Planeta Lem visual identity
Planeta Lem is a new center for literature and language that will be established in Kraków in the upcoming years. The center will be dedicated to the work of Polish science-fiction writer Stanisław Lem – author of Solaris. In his books, the writer explores philosophical topics, speculating on technology, the nature of intelligence, and life on other planets. With the help of the writer’s timeless diagnoses, and contemporary scientific reflection on language and communication, Planet Lem will contribute to building an open and conscious society in the changing world.
In its program, the center wants to respond to the constantly changing world; this includes trends in communication, literature, and language, and new technologies. For its new visual identity, the center organized a design competition, from which our proposal was chosen. Therefore, together with Łukasz Podolak, we have created a variable and animated identification that reacts together with the center to the current problems. Our assumption was to create such a tool that the Center would not only be the creator of the content, but also co-create the identification, and thus its identification would never lose its freshness or topicality.
The phrase “Cross the boundaries of cognition” led us towards creating a narrative identity that is constantly evolving. We wanted Planet Lem to take the viewer, as Lem did in his books, on journeys through unknown dimensions and hitherto undiscovered worlds. Planet Lem’s identity consists of a logo, a grid system, and abstract visualizations of exceeded dimensions, as well as a fleeting raster.
The planet is in constant motion; a glimpse of this movement was captured in the logo. The logo exists simultaneously in two dimensions; both in known reality and unknown, undefined, mysterious. The logo is available in two versions printing as a rasterized form and digital as a gradient.
The logo uses the geometric TWK Everett from Weltkern as it has strong typographic details that add a high tension while keeping the reading experience comfortable. To add more graphic and yet fluid tech we cut E and L diagonally and widened the P which added a unique touch. In headlines, Everett is set with tight line spacing, enabled by its short extenders and ascenders.
The complementary typeface is Neue Haas Unica from Monotype, which is highly readable across all sizes and weights. It also has additional characters for Eastern Europe that we needed.
Inside the visualizations, familiar elements look and behave differently than our intuition tells us. They are in motion, they work at different times, constantly recreating and changing. Since our imagination and interpretation of the universe have no limits, identification can have an infinite number of dimensions (visual outputs). Like Lem, through the developed identity rules we can create and visualize new worlds endlessly.
Concept, design, and animation: Gabriela Baka and Łukasz Podolak with assistance from KBF.
Read and watch the full case study on Behance.
