hello @ alexkostiw.com ︎

913 543 20 35
Chicago, Illinois

Connecting characters with audiences.

I have worked with clients in arts & culture, built environments, education, and publishing. Together, we tell stories through expressive art and design.

I treat design as a bridge into the client’s world—whether it’s a visual identity, cover-to-cover publications, graphics for a page or a wall, or a branded website. I’m excited most by projects that connect audiences with creative voices and that turn physical spaces and forms into narrative experiences.

My studio practice centers on the primeval. I use design, sparse text and image, and print formats to gesture toward human interiority, unexpressed feeling, and struggles for intimacy. My comics draw readers into intuitive stories. They have been in expos internationally and are collected in the Joan Flasch Artist’s Book Collection, the National Museum of Women in the Arts, and the Library of Congress.

I teach courses in graphic design and storytelling at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where I received an MFA in Visual Communication Design after a BA in English literature from the University of Chicago.

I love talking with people about comics and offer a workshop in which we investigate design in the context of the medium. ︎