initiative.

Gallery exhibition

The exhibition, titled Avgust spomladi, took place at Video galerija KLET, ZDSLU in Ljubljana from 12 June to 6 July 2024. It brought together multiple contributors around the same visual logic and opened to the public as a group show. The project was produced in collaboration with the University of Ljubljana’s NTF and Pionirski dom, building on Černigoj’s portrait of Kosovel and its place in Slovenian visual culture. Additionally, I contributed a related 3D-printed vase developed from the same visual idea; that piece later appeared at the NTF conference and is featured separately on this site.

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Kosovel tactile vase

In 2024 I designed and produced this piece independently, starting from a portrait of a vase created at Pionirski dom. I translated that portrait into a physical object by modeling the vessel in Blender and adding a raised relief based on the same constructivist reading of Černigoj’s portrait of Srečko Kosovel, so the image can be understood by touch as well as sight. Early tests deformed the relief when printed horizontally, so I switched to a vertical build, increased mesh density to preserve small shapes, and finished the surface with careful sanding. The vase was shown in Ljubljana at Avgust spomladi at Video galerija KLET, ZDSLU, and later presented at the NTF conference as a continuation of the project.

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Volcanic mine, low poly 3D series

In 2024 I created a ten-image 3D landscape series as a student project, working solo from initial layout to final renders. I’m drawn to early 3D game visuals and to rebuilding that look with modern software, so the geometry stays intentionally simple and materials rely on flat image textures without normal or bump maps. The setting is a mining facility carved into a volcanic crater, with giant cranes loading minecarts so each frame feels like a moment from a busy shift. Light comes mostly from the lava pool’s yellow and orange glow, with a few cool blue work lights to heighten contrast. Cameras sit low and close to edges to heighten scale, and materials stay honest to the low poly approach so the PS2-type style reads immediately. Everything was modeled and rendered in Blender.

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Exploding kittens inspired board game

In a three-person student team (copywriter, illustrator, designer), I was responsible for the card system and print production. I set the type hierarchy and icon placement so actions read at a glance, built a consistent grid across the deck, and localized the interface to Slovene. For production I prepared press-ready files with CMYK builds, bleed, safe margins, and a precise die line for heavy stock, plus imposition for the cutting workflow. We iterated with test prints to tune legibility at arm’s length and to lock in back-to-front alignment and corner radius consistency. The final package delivers a complete, ready-to-cut deck that plays fast and scans quickly on the table.

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"Dogaja se" events app for Ljubljana

In 2025 I led the user experience work on Dogaja se, a student-built events app for Ljubljana. We interviewed more than 60 potential users to understand how they discover events and where current tools fail, then shaped the core flow: a feed with filters for date, location, price, and category, and a detailed view that includes event time, place, organizer contact, ticket link, saving, and sharing. I produced wireframes and an interactive prototype and ran task-based usability tests with 10 participants covering scenarios like finding a specific concert, browsing by date or price, checking past events, and using settings. We shipped design changes from the findings, including stronger contrast, smaller icons, moving My events and Friends for faster access, adding Invite a friend, and prioritizing dark mode as the default. The project culminated in a tested prototype and demo video, and remains at the prototype stage while we explore partners and resources to build it out.

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Mural for Zavod bob

In 2025 I led the creation of a modular and interactive Mural. The focus on interactivity was a result of this mural being at the centre of a cultural event NEXTival, where participants of the community could help with creating an activist message that would be displayed in the centre of Ljubljana.

We faced issues with the facade, since it was crumbling in many places, yet we did not have the resources to completely replace it. What we came up with was a solution that hit three(!) birds with one stone... instead of painting the facade we created a set of wooden boards that could be placed infront of the wall itself. This allowed us to create a modular system where these wooden boards could be removed and re-applied as necessary. While this modularity fits very well with an activist group focusing on different issues at different times it also fit the institutes ambition to allow participants of the Nextival festival to share their opinions and agree to debut the mural with a message they wanted to write and display as a collective. All this while also sidestepping the issue with a crumbling facade!These different messages literally pop out of the wall, which complements their activist nature. Other elements of the mural where meant to represent different aspects of the youth centre: community, help/guidance and representations of everyday habits of the residents (which I observed while staying there). To help contrast the activist part of the mural we also added some playful elements that lets a passerby know that they are welcome to join the community.This project was very ambitious and would not be possible without the help of volounteers at Zavod Bob and Izabela Štajer who helped with many elements of this project.

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PUZZLE DEVELOPMENT USING MODELING SOFTWARE AND THREE-DIMENSIONAL PRINTING TECHNOLOGY

This diploma thesis examined the development of a three-dimensional printed puzzle based on three-dimensional modelling and a selected motif of Slovenian cultural heritage. Avgust Černigoj’s portrait of Srečko Kosovel was used as the visual source because of its clear constructivist structure and suitability for conversion from a two-dimensional image into a three-dimensional model. The purpose of the work was to develop and evaluate a prototype in which assembly would not rely only on conventional visual or edge-based puzzle logic, but also on spatial information created by height transitions between individual pieces.

The experimental work followed a design process with gradual phases. Initial relief puzzles without a motif were created to isolate the role of height transitions in assembly. The selected motif was then digitally prepared, manually reconstructed in Blender, converted into a three-dimensional form, adapted to a relief surface and divided into square pieces. The final model and frame were prepared for three-dimensional printing in Orca Slicer and printed using material extrusion technology with a thermoplastic polylactic acid filament.

The developed prototypes confirmed that height transitions can support the assembly of a three-dimensional puzzle, although their effectiveness depends on the clarity of the relief structure and on additional orientation cues such as surface texture and motif readability. The final prototype preserved the main visual characteristics of the selected portrait while also establishing a tactile and spatial form of interaction.

The work demonstrated that a three-dimensional puzzle can function as a distinct approach to assembling, interpreting and experiencing visual content. Its potential was identified in education, museum and gallery interpretation, accessibility for blind and visually impaired users, play and further design research.

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