Agency2012 / Żywiec · 2023–2025
The key visual that brought Żywiec's brand together
Żywiec, one of Poland's biggest beer brands, needed a fresh key visual for its 2025 campaigns. The brief they gave Agency 2012 was simple: find a new use for elements within the existing brand, which had just been redesigned. Agency 2012 brought me in as a fresh pair of eyes. I was originally hired just for the exploration phase, but the concept I developed won the pitch, so I stayed on to design the full system.
The Tension
The new campaign was celebrating the Polish countryside, with new flavours inspired by Polish flowers. But the KV needed to unite all their campaigns, be the red dot. I found an unexplored gap in the brand system and previous campaigns that helped me do just that. Żywiec had stunning campaign photography and strong typographic billboards on white backgrounds, but nothing that brought the two together. They have a rule: no typography on photography. So the brand's two biggest strengths, their imagery and their taglines, never shared a screen.
The Decisions [1]
I explored several directions. Abstract shapes pulled from the dancing pair weren't recognisable enough as brand elements. The detached figures, like the individual legs, were recognisable but only in the brand's existing colours. The Ż was different. It was the most iconic element in the system, and it carried real meaning, having been used as the backbone concept of the typographic billboards I mentioned.
The Decisions [2]
In Polish, life is "życie," which starts with the same letter as Żywiec. Everything in life fits inside Ż. That was the core idea. To make it work visually, I took the Ż from the custom font (not the logo) and turned it into a mask. Any photograph could sit inside it. Headlines sit beside it, not on top of it. For the first time, their taglines and their imagery could coexist in a single layout. The same logic extended to video, where titles and footage had always been separated by hard cuts. The agency director agreed, and that's the concept they took to the client.
The Work [1]
The Ż in the font was designed as a typographic mark, not a container. I redrew it, evening out both sides so it could hold a photograph cleanly. Then I built a grid system: three by three, percentage-based, with margins. No fixed sizes. It works at any aspect ratio. The grid also set the rules for logo placement, the mandatory health warning and the mini tagline that appears on every graphic.
The Work [2]
The three-by-three grid won out because it gave the mask the best proportions. It held the most photography while keeping the stretch visually pleasing. For taller formats like A4 and A3, the Ż could use the full grid or sit in the bottom two rows with copy on top. One row for the mask was off limits. I ran tests with dozens of photographs. How far can an image escape the mask before it loses structure? Which edges of the Ż, the little zigzags, need to stay clear for readability? How full can the interior get before it loses clarity? Each answer became a rule in the toolkit.
The Landing
The concept won the pitch. Żywiec selected it over competing proposals from other agencies, and it became the primary campaign visual for 2025 across out-of-home and digital. The toolkit I developed was picked up and used throughout the year by multiple agencies working with the brand. I've walked past billboards in Poland with this work on them. The individual executions weren't mine, but the visual system they're all built on is.
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