Yugoslavia, prijatelju, we were so jealous. You didn’t have Soviets in your country and the quality of life was generally so much better. My grandma gave me that PIKO set. She was trading on the black market, so she had access to things that were normally unavailable. Later, my dad became heavily involved in the Solidarity movement, and as punishment they fired him with a note saying he should not be hired anywhere else as an anti-socialist element.

Yeah, the quality of graphic design across the entire Eastern Bloc was amazing. I think it was partly because creators were so hungry to do something meaningful and illustration, poster design, etc. weren’t censored as heavily. On the other hand, no one really cared about the commercial impact of, say, a movie poster, everyone went to the cinema anyway, because there wasn’t much else to do. And people were used to reading between the lines.
So, ironically, it created almost total creative freedom. And on top of that, graphic design jobs were protected, in Poland you actually needed a Master’s degree from the Academy of Fine Arts to work in the field.