In the fourth episode of WordCamp Europe Insights, Kasia Janowska sits down with Ohia, the lead of the design team for WordCamp Europe 2026 in Kraków. The conversation is warm, playful, and full of creative detail, taking us through how a nine-person international team builds the entire visual identity of one of the world’s biggest WordPress events. If you’ve ever looked at the WordCamp Europe website and wondered who’s behind those colours, shapes, and intricate little ornaments, this episode gives you the full picture.
Polish Roots and Dragon Shapes
Every year, the design team starts from scratch. Rather than recycling an existing visual language, they treat each edition as a new client brief, researching the host city in depth before a single shape is drawn. For Kraków, Ohia explains, that meant immersing the team in Polish history, traditional folk art, regional embroidery, the flower-painted houses of small Polish towns, and the broader visual culture of contemporary Poland. One of her key decisions early on was to include a local designer in the team: Zuza, from Kraków, whose insider understanding of the city’s visual culture proved invaluable.
The result weaves together several decades and influences: the intricate patterns of traditional embroidery sit alongside bold typographic choices drawn from Polish poster design of the 1980s and 90s. And then, of course, there is the Wawel Dragon. Kasia, who openly admits she loves it, asks Ohia to explain the thinking behind including the dragon so prominently. Ohia points to the ambiguous, layered shape in the background of the website header and explains that even though the dragon sits in tension with the brighter floral elements around it, that tension is intentional. The dragon adds more depth to the whole composition.
One detail Ohia is especially proud of is how the team blended the old and the new at a very small scale. The ornamental flourishes across the site draw from traditional embroidery patterns, but they are married with the icon set from the WordPress backend: familiar dashboard icons, reimagined within a folk-art visual language. When Kasia says she loves the flowers and little touches everywhere, Ohia is quick to point out that finding a way to blend old traditional and new modern was one of the team’s core creative challenges, and one they are proud to have solved.
Building the Team
The design team for 2026 consists of nine people spread across Spain, Italy, France, Germany, and beyond. Ohia assembled the team herself, and when Kasia asks what she was looking for when reviewing applications, Ohia is candid: the single most important thing an applicant can include is a link to their portfolio. Without it, she found herself doing independent detective work, hunting down websites and social profiles to understand what each person was capable of. It is not about gatekeeping, she explains; it is about fairness. Reaching out to someone to ask for their portfolio after reviewing their application, only to reject them afterwards, feels like a bad experience for everyone involved.
Designers who did not make the final team were not necessarily less talented; the team simply could not grow any larger. And the nine they settled on, Ohia says with confidence, is a solid group.
Leading Through Consensus and Delegation
This is Ohia’s first time leading a team at this scale, and she is open about what the learning curve has looked like. Her instinct at the start of the year was to involve everyone in every decision, to run the whole process as a shared creative endeavour. Kasia picks up on this immediately, noting that leading a team of talented people with their own artistic visions cannot be easy. Ohia agrees and explains that she has gradually found a more workable balance: bringing the team in on the big directional calls, while also being willing to delegate clearly and trust people to deliver.
What makes the design team’s position particularly exposed, Ohia notes, is that design, much like the speaker lineup, is something the whole community feels entitled to have an opinion on. Whether someone is a seasoned designer or simply a WordCamp Europe attendee, they will notice the visuals, and they will react. If you are going to lead the design team, she says, you need thick skin. You will not please everyone. The encouraging news for 2026 is that the feedback so far has been overwhelmingly positive, including compliments she has overheard from people who had no idea they were talking to the team lead.
Everything You See, the Design Team Touches
Kasia asks Ohia to spell out what the team description really means in practice, particularly regarding supporting other teams’ visual communication needs. Ohia’s answer is broad: everything you see, the design team touches. The website, social media graphics, podcast thumbnails, printed materials, venue signage, environmental design, swag, t-shirts, bags: all of it passes through the design team at some point.
At the moment, the team that demands the most ongoing output is social media, given the volume and pace of content required to promote the event throughout the year. But Ohia points out that this will shift as June approaches: the local team and production team will start making heavier requests regarding venue design and printed materials, and the balance of work will evolve accordingly. She describes it as an organic, evolutionary process.
The Hardest Part, and the Most Enjoyable
When Kasia asks what Ohia finds most challenging, the answer is clear: the beginning. Establishing the branding, settling on a visual language, and making those foundational decisions about colour, type, and shape is always the hardest stretch. Logo design and branding, Ohia says, is the most difficult part of her wider skill set. Once that foundation is solid, everything else becomes a matter of applying and adapting the elements rather than starting from nothing. She describes those early weeks as “swimming through gravel”: slow, effortful, and not always visible to others, but essential.
The most enjoyable work, by contrast, is the playful side. Ohia has been making deliberate efforts this year to inject fun and lightness into the team’s output: small creative surprises and inside jokes that circulate among the organisers before they reach the wider public. Her reasoning, which resonates with Kasia, is simple. The WordPress community comes together for connection and joy, and that spirit should be present in the design long before people arrive at the venue. If you want a preview of what that looks like, both of them suggest following the social media channels, where the more playful side of the 2026 visual identity is beginning to emerge.
T-shirts, Swag, and the Wapuu
Two things that WordCamp Europe attendees always wait for are the Wapuu and the t-shirt, and both are being kept as surprises for Kraków. Zuza, the local designer on the team, is working on the Wapuus (yes, Ohia confirms, plural), and she describes them as genuinely cute. The t-shirt design is also finished, and Ohia’s stated ambition is clear: she wants people to still be wearing it years after the event. Swag that ends up forgotten in a drawer is not serving anyone, and a well-designed t-shirt has a life long beyond the conference itself.
Kasia cannot resist asking whether the Wapuu will hug a dragon this year. Ohia laughs and leaves it deliberately open, suggesting it might just be a question best answered by a community poll.
Ohia’s Background and the Word of the Year
Kasia is curious about what Ohia does beyond WordCamp Europe, and the answer spans a wide range. She has been building WordPress sites since around 2009 and describes herself as someone who moves across disciplines: front-end implementation, CSS, logo design, branding, content writing, and increasingly paid advertising. She got drawn into the wider WordPress community through a local WordCamp in Galicia, northwest Spain, and now describes the community as something close to family, a network of people across the whole country she knows she could turn to if she needed help.
Her word for 2026 is collaboration. She has been thinking about how the design team, the web team, and other groups could work in a more fluid and integrated way in future years: designers who understand implementation, and implementers who understand visual systems, all working from a shared foundation of established branding. It is a vision for a more sustainable, less siloed way of running the creative side of WordCamp Europe, and she hopes to carry it forward either as co-lead or as a mentor to the next team.
Why Get Involved
Ohia’s closing message is the same one that runs through every episode of WordCamp Europe Insights: get involved. Volunteer this year. Apply to be an organiser next year. The WordPress community is actively working to attract new contributors and younger participants through initiatives such as WordCamp Connect and the WordPress Credits project, and there is room for people at every level of experience.
WordPress changes constantly, Ohia points out, and that means the community always needs fresh perspectives and new contributors. Whether your background is in design, development, project management, or simply being a reliable and enthusiastic team member, there is a role for you somewhere.
If you’d like to attend WordCamp Europe 2026 in Kraków, you can secure your place through the official WordCamp Europe 2026 tickets page. For a sense of what previous editions have looked and felt like, browse the community’s photo archive on the WordCamp Europe Flickr albums.
Listen to the full episode wherever you get your podcasts, and share it with someone in your life who belongs in the WordPress community, even if they do not know it yet.
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