Before we launch the new season of The PRINT Awards, we wanted to take another look at some of our favorite winning entries from this year. In the coming weeks, we’ll highlight stellar creative work across the breadth of categories. The 2025 PRINT Awards will open for entries in early November 2024.
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Podpunkt is an award-winning multipurpose creative studio based in Warsaw, Poland that specializes in design systems. The company is a crossover between a design studio and a digital agency making visual literacy accessible across a multitude of platforms for a larger audience. Consisting of ten core team members, the company has earned 35 awards and attended/hosted 12 juries and conferences in just over a decade, creating a level of international credibility within the design field.
Podpunkt’s work with The National Museum in Krakow, led by Emilka Bojańczyk and Zuzanna Charkiewicz, earned the studio first place in the Branding Identities & Identity Systems category of the PRINT Design Awards. The National Museum in Kraków (MNK) is the largest museum in Poland and the main branch of Poland’s National Museum. The Museum consists of 21 departments divided by art period: 12 galleries, two libraries, and 12 conservation workshops, holding approximately 780,000 art objects.
Taking on the rebrand for such a major museum was an endeavor but emphasized the studio’s capability to balance umbrella-ed coordination with stark individuality. The museum’s new identity was based on the metaphor of weaving threads of inspiration and artworks into the vast body of art—as the basis and DNA of the collection. In the workshop and strategy phase, the team homed in on alterations to the names of the Museum’s branches to best encompass the main MNK brand and form a more harmonic big picture. Accompanying the modified branch names is a dynamic serif that changes form in correspondence to the art or building that it represents. The typographic system is based on the Sangbleu typeface by Swiss Typefaces. Its letterforms are at once classic and modern, and have the elegance and finesse to fulfill all the different identity needs. The reimagined logo is a graphic rendering of the abbreviated name of the Museum-MNK and is based on a meticulously designed geometric grid that is timeless while innovative.
Receiving the Print Award has been a truly special moment for both us and the team at the National Museum in Kraków.
Magdalena Dobruk, Partner at Podpunkt Studio
The brand identity design for the National Museum in Kraków not only won first place in the Branding Category for the PRINT Awards but it was also recognized by other design media, including PRINT’s friends at Brand New. However, back in Poland, the reception was somewhat lukewarm according to the Podpunkt team.
It’s an unconventional design that encourages playful engagement with art and creative exploration. It allows for the fusion of various art movements, creating a fresh visual identity. Even though the local response was not as robust as expected, our award reassured us that we made the right creative decisions for the Museum’s brand.
Most importantly, the brand identity system continues to serve the Museum well. As a versatile tool, the brand system enables them to create eye-catching campaigns for new exhibitions and events with ease.
Based in Warsaw, Podpunkt also had a rewarding year in the Polish design awards scene taking the main KTR Award (Polish Creative Club) in the Design category for the brand identity of OAcademy—the Orchestra of American Group. Inspired by these accolades, Podpunkt recently focused on its own brand image and, after ten years, designed and launched a new website that beautifully explains its mission and expertise.
We feel like we should set out with our works across the ocean more often—this year, a lot of good has come our way from the other shore of the Atlantic!