Conceptual exhibition identity — Vistula University
Small Graphic Forms
A visual identity for an international contemporary printmaking exhibition, built to work across outdoor banners, exhibition stands, signage, and print at every scale.
Details
Type Conceptual · academic project
Institution Vistula University, Warsaw
Scope Posters · banners · exhibition stands
Tools Illustrator · Photoshop
The concept
Printmaking is physical. The identity should feel it.
Printmaking is a tactile process — ink pressed into paper, texture built through repetition and physical pressure. Most exhibition identities use clean digital aesthetics that have nothing to do with the art they represent.
This identity translates that physical quality into a bold graphic system: a hand-drawn wave motif referencing the movement of ink across a surface. Applied at large scale it becomes dramatic. Applied small it stays instantly recognisable.
-
DescriptioHand-drawn wave — references ink movement across a printing surface. Scales from a small programme to a 3-metre exhibition wall.n text goes here
-
Black and off-white only. No colour. The restraint mirrors the printmaking tradition — where the mark itself is the message.
-
Bold sans-serif at large scale. The title "Small Graphic" set enormous — an intentional contradiction between the word "small" and its visual weight.
The system
Poster
outdoor · event announcement
Exhibition stand
3D environment · full space identity
Billboard
Outdoor · large format · street presence
Roll-up banners
2 formats · entrance · wayfinding
Scalability — the test of any exhibition identity
Same mark. Every scale. Every format.
An exhibition identity lives at extreme scales simultaneously — a small printed programme in someone's hand and a 3-metre wall graphic in the same space. Most systems break at one end or the other. The wave motif was designed to work at both extremes: at large scale the flowing lines become architectural, at small scale they become
Programme A5
Poster A1
Exhibition wall 3m
A mark that scales.
From hand to wall.
Conceptual exhibition identity · Vistula University, Warsaw