Anna Wanczyk first arrange her personal enterprise in 2019, and on the time, she did not give an excessive amount of thought to the title. She had “CZYK Design” already from aspect tasks and used it by default, however discovered that it by no means fairly match.
“Nobody may spell CZYK Design. Nobody knew easy methods to say it. Nobody ever tagged me with the precise enterprise title. I hated saying it, and it did not sit proper with me,” she admits. “I by no means actually supposed it to be my firm title; I simply had it already from occasional aspect tasks after I first began my present enterprise.”
The title additionally missed the mark in describing what she really does, as Anna’s follow has at all times been rooted in collaboration. Generally that is between her and a consumer, typically with a community of different creatives, and typically in partnership with businesses. Now that ethos is entrance and centre, and her studio has been reborn as Anna&.
Anna Wanczyk, second from left, at Inventive Increase IRL Leeds (Images by Michael Godsall
For some businesses, discovering a brand new title comes from hours of strategising and infinite workshops. Nevertheless, the concept led to Anna& got here from a pint with a good friend, Eleanor Calsy-Harrison (who additionally occurs to be a strategist and author).
Anna had been wrestling with whether or not to strip her surname out of the model or current herself as a “collective”. Eleanor reduce by the noise, suggesting “Anna&,” for its simplicity, flexibility, and open-ended nature.
“My eyes full of tears. I used to be like, ‘That is it!’ and realised it was my new title,” Anna remembers.
It was instantly clear that this new title was what she’d been on the lookout for. “Individuals are very a lot shopping for into me & the individuals I work with,” says Anna. “I did not need to take myself out of the state of affairs and provide you with one thing that felt meaningless, so I may appear to be a much bigger studio or no matter.
“I actually wished to champion and rejoice collective working, independents coming collectively to ship tasks, to point out individuals it’s an possibility.”
Though the seed was planted again in 2022, the rebrand was delayed when Anna discovered she was pregnant together with her second little one. Moderately than rush, she sat with the concept throughout maternity go away and gave herself time to correctly suppose by the brand new model.
“Understanding I could not get all of it executed earlier than my maternity go away pressured me to suppose it by correctly and gave me time to launch the precise factor,” she says.
Now she has a studio id that lastly feels thought-about, aligned, and completely suits her providing.
In addition to inspiring the title, collaboration additionally formed the visible language. Anna experimented with patterns at first, however rapidly realised they felt trend-driven. The extra pure match got here within the typography, as she noticed the mix-and-match potential of various typefaces as a metaphor for various sorts of inventive partnership.
“Each mission is completely different. Each consumer has completely different wants. The mixture may very well be completely different for any mission,” she explains.
This led her to Kyiv Sort Foundry, whose fonts she had bookmarked years earlier than. With Ukrainian heritage on either side of her household, Anna wished to weave in one thing private and lasting.
Lots of the fonts she selected come from the Kyiv Metro assortment, created by college students who primarily based letterforms on kind discovered within the metro system in the course of the early months of the warfare. Gross sales of the fonts help Ukrainian refugees.
“It is unimaginable what they’re doing,” she says. “Utilizing these fonts was a chance to rejoice what they’re doing and convey a few of my heritage into my model.”
The ampersands themselves are intentionally uncommon, drawn from kind rooted in Cyrillic signage and newspapers. “It simply all seems a bit completely different and I am a bit like that – a bit untraditional,” Anna provides.
The best way Anna speaks about her work, and to her viewers, is equally vital and has undergone a slight refresh. Her announcement of the rebrand was strikingly candid because it was direct, humorous, and freed from the type of jargon that clutters design trade posts. This was deliberate, based on Anna.
“I’ve at all times been like that, actually – a bit bit too sincere, typically. I worth honesty,” she says. “Issues have been grating on me since I entered the design trade in 2006. There’s a number of bullshit within the trade, and I do not suppose any extra wants including to it. I need to change some issues.”
Working together with her husband, copywriter Mark Johnson, she discovered a strategy to translate her pure voice into one thing genuine for the model. “I’m a human and I am attempting to talk to different people. I feel in a sea of AI-generated posts and LinkedIn slop, it is much more vital to sound like a human, even (or particularly) if which means letting just a few tough edges present. We ain’t promoting to robots!”
Anna& is intentionally unfinished, with a reputation that leaves room for no matter comes subsequent, whether or not that is a digital-first rebrand, a marketing campaign, or an exhibition. “I feel the choices are infinite! I am not afraid of a problem, I really like studying new issues, and I may associate with anybody with any experience to supply regardless of the mission wants,” she says.
For shoppers, the goal is to really feel concerned moderately than sidelined. “I would like individuals to really feel like Anna& is open, like they’re a part of the method and the mission. This is not one thing that is being executed to them, it is a collaboration with me, or with me & different specialists.”
Whereas the speedy focus is on constructing momentum for Anna&, Anna can also be pondering long run. Alongside consumer work, she desires to create pathways for numerous creatives, notably these from working-class backgrounds, to entry alternatives in design.
“In some unspecified time in the future, and it is a means off, I would love to have the ability to assist them with the boundaries into the trade and supply them with the alternatives that you do not at all times get when you’ve been introduced up within the north, with the mistaken accent, by a welder and an NHS admin employee, with out the precise connections and many cash,” she says.
“It is one thing I received to the touch on a bit after I was working with Eve Warren on the Yorkshire chapter of Kerning the Hole, however I need to discover it extra straight.”
These concepts are nonetheless effervescent away, however the intention is obvious. Anna& isn’t just a brand new title, however a platform for collaboration within the broadest sense.
