Zemla Studio — experimental design & visual production, Lviv

[ Main approaches ]

We present work by approach rather than by client. Video, photography, digital, print, physical installation, outdoor intervention and sometimes guerrilla solutions are not separate deliverables here — they are parts of one communication vision. Open a direction to read the full case.

Lviv International Symphony Orchestra

2018 → · Branding · Lviv Philharmonic / INSOOpen case ↗

Task: The orchestra has a long history that began in the 1990s as an international project and has since become a professional Ukrainian orchestra with a real role in the social and cultural life of Lviv and of Ukraine. Despite that history it had no consistent or representative brand identity.
Audience: In Ukraine, mainly older intellectuals together with younger open-minded people interested in contemporary culture and classical music. Internationally: educated listeners, impresarios, festival curators and event organisers who book orchestras — and the musicians themselves.
Issues: As part of the Lviv Philharmonic the orchestra competed not only with the second orchestra inside the same institution but with the whole entertainment and cultural scene of the city. We needed to raise visibility among cultural institutions, make posters cut through the urban environment, build and engage a local community, raise ticket prices through stronger brand perception, and make the orchestra a more desirable place for musicians to work.
Solution: A poster system built on a single colourful dot inside a large white space, which lets INSO stand out from the visual noise of the city. A consistent series of community-oriented events aimed at engagement and long-term cultural connection. And a dynamic logo system generated from the names of the musicians, so performers read as an integral part of the orchestra.

~10KFacebook followers
~19KInstagram followers
~2000%Ticket price increase
~70%Average local ticket sales
Sold outRegular international tours
Stable growthThrough Covid and the full-scale invasion

Lviv UNESCO City of Literature Office: The Figure

2020 → · 360-degree ecosystem for an international governmental institutionOpen case ↗

Task: The Office works on three levels, each a different scale of cultural engagement: locally it supports projects made in Lviv, nationally it brokers collaborations across Ukraine, internationally it represents Ukrainian literature. The goal was to serve all three directions inside one coherent visual ecosystem.
Audience: Writers, readers, literary festivals, libraries, NGOs and governmental organisations — local and international alike.
Issues: The Office runs dozens of communication branches across those directions, so the system had to hold a wide range of channels and formats without falling apart.
Solution: The Figure became the central character of the identity, standing in for the wider literary community and building empathy around local culture. In event branding the Figure adapts to specific literary personalities such as Stanisław Lem or Vasyl Stus. Around it we developed a broad ecosystem of print, digital, photo and video material to communicate local activity, state political and cultural positions, and promote emerging writers.

Lviv UNESCO City of Literature Office: The Figure

103,850 EURBiggest budget for an urban literary programme in Ukraine
38,500 EURAnnual increase in book-purchasing funding
~38,500 EURAllocated by the city each year for literary events
2,000Respondents interviewed for the Literature in Figures study
CommunityOne of the most active and close-knit communities in town

Sell Your Friend

2018 · HR communication strategy · Symphony Solutions (NL)Open case ↗

Task: In 2018 the Dutch IT company Symphony Solutions was hiring actively in both Poland and Ukraine. As marketing designer and coordinator I supported the organisation of events in Poland, supplied venues with all the communication materials they needed, and contributed to the digital marketing strategy of the recruitment campaign.
Audience: Junior and mid-level developers specialising in specific technologies.
Insight: Analysing the market showed that referral programmes based on symbolic perks or gadgets — iPads and the like — were far less effective than direct financial incentives. The strongest motivation to refer a friend or colleague was a straightforward monetary reward.
Solution: Symphony Solutions is agile-driven with a strong emphasis on horizontal corporate culture, and the name itself carries associations of harmony, culture and collaboration. Our approach was to combine that refined internal culture with a deliberately bold and direct communication style for the referral campaign.

400+New hires in 5 months

The approach

Task · Audience

Task: Sometimes a brand does not need a complex communication strategy but a spark-like concept — one sharp idea that can carry the whole thing.
Audience: With the American company Peck&Burl we had to analyse the possible market and build specific visual communication for a set of design personas. With ZYVE Botanical Lab the task was the opposite kind of move: to create an alternative perception of what a flower shop can be on that market.

Peck & Burl

2020 · Branding · Web · Wooden flooring, USOpen case ↗

Solution: Communication was built around several customer personas: a modern businesswoman balancing work and home life, a young creative couple shaping their first shared space, a designer working inside the creative industries, an entrepreneur whose identity extends into artistic hobbies such as playing the violin, and a yoga teacher looking for calm and emotional balance at home. The strategy then focused on one thing: how natural materials become part of everyday rituals, emotions and identity.
Effects: Peck&Burl eventually shifted its business focus toward wholesale, and the communication strategy was never launched.

ZYVE Botanical Lab

2021 · Branding · Interior · Communication · LvivOpen case ↗

Solution: With ZHYVE (living) the concept explored the intersection of nature, future technology and urban mythology. Florists were presented as researchers running experiments with flowers, fertilisers, recycled flowerpots and bio-inspired aesthetics. Communication combined the atmosphere of a futuristic laboratory with the emotional warmth of an overgrown urban jungle. Staff uniforms were developed with Ukrainian fashion designer Olha Steblak from recycled materials and the principles of upcycled fashion. The logotype itself is a flower built from the Cyrillic word ЖИВЕ — living.
Effects: Following the beginning of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, ZYVE Botanical Lab closed: the founder joined the military as a volunteer.

The approach

Task · Audience · Issues

Task: Guerrilla outdoor interventions often turn out to be the most effective way to promote a cultural project and pull public attention toward it.
Audience: Designers, artists and a broader urban audience interested in contemporary art, experimental music and modern culture.
Issues: During Contrasts the main challenge was to attract a wider audience and position the festival as a prominent platform for contemporary music. For the 100th anniversary of Stanisław Lem we needed a large-scale, memorable opening capable of generating public engagement and media attention.

Contrasts festival posters

2016 → · Poster · Ready-made · Contrasts LvivOpen case ↗

Solution: Since 2016 several poster projects have deliberately moved beyond traditional print formats, turning into playful physical objects that embody the very idea of “contrast”. The Triangle Poster, previously awarded during Ukrainian Creative Week, became an additional communication asset that amplified interest around the festival.

Mirrors — 100 years of Lem

2021 · Installation · Music · Video · Lem Station, Katowice Miasto OgrodówOpen case ↗

Solution: For the Lem centenary in Lviv we built an immersive installation of 100 mirrors, sourced by me and the studio from a large local retailer. Two-metre mirrors on construction frames were placed as a corridor under the mural, facing each other, so an optical corridor and curved-mirror effects appeared; smoke and LED light made the place read as space. On the sound side it was improvised ambient built around a deconstructed interview with Lem about parallel worlds, the evolution of society and the connection between art and science.

AwarenessSMM reach and local brand awareness
RecognitionBy the city authorities

The approach

Task · Audience · Issues · Solution

Task: Habitat and Your Comfort Zone were two distinct projects with different goals and audiences. Habitat sat inside an artistic residency and cultural research initiative; YCZ was developed as part of the PR strategy for a new YOKI restaurant in the city.
Audience: For Habitat, mainly intellectuals interested in Ukrainian history and culture, plus younger people from outside the usual academic or cultural bubble. YCZ targeted the city's creative and cultural elite while still speaking to locals looking for more sophisticated social spaces.
Issues: For Habitat: generating broader public interest in the Stilsko hill fort, a monument of the 7th—10th centuries, on a very limited budget and with no established audience for a newly formed NGO. For YCZ: positioning the restaurant as intelligent and culturally relevant — not only for wealthy visitors but for locals with refined tastes and modest budgets.
Solution: In both cases cinematic storytelling was the core communication tool. For Habitat my team and I produced three films instead of one: two on the historical site and the workshops around it, and a third as an action-driven narrative film. Together they build a pseudo-documentary atmosphere — a kind of conspiracy folk horror. The same solutions shaped the scenography of CYCLES.

3513%Habitat views against the channel's subscriber base — 1.3K views on a channel with 37 subscribers
50,000+YCZ views on Instagram, the starting point of the SMM strategy — the account has since grown to 17K followers
~2,000Visitors at the YOKI opening event
Sold outClosing concert of LvivMozArt festival

Habitat

2021 · Promo movie · NGO Ecology.Culture.ArtOpen case ↗

Story: Stilsko is a place with history that is poorly researched. During our own expedition we found that the first grassroots survey had been made by a local enthusiast and archaeologist, Vasyl Deresh, who remembered the legends his mother told him as a boy and later drew the first map of Stilsko. His story became the spine of the plot; stories collected from locals and older legends became the second half. Chyma, the girl killed as she left the fort in search of water, personifies nature — and the territory is being destroyed by sand mines today, so she is killed twice.

Your Comfort Zone

2021 · Commercial · YOKI restaurantOpen case ↗

Story: We took the biggest pain of a Lviv local — crossing a tourist-packed Old Town just to have lunch — and made it the plot. An office worker gets an impossible mission: reach the restaurant. The street is full, he moves fast, then starts jumping over heads; it turns out he is a parkour tracer. As part of the campaign we produced handmade personal invitations carrying only the line “Your comfort zone” and the opening date, each delivered in person.

Cycles

2021 · Audiovisual performance · Scenography · LvivMozArtOpen case ↗

Concept: Cycles unites electronics, live vocal improvisation and video installation around the states and initiations of a life: birth, marriage, swaddling of children, tillage, death. The story opens as a spiral, so it can be read both synchronically and diachronically. Ukrainian traditional songs are wrapped in improvised electronics, ambient and melodic techno; the visual concept builds on Ukrainian cinematography of the 1960s—80s mixed with 3D objects — artefacts of contemporary culture.

The approach

Task · Audience · Issues

Task: Anabasis and Ukrainian Corridors were two conceptually related projects. Anabasis worked as an online gallery and artist workshop platform; Ukrainian Corridors was a series of articles in which Ukrainian musicians reflected on music during wartime.
Audience: Audiences interested in contemporary art and music, and the artists and musicians themselves.
Issues: For Anabasis the challenge was rethinking the online gallery: how can a digital art platform become visually immersive and emotionally engaging instead of merely functional? For Ukrainian Corridors the goal was an identity able to carry displacement, humanitarian aid and cultural continuity during war.

Anabasis & anabasis.space

2021 · Branding · Web · Gedankendach, ChernivtsiOpen case ↗

Solution: We expanded a glass cube sculpture previously made by the artist Ruslan Luchko. Using macro photography we turned its surface into a pseudo-3D visual language, and the resulting “bubble” form went on to shape the entire ecosystem of the website — a phygital connection between the physical artwork and the digital platform.

Glissando: Ukrainian Corridors

2023 · Photography · Art direction · GlissandoOpen case ↗

Solution: I developed a clean, surreal still-life style using everyday ready-made supermarket objects whose original purposes are subtly reimagined. Through those compositions I aimed to reflect the complexity of the contemporary world — shaped at once by war, consumption, disorientation and loss, but also by creativity and imagination as tools for coping with a chaotic reality.

ХАТНЄГРАННЯ / HOMEPLAYING

Since 2012 · Curating · Label · Workshops · PodcastOpen the archive ↗

Task: It matters to me to communicate the idea of grassroots cultural movements in Ukraine, and to show the connections between independent initiatives in Ukraine, Poland and the broader European context.
Audience: Artistic communities, media, NGOs and governmental institutions.
Issues: Experimental and emerging artistic practices often struggle to get support from official governmental institutions. The challenge was to create alternative ways of making cultural initiatives happen independently and sustainably.
Solution: Since 2012 the studio has initiated and developed a series of independent cultural projects. One of them, HOMEPLAYING, was an open improvisation initiative built to encourage musical practice among children and people without formal musical education. Over the years we released two physical CDs and more than twenty digital albums. My podcast for Polish Radio for Ukraine explores Polish—Ukrainian cultural connections. In Poland I ran masterclasses for displaced Ukrainian children with the support of the Goethe-Institut. With support from GIZ we organised workshops in Lviv and, in 2015, gathered activists from Poland and Ukraine at the First International Forum of Independent Initiatives.