Petra Šištíková
The young Slovak designer Mária Baliová is just living a designer’s dream – two products designed by her have recently appeared on the shelves of an internationally successful chain of furniture stores and the third one is about to follow suit. Mária graduated in product design from the Institute of Design at the Faculty of Architecture of the Slovak Technical University in Bratislava and obtained a bachelor’s degree. To change the environment and draw fresh inspiration she decided to continue her master’s study abroad. When selecting the school, her love of Scandinavian design and the offer of a special master’s course at Linnaeus University oriented to human-centered design had proved to be decisive. Thanks to her diploma work that contained an innovative human centered approach to design, she managed to spend a few months on a study stay directly in the epicentre of the factory of ideas for the IKEA brand name – its design department. Two products she had designed for this mark found their way to the sales: cutting forms for Christmas pastry VINTERKUL (2014) and wall clocks SPRALLIS (2015). Her career in IKEA had started – following the study stay she spent 18 months working on the project Future Homes in the internal research department Research in Life at Home and since April 2015 has held the position of a supervisor of product development projects.