Polar, Ltda.
Polar, Ltda.• Date added
• Date added
Polar is a studio in São Paulo focusing on designs for individuals, brands, and spaces. Established in 2020 through a collaboration of professionals from various studios, Polar seeks to design new perspectives for tomorrow's design while incorporating different disciplines. The studio offers services ranging from visual identity, packaging, and digital design to typography, animations, and editorial projects.
Three years after its initial launch, Polar developed a digital branding system that is reflected in its new website. The main challenge was to create a platform that reaffirmed visual elements known from their identity, now with new guidelines that manifest themselves in the entire institutional communication of the studio.
Client
Polar, Ltda.
Year
2023
Creative Director
Bruno Ribeiro
Lais Ikoma
Ralph Mayer
Typefaces in Use
With new implementations such as a news and updates feed, various case study viewing options, content sorting via filters, and a budget inquiry form, they provided the opportunity to generate new assets contributing to the visual system.
The elements were crafted through authentic and distinctive solutions, resulting in a visually striking user experience that remains easily identifiable yet consistently intuitive. This involves uniformity in visual choices, such as button sizes, placements, filters, tags, and other components, and establishing a logic that ensures a simple and functional navigation.
The Polar ecosystem encompasses the convergence of languages, spanning from the visual aspect to the digital realm. Deliberately, this duality overlays the aesthetic selection of elements. New complementary colours have been introduced to provide more depth to the tennis court setting and further enhance the colour of the ball – one of the brand's most iconic and recognisable assets.
Universal Sans is a versatile typography that extends across all graphic outputs, maintaining its robustness for the digital framework. The visual identity has also incorporated new 3D assets, playfully expanding the components of the identity and demonstrating the capability to produce high-quality images.
"The challenge was to develop a solid surface for the website controls that would consistently embody the Polar language while placing the projects at the forefront. The solution was a creative digital identity that engaged with the world but positioned itself directly within the acidity of Brazilian design."
Situated at the screen's corners, the command buttons, accessible via hovering over the menu, embrace a pragmatic approach, offering users a seamless navigation experience. The homepage is designed to spotlight new projects, complemented by a dynamic news feed that delivers pertinent content from the studio's everyday life. This feature unites various internal activities and engagements, including the Polar store, courses, awards, and beyond. The footer reinforces the visual identity's elements and concisely compiles pivotal contact information.
Within the archive, users can explore all of Polar's works. A condensed format presents the case studies, allowing the studio to capture the breadth of projects while being categorised based on Polar's key services. This method intensifies the focus on the current production, fostering a sustainable framework for generating new content.
"We were able to benefit from this design restructuring also to update the entire architecture we were using. We replaced WordPress — and all its accompanying structure — with a serverless architecture using a headless and open-source CMS (Payload), server-side rendering through Next.js, and even reconsidered our analytics to favour a privacy-friendly tool. The result of this entire process is that, besides having a website that serves us better, it now runs faster, encounters fewer issues, and is easier to maintain."
Aiming to promote user engagement in a friendly and intelligent manner materialised as a simple and inviting solution named 'Let's Play,' a game designed to offer dynamic matches against the computer, reviving the graphic style reminiscent of early two-dimensional arcade games.
The combination of all aspects in the Polar universe reveals its unique positioning and showcases its design thinking for its community. The outcome of interactions between spaces and people goes beyond the physical environment and spills over into the digital realm.
Polar, Ltda.
Polar is where what is identified around people, brands and spaces is designed. Both a studio and shop, Polar brings together professionals from different specialities who see projects as a means to provoke new perspectives. Internationally acclaimed, the studio works with diverse projects and clients willing to collaborate and build with a purpose above all.
Related works
