The Swamp Collective find roots of graphic design in the muck, mud and mire of Europe

Karolina Pietrzyk and Tobias Wenig, are both primarily Berlin-based graphic designers and illustrators who founded the group project Swamp Collective, a collection of artists that self-publish, from zines, books and posters and collaborate with artists, musicians, cultural institutions and musical festivals across Europe. Formed to create an umbrella space to capture all of its artist’s talents, the collective started swamp.center at the beginning of 2025 – because there is never a bad time to run a small publishing house, label and small bookshop all at once.

Whilst digging through archives, taking photographs, drawing and scanning materials, the collective works primarily with nature – exploring typography, history and maps to capture the unique swampiness of its visuals. “Typeface research is always one of the most fun parts of the work,” says Karolina. “It’s great to research specimens, digging the story behind them – we spend hours on it, it’s fascinating.”

The swamp is a very special place for the collective, or as they call it: “mystical”. In its work for an exhibition Kukania, curated by Katarzyna Różańska-Szabelska at Arsenał Gallery in Białystok, Poland, the collective honoured the medieval myth it’s named after, exploring the marsh as both “a historical and contemporary place of refuge”, says Karolina. To do this, the collective borrowed visuals from Brandenburg swamps to produce moving collages mixed with typography taken from old holiday resort postcards.

Swamp Collective’s colour palettes are filled with bucolic, greeny textures, with angular twig-like shapes. It’s all about the strange beauty of the muck and mud. Other times, the group’s designs mimic retro computer ASCII art, referencing the mechanical environments that surround nature. The collective recently finished a new visual identity for BGSW Bałtycka Galera Sztuki Współczesnej (Baltic Contemporary Gallery), where the artists collected found materials such as plants, twigs, fragments of fish nets and stones with post-glacial fossil samples found on the Baltic shore between Slupsk and a seaside town in Poland Ustka. “We carefully reproduced colours with color charts (Pantone) from found elements – from bluish-greyish twigs, light-green algaes, yellowish and burgundy dried roots,” so as to “represent the gallery and it’s surrounding as an entangled entity,” says Tobias.

Next time you get your foot stuck in the mud or stare into the algae of gentle streams, you might think about how it can be utilised into graphic design all thanks to the Swamp Collective.