Project

UNITY TOWER / KRAKOW

Role

Senior Art Director / Designer

Designing Unity

Building lifestyle in two languages

How to create a printed experience that showcases a historical building, creates a connection with cultural heritage, and delivers real state business in both Polish and English? The language barrier was one of the initial challenges due to the unique Cyrillic characters in Polish, then hundreds of building features, and floorplans, and finally communicating everything seamlessly in both languages. Overcoming this hurdle involves crafting iconography, logos, and concepts that resonate in both languages while reflecting historical and design nuances, influenced by brute architecture, Art Nouveau, and design history, adding complexity to the project.

Seamless storytelling in both languages

My approach was to craft a minimalist design that facilitates the organic flow of text, allowing for seamless storytelling in both languages. The goal was to establish a visual harmony where Polish and English coexist without overshadowing one another. This involved identifying subtle visual cues to guide the audience’s navigation through the content.

Also, I designed a custom font for the logo and icons, drawing from the styles of Art Nouveau, functionalism, and monumental design. This added cultural depth and historical resonance to the visuals, enhancing the audience’s experience.

Creating an immersive experience in print

Given the abundance of text, the challenge was to create a layout with enough space and visual elements to accommodate both languages while maintaining consistency and aesthetic appeal. The goal was to effectively communicate all property highlights to both Polish and English-speaking audiences, despite the text-heavy nature of the content.

Creating value in the multidisciplinary cultural experience

Leading design and creativity for a project like this requires different capabilities and sensibilities. Working with 3D artists, architects, and print houses in both Polish and English was a beautiful challenge. Plus the creative ‘savoire’, and the print & design knowledge (Silver foil and varnishes are a world on their own) you have to connect with diverse audiences and navigate cultural differences, between audiences and stakeholders, sometimes 6+ hours apart, but at the end, the result was beautiful, effective and created many opportunities to connect an create wonderful experiences.