A comprehensive information project for MPK Kraków
About this work
In 1985, the director of the Municipal Transport Company in Kraków approached the Dean of the Faculty of Industrial Design at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków with a proposal to sign a cooperation agreement. It stipulated that the Faculty would organize a competition for three design teams to design a comprehensive visual identification and information concept for the Municipal Transport Company (MPK). After the competition was concluded, the winning team would proceed to implement their project in three annual stages.
It so happened that the team composed of Ewa Hołowaty, Liliana Kubianka, and Aleksandra Wala, under my supervision, won this initial competition. I invited all the remaining colleagues to continue working. Only Maria Banaś-Majkowska and Adam Miratyński accepted the proposal. We presented the first stage to the MPK management within the contractual deadline. Unfortunately, while we were implementing this scope of work, the entire composition of the MPK management changed. The new director terminated the agreement without any objections. The pretext was alleged to be MPK's financial problems.
The documentation for the first stage was never returned to us. It has only fragmentary, not-so-good photographic documentation. I deeply regret this, because in my opinion, the enthusiastic commitment of the entire team and the results of their work were the harbingers of an interesting project. A project that would be the first comprehensive solution to this type of issue in our country. The documentation provided for the first stage was in the form of a manual. It is a manual, a complete identification concept, and at the same time, instructions for using the project thus prepared.
It should be noted that the project's origins date back to a time long gone, with all the poverty of available technologies and materials.
As an aside, in many cases, it is impossible to determine the scope of a specific project, because it is essentially comprehensive, encompassing the characteristics of a visual communication project, but also a product design.