STOREFRONT AND ARCHITECTURE DETAIL REDESIGN
Category
Environmental Design
Services
Custom lettering | Graphic Identity | Storefront design | Retail advertising | Production | Messaging + Narrative | Communications Planning | Social media | Photography | Architectural detail design | Metalwork design | Signage and wayfinding
DEVIL’S IN THE DETAILS: BRINGING SPLENDOUR BACK TO A MID-WAR TENEMENT HOUSE
Once again, we have combined our powers to redesign a place dear to locals. The tenement house, built in 1938 hosts an iconic pub and coffee bar on the ground floor. For years, its modernist glory had been hidden by ugly banners and cheap adverts, illegally plastered all over its facade. The pub had its own unique visual identity, but it got a little dusty over time.
The first step was to take down the advertising and signage on the upper levels of the building, exposing the sandstone facade underneath. Thus, the businesses still operating in the building had no way to let people know where to find them. Traffic Design, together with a typography specialist, Maciej Połczyński, designed an elegant multi-tenant wall sign to suit their needs.
The pub’s iconic type was digitised by Maciej and an old plastic board was replaced by metal letters mounted on a rail. However, the redesign didn’t stop there. An artist SC Szyman created a three-dimensional, geometric gate design, as a new outdoor lamp featuring the building’s number was hung above the entrance to the inner yard. Commemorating the history of the building, we came up with an idea of a terrazzo and copper plate embedded into the pavement. It spells the name of a mid-war company that originally built the tenement house, Panta Rei. We thought it absolutely necessary for the materials, not only the design, to reflect the spirit of the times.
All of these details combined made an astounding change, restoring the glory of a simple, yet endearing modernist building.
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