Vlad Boyko on bringing back early 2000s clubbing visuals

Since we last caught up with graphic designer and art director Vlad Boyko, the creative has moved from Brussels to Antwerp and picked up a set of keys to a shared studio space with a few friends. Back in 2022, Vlad was also balancing the early stages of his freelance career with a few big commissions under his wing. Now, this new permanent space is a place to progress the practice he’s built over the last four years, it’s a welcome container for all of the designers incredible image making to keep taking shape: “I’m not just a guy with a laptop running from one coffee place to another anymore, I’m actually building a practice of my own,” he shares.

This past year saw Vlad’s expressive, digital collage-like approach plaster a number of parties and events. An exciting run of commissions in the music space, meant a lot of these design projects “felt like a sprint”, he shares, “sometimes I only had a week or just a couple of days to come up with one”. Whilst the fast-paced briefs were fun – and a good exercise in working under pressure and trusting the process – they left Vlad feeling fairly burnt out. “Mainly because I had to generate new ideas so often that I didn’t really have enough time to cherish them,” he says. “I’ve realised that it’s important for me to be able to let an idea live in my head for some time, to build a little environment around it.”

The most successful work in this steady run of experimental flyers and prints always seemed to be the ones Vlad designed for friends or ‘small’ events: “the one flyer that I think, received the most attention last year was Doomscrolling Live for a small ambient listening night organized in Antwerp by my friends SYSTM. I don’t remember how many times people have come up to me and said ‘Oh I loved that poster you did with the goblin’,” he says. “Doing self-initiated things, local things, things for your friends does pay off.”

Vlad has noticed a transition in his visual style over the years, his older work was full of abstract shapes and typography, and perhaps much more loose and experimental. “I think I’ve become more mindful about the tools and resources I use, learned to appreciate the basics more, and not be afraid to seem ‘boring’ or repeat myself sometimes if the idea really does make it worth it,” he says. This more systematic approach feels less like he’s just doing visual stunts to stand out but paying attention instead to how to best communicate the concept behind each project. “I feel like I’m actually starting to enjoy things now, after a lot of struggle and dissatisfaction with my work being ‘not there’ or comparing myself to others,” he says. “After all, no matter how deep it gets, we’re all just people making images.”

The designers recent NYE campaign for Colour Factory, a music venue in London, was his favourite project from 2025. It was another foray into the audio visual world that surfaced some crazy colourful, nostalgic visuals for the clubs largest event of the year. Typical of Vlad’s layered and playful use of type and form, the visual identity for the venue drew its inspiration from the ‘vectordelia’ aesthetic, a design flavour that defined the early 2000s with high-contrast, vibrant and maximalist vector graphics and minimalist grotesk fonts. “Apart from just being currently trendy, it also made me think of how intense and global the new year’s eve of 1999 must have felt, especially the excitement of entering a new millennium,” Vlad tells us. “Even though I wasn’t even born yet it makes me feel somehow careless and lightweight.”

When all the motion and elements came together, (dancing silhouettes and all), it felt very “‘right’ and confident” Vlad says. “I’ve always wanted to be able to regularly design for one specific venue, to be able to build a consistent narrative through separate works, so I was really happy when Matt from Colour Factory reached out again to develop this new visual language for them.” The commission to design a run of monthly event listings and flyers for the venue has marked a shift into more creative direction for the designer. It’s given him an appetite to welcome more complex and challenging projects into his new studio.

On the side of all of his exciting music commissions, Vlad has also been quietly cooking up an exciting collaborative design lab and educational platform Processed World, a side project that he started a few years ago that’s now become a space for multiple workshops and gatherings surrounding graphic design and typography. “It’s been silent for more than a year now but I have quite strong plans for it,” the designer ends “there’s hopefully going to be some announcements soon.”