Building brand worlds you want to live in.

Gdynia's Pearls – The crown jewel

We have always wanted cultural projects to be part of our studio's work. We feel very connected to the Tricity, where we come from and where we work, so we take great pleasure in getting involved in local initiatives.

This time (we are pleased to say, yet another one!) the Museum of the City of Gdynia invited us to cooperate.

2021
Gdynia's Pearls – The crown jewel (0)
Gdynia's Pearls – The crown jewel (1)

About the client

The Museum of the City of Gdynia is known for its interesting initiatives, beautiful exhibitions and rich educational programs.

For us, it is also synonymous of modern museology. MMG is an organization that brings people together and supports passions. Each new project is surprising, intriguing and attracts both Tricity residents and tourists.

Gdynia's Pearls – The crown jewel (2)
Gdynia's Pearls – The crown jewel (2.2)

Only not modernism

The Museum of the City of Gdynia intrigued us at the very beginning with their idea. The curators wanted to create a publication and an exhibition on the gems of Gdynia's architecture that are NOT modernist.

The topic itself caught us off guard a bit, as it turned out that we were mostly (or only) familiar with modernist buildings characteristic of the city. So we were faced with the challenge of learning about and introducing the silhouettes of buildings representing the styles of Zakopane, classicism or art deco in a simple yet intriguing way.

Gdynia's Pearls – The crown jewel (3)
Gdynia's Pearls – The crown jewel (4)

A city with pearl building

In the case of this project, we were inspired by its very title. And it was a literal inspiration. The shape of pearls, their irregularity and symbolism became the perfect opponent for squares, which in our design reflected modernist objects.

Playing with those shapes became the main element of the posters and animations that promoted the project. The 3 colors that we chose – muted pink, blue and green – proved to be a subtle contrast to the harsh, modernist color scheme.

Gdynia's Pearls – The crown jewel (5)

50 shades of pearl

We explored our pearl inspiration even further in the process of creating the publication. The album that accompanies the exhibition is, of course, first and foremost a collection of vast knowledge in the form of texts and photos. No less, we wanted our project to emphasize its content value even more strongly through subtle touches.

The icons and illustrations are a continuing reference to the irregular form of the pearls. The very use of embellishments is a departure from the modernist, minimalist form. Surprising layouts draw attention to details of architectural solutions that may not be clearly visible at first glance.

For the print, we used a unique metallic Pantone, lightly tinted with pink. Once again, we worked with Misiuro printing house, which made the difficult and long process of selecting the perfect shade extremely fun and creative.

Gdynia's Pearls – The crown jewel (6)
Gdynia's Pearls – The crown jewel (7)

Culture of collaboration

Cooperation with the Museum of the City of Gdynia is always a pure pleasure for us. We had the opportunity to work with wonderful curators who always shared their immense passion and knowledge with us and happily entered into a creative dialogue with our studio.

Let’s create something special together!

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Building brand worlds you want to live in.

Feel free to contact us: +48 883 595 268 hello@workshop91.com

workshop91 sp. z o. o.
ul. Danusi 5/24
80-434 Gdańsk
Poland
VAT ID 9571115669
Zuzanna Zamorska-Wegner art director, designer & co-founder zuza@workshop91.com
Mikołaj Sałek art director, designer & co-founder mikolaj@workshop91.com
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