Woźniak and Niemierowicz employ simple symbols, using colour in a cogent way. When working on promotional materials for a multicultural festival, they create colourful, dynamic and expressive designs; when creating graphic symbols for an upmarket clothing store, they use subdued and restrained forms.
Polkadot enjoys doing work for cultural institutions. In 2010 and 2011, the studio designed the graphic layouts for the Yearly Reports for the Centre for Contemporary Art at Ujazdowski Castle in Warsaw. For these reports, the designers used a dynamic blend of picture arrangements and short texts to sum up the institution’s activities. In 2010, Polkadot created three-dimensional Christmas cards for the Jaracz Theatre in Łódź — these minimalist structures, with their red and white colour scheme, powerfully illustrate the subject matter of the commission: that of a theatre auditorium and a Christmas tree. In the same year, Polkadot were commissioned by the Academy of Fine Arts in Łódź to produce a series of promotional materials for the Centre for Fashion Promotion: covers, envelopes and folders were created from grey cardboard, each embossed with graphic symbols and texts in a uniform range of yellows. In contrast, the Polkadot team employed a wealth of colours when it created promotional materials for the Łódź Four Cultures festival in 2011 — the dynamic, geometric and colourful patches which formed the background to the catalogue text beautifully express the diversity of events featured at the festival. In 2012, Woźniak and Niemierowicz designed an album of Balkan photography — instead of the traditional form of a book with pictures, the pair created an elegant box containing carefully printed photographs. The album was showcased during Sofia Design Week 2013.
Woźniak and Niemierowicz were responsible for creating corporate identity systems for up-and-coming fashion designer Łukasz Jemioł and architecture company 81.waw.pl. The pair have also created logotypes for furniture stores and jewellery designers, produced neon lighting for restaurants and wine merchants, created graphic symbols for volunteering campaigns and conferences, and designed posters and production brochures for Janusz Zaorski's film Syberiada Polska (English title: Siberian Exile). In selected shops throughout Poland you can buy beer mugs emblazoned with designs by Polkadot (as part of the Mamsam project, the designers were asked to create a series of captions and pictures for these mugs).
Author: Anna Cymer, September 2013
English translation: Garry Malloy
Read more at: polkadot.com.pl (in Polish and English)