Where The Motherland Begins

Yury Ostromentsky: Irina Meglinskaya, who curated the exhibition and edited the book Where The Motherland Begins (С чего начинается Родина), asked me and Daria Yarzhambek to design the logo, the graphic elements, and the book. The exhibition presents photographic stories of people doing all sorts of jobs in different parts of Russia: e.g. a postman from a remote village side by side with a contemporary art museum director in Moscow. The logo needed to have its own personality — as bright as the exhibition’s heroes have, — and secondly, it had to be somewhat… Russian. ‘Russian’ in graphics is typically associated with either Ustav and Vyaz, Slavonic medieval script styles, or the Soviet Constructivism which is supposed to be responsible for modernity, but has been failing to meet the challenge for quite some time now. I tried something synthetic — this typographic style is some sort of Vyaz, Constructivism, and Khrushchev Thaw blended together, slightly exaggerated, with unconventional approach to spacing and composition. Which does result in something quite Russian.