Adam Widmański – A Digital Creative at Home in Warsaw

Growing upon his bustling freelance career for companies in both New York and Stockholm, Adam Widmański co-created digital agency Praesens in his native home of Warsaw. He found a few moments to sit down with us and chat about his work and home.

You call yourself a ‘digital creative’ – what do you mean by that?

Well, it’s everything related to my job, all together. I’m both a designer and a programmer. It’s a term that somehow incorporates everything I do – but doesn’t limit my professional activities in any way.  

The fact that you design and program your clients’ websites is a pretty interdisciplinary approach in itself.

Yes, it might not be the most typical combination – but it’s definitely a very logical one! It gives you great control of the final outcome of a project. I’ve been doing way more programming than design for a while now though. Praesens, the agency I founded with my good friend Michał Jóźwin, is still rather small so we all have very flexible roles. Actually, mostly all I do right now is write emails! We all do though, don’t we? [laughs]

From design to fashion brands, your clients come mostly from the ‘creative’ industries, it seems. 

Yes, because of my first few projects, both myself and our agency have become associated with that type of brands. But we’ve had a chance to work with a lot of really great international and local clients, too. One of the most interesting ones recently was an American start-up in the suitcase business – AWAY. We’ve been with them from the very beginning, and it was great to see how they went from a small studio in Chinatown, New York to Jay-Z carrying their bags. 

Let’s talk about your apartment a little bit as well. When did you move here?

My wife, Zofia Chylak, a fashion & handbag designer, and I have been living here for 3 years. So we’ve already settled in pretty well. There are some wine stains on the walls (we covered them with a nice artwork) from a few parties we held. You can feel that the space has been actively used and exploited [laughs]. But we really like it! We still can’t finish it off – but I guess it’s the usual problem. Everyone seems to be having the same issue with putting that finishing touch on their place. We’re still in the process of figuring out what we need and where we need it.

You’re just being humble! The place looks amazing. How did the process of designing the flat go, with both of you being creative professionals?

Not so easy. I’m the difficult one! I bought and started to furnish the place before Zofia moved in so I made quite a lot of choices myself. So now we’re making sure that the space takes her style and needs into consideration as well. Like, actual wardrobes or enough clothing racks [laughs]. Actually, our Tylko shelf was one of our ideas to bring some order into this space. Before, we used to keep our books and other stuff on the window sills, but the shelves became a great way to display some of our favourite things – like this golden teapot or the two pots we got from my father for our wedding. We totally loved the Tylko app and used it when designing our shelf e.g. to make sure the socket and light switch would fit. The AR feature of the app is one of the few examples when using augmented reality really works and makes so much sense. Well, apart from Pokémon, of course. [laughs]