Graphic symbol on the occasion of the anniversary of the Year of Kolberg

Oskar Kolberg, whose main field of activity was ethnography, describing and documenting with great care the life of the Polish countryside deserves special treatment, therefore the Sejm of the Republic of Poland declared 2014 the Year of Oskar Kolberg. For this reason, a graphic symbol was created to identify the anniversary celebrations.The construction of the proposed symbol for the jubilee year of Oskar Kolberg 2014 is based on the handwritten signature of the documentalist. The authentic signature of the ethnographer is an expression of his personality, character traits, style and temperament. In the characteristic stroke of the pen, one can see many images, the beginning and end of written history. In the stain of the ink spreading on the structure of the paper, a contour image of the horizon from the Polish countryside, so dear to the author, was incorporated.In this way, thanks to a small intervention, we received a clear, characteristic and natural symbol that we can read in many layers. Documenting with respect, we have preserved what is most important – the “Kolberg engraving” with the entire content of the autograph, which, provided only with the modern ordinal number “2014”, has gained a digital date stamp. The technical number, contrasting with the handwritten, soft shape of the signature, has become a symbol of modernity in this combination, a machine mark, with which we today provide archival documents.