Natalia Witwicka is relatively new to freelance life having recently finished positions on Marina Willer’s team at Pentagram and at Google Creative Lab. She admits that she regularly follows her creative instincts and, to date, this process has served her well. 

After graduating in communication design from Glasgow School of Art in 2021, she successfully applied for an internship at Pentagram which turned into a full-time role on Willer’s team. Witwicka says she applied directly to Willer on the recommendation of one of her tutors. “I really identified with Marina’s hands-on approach for projects like the Moholy-Nagy Foundation and Tate,” she says, “and she was the only female partner at Pentagram London at the time, so I really looked up to her.”

When she applied to Pentagram, Witwicka was strategic with her portfolio, she explains, “making sure my work came across as exploratory, but not too mad, showing I could get the job done while appealing to studios that would let me experiment.” She then went on to work on several major arts, culture and charity brands such as the Young V&A, which used her hand-drawn typography and icons, the Natural History Museum and Love Supreme Projects, where she says her own experimental approach started to clarify.

Love Supreme Project process video, Pentagram, Marina Willer’s team

She learned a lot under Willer’s stewardship, including how the best leadership is deeply rooted in care for the people you work with, she says. “Arguably my most valuable lesson was in how encouraging Marina was of my hands-on experiments, which often seemed silly at the time and definitely got me some weird looks, but created the unique base for many of the brands we worked on with the team. She made me realise that there was space for this kind of work in commercial projects – beyond art school, your camera roll and your bedroom at midnight.”

Witwicka realised that it was possible to draw from the things she made, then work together to adapt them for client work, as evidenced in the Love Supreme Projects or Grow to Know work. She sees the process as “being like sketching through making, instead of on paper or in Figma,” she says.

Personal work

A sense of experimentation has been central to Witwicka’s work and is clearly visible in both the personal and client projects she has produced since leaving university. “In my earlier art school years I was more hands-on, doing bits of illustration, print and books,” she says, “but that changed when I couldn’t go into the studio because of Covid and had to find the joy of hands-on making in my tiny flat.”

The Covid lockdowns made her realise that she could get just as excited making generative projects digitally, as she could when painting, making books and prints. “Both approaches often come with embracing chance and working around happy accidents,” she says, suggesting that her work transfers between digital and analogue as if in conversation with the computer, attentive to these moments of accidental discovery.

Young V&A work, Pentagram, Marina Willer’s team

In her final year at Glasgow, Witwicka taught herself how to code in order to make a couple of experimental web games, constructed some modular type projects and also designed identities for imaginary arts and culture projects. She now primarily works in TouchDesigner, Processing and various AI tools, including Claude, and is currently learning Blender.

Born in  Wrocław in Poland, Witwicka grew up on a remote farm in the countryside. “There weren’t many kids around to hang out with,” she says. “I was always making things with found items, cheerleader pompoms out of blue plastic bags, custom perfumes from lilac flowers mixed with grass…. One of my favourite things I drew as a kid was a card deck with illustrations symbolising the four seasons instead of ‘boring’ hearts, diamonds, clubs and spades.

I’ve been getting some exciting collaborations recently, where clients have said ‘just make what feels right for this, we want you to go wild and see what you come up with’

“I knew I was good at maths and geometry, so I started after school architectural drawing classes, which I quickly got bored with and picked up painting instead. I was very lucky to have art teachers outside of school who encouraged me to keep learning and made me realise that I could make a living off design.” 

At Glasgow, Witwicka says she experienced a bit of a culture shock “coming into an environment that was way more concept-focused than the classical, craft-based art school prep I’d experienced in Poland.” 

Personal work

In 2025 Witwicka finds herself in the fortunate position of actually being asked to experiment. “I’ve been getting some exciting collaborations recently, where clients have said ‘just make what feels right for this, we want you to go wild and see what you come up with’, and then we work together to bring it into the reality of what we can produce and how bold they’re ready to go. Those are the most rewarding types of briefs, but I equally love the challenge of finding a unique point of view on more corporate, strategic work.”

Whether by intent or fortune, or perhaps a little of both, Witwicka has carved out a great position where she can bring her experimental work into client commissions, thereby balancing the two areas of design work that excite her. She is able to both be in control and free. 

For example, her creations she terms ‘generative play’ are “about losing control sometimes and just letting things happen, then regaining it and maybe losing it again. This is actually the opposite of how I am in my personal life, which is probably why I enjoy it so much. This push and pull between controlling the process and surrendering to it really draws me in: I might start very directed, then let it go wild, then step back in when I see something worth pursuing.”

Love Supreme Project, Pentagram, Marina Willer’s team

Now she is in the enviable position of having her personal work attract clients, blurring the definition between commissioned projects and personal play. “Most of my client enquiries are actually around my personal projects, and that has become my main work recently,” she says. “I keep trying to find new ways to integrate what I make into branding to make it more unique.”

With several projects launching soon, she continues to enjoy integrating her personal work with her client work, working primarily across branding, campaigns and art direction, mostly through referrals and social media, she says (she recently worked on the the stage visuals for FIFA Club World Cup halftime show with Studio Moross, for example). Other recent work includes a campaign for a public services consultancy and reimagining a travel platform, alongside branding for a boutique perfumery, high-end living spaces and an art advisor.

Four letters made of letters, personal work

Despite this experience, Witwick says that she continues to learn. “I’ve learned so much in these few months: how to price projects, track time, write proposals and manage clients. The biggest challenge has been exactly what everyone warned me about: the admin side. It easily adds a full day to my week, so I’m still finding my work-life rhythm. I’m also adjusting to not having a set routine – every day is different.

“Being freelance also means I’m perceived more as a person behind the work – and the genuine connections I’ve made along the way have been really meaningful and heartwarming. I’m just really excited to keep making more things.”

nataliawitwicka.com, @nataliawitwicka