Solidarity

In the 1980s Poland, Solidarity (Solidarność) was a broad anti-bureaucratic social movement, using civil resistance to advance the causes of workers’ rights and social change. The Communist government attempted to destroy it during the period of martial law in the early 1980s and several years of political repression, but in the end it was forced to negotiate. The talks between the government and the Solidarity-led opposition led to democratic elections and in December 1990 Wałęsa, the movement leader, was elected President. Eventually Wałęsa became a Nobel Peace Prize laureate.

Originally designed by Jerzy Janiszewski during the movement’s heyday, the Solidarity wordmark was meant to represent a crowd hoisting up a Polish flag.

My friend Paul suggested that I design an American equivalent of this iconic symbol. I gave it a try and after a bit of back-and-forth, we settled on the version below.

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Feel free to print and distribute, but do not use for any commercial purpose. Please note that the Solidarność logo is property of Self-Governing Trade Union Solidarność.