Vylaď Kolín — Participatory Budget Campaign
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Overview
Vylaď Kolín is the participatory budget of the city of Kolín, giving residents a direct role in deciding how part of the city budget will be used. Citizens submit ideas for improving the city, discuss them, and vote on which projects should be realised. The initiative launched its first edition in 2023, with the city allocating 2.5 million CZK, and has continued into a second edition.
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Challenge
The challenge was to create a campaign that would make participatory budgeting feel simple, open, and motivating rather than bureaucratic or overly institutional. The first edition came with a very tight timeline, so the visual concept had to be developed quickly while still being distinctive and expandable across many outputs. Another challenge was long-term continuity: the campaign needed to work across two editions, evolving visually while remaining recognisable to the public. It also had to speak to a broad civic audience, from younger participants to seniors, and support both idea submission and public voting.
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What I Did
I created the visual identity and campaign system for two editions of Vylaď Kolín. In the first year, the visual language was built around sketch-like drawings and the idea that improving the city can begin with a simple thought, paper, and a pencil rather than polished architectural visuals. As the campaign evolved, I expanded it in the second edition into a more comic-like system with universal characters, making the communication even more accessible and engaging for a wider public.
The project extended far beyond a single key visual. I designed campaign materials, web pages, bus wraps, stickers and surface applications, and other public-facing outputs. A key part of the process was also the use of a custom-trained Stable Diffusion model to generate original illustrations for the campaign, helping create a visual language that encouraged creativity, civic participation, and brainstorming. The campaign also drew on the city’s bright yellow as an activating colour and used familiar brainstorming references such as sticky notes and sketch-based thinking.
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Result
The result was a campaign identity that helped frame participatory budgeting as something approachable, creative, and genuinely open to citizens rather than as a distant administrative process. Across two editions, the system proved flexible enough to evolve visually while keeping a clear connection to the core idea of civic participation. It supported public awareness, proposal submission, and voting through a recognisable campaign world applied across digital, printed, and urban formats