I Believe in the beauty
of reality (2014)

Book 210 by 297 mm
20 pages

The book is an image-based reflection on the poem “What I believe" by J. G. Ballard. This piece caused very conflicting feelings in me. On the one hand it is a beautiful poem, which invites a reader to think about his own beliefs, but simultaneously it feels detached from daily life. So what is it, a sense of life or just big words, that don’t have any real implementation?

The name of the book is “I Believe in the Beauty of Reality” and it juxtaposes very poetic, professionally staged images and the most ordinary shots of kebab restaurants. Treating them as mere compositions of imageries, both categories of images are treated equally without any hierarchy.

Fifteen Lucky stories (2016)

Book 158 by 234 mm
160 pages

Immigration is quite a big issue nowadays, however not a new one. The immigration across US - Mexico has a long history and still remains complicated. It’s a sensitive topic concerning different aspects such as economical, political, and humanistic dilemmas. During my research on this topic I found some sort of dualism in the perception of this question. Once we face a story of a single person of his achievements and struggles, it is very easy to be humane and compassionate. But when we try to see a general picture zooming out of all kind of complexities surrounding this issue, it seems that a personal story loses it’s value.

This book is my personal reflection on this dualistic approach. It is divided into two parts; the top part consists of scientific articles, written by Nicholas De Geneva and the bottom part is an interview of immigrants conducted by Walter Gallacher. This is my visual proposal on how we should view this issue, by attempting to look at both sides at the same time.

Time travel (2017)

VJ-ing tool
Programmed using three.js library

Nostalgia is not only a poetic human weakness, but also a powerful political tool. We tend to look at the past thinking that back then life was much better and rarely aware of how fragmented those memories are. A great example of a common nostalgic period in Russian culture is “Ottepel,” a specific short period in the history of USSR, when the political, social, and cultural life of the society was vastly improving.

This VJ-ing tool gives a tour though the landscape of photos of that period, however it is only fragmented pieces of what reality was and the illusion we keep in our memories.

Try the tool
Music by the Russian instrumentalists, “Мегаполис” (Megapolis).

Substitute Daddies (2016)

Book 165 by 220 mm
72 pages

This photo book was made in collaboration with Sydney Rahimtoola. It tells a story of a young woman and her relationship with 5 different men, who are in one or other way a replacement of her father. Some photographs are very touching, some are quite personal, others are uncomfortable. The book also includes personal notes and other documentations. This is a poetic and sentimental photo diary; the only trick being that all the photos included are staged…

Photographs by Sydney Rahimtoola

Romany dance (2016)

Dynamic installation
Fabric, sublimation printing, motor

This installation is a poetic representation of research on the Romany identity. Romany or Roma is a common name for several traditionally nomadic ethnic groups, scattered across the world. Historically they have always lived separately from each other, but shared similar life styles and identity.

The pattern on the skirt is a collection of all Romany names and the movement is a metaphor for their culture and traditions, which are strongly represented in dances, music and performances. When the skirt spins, all names merge and unite into one colourful blur and the spirit of culture takes over the formal division.

Watch video
Music by Alexander Turnquist

The Dialogs of
Greek Islands (2016)

Map, video
Fabric, sublimation printing

Together with Natalia Vishnevskaia, we created a map of the Mediterranean Sea with an illustrated landscape of media 'voices', related to the 2015-2016 refugee crisis across the Greek Islands. We collected opinions and statements from online Western media, tourist comments, as well as refugee interviews, to exhibit how various people subjectively experience the consequences of the same global events and how Greek Mythology connects to these current events.

Watch video
Collaboration with Natalia Vishnevskaia

Twin poster (2015)

Series of posters
Silkscreen on paper

The poster is a small exercise of learning by imitating. The original poster was made by Ludovic Balland in 2013. My interpretation of this poster is an outcome of the formal research on composition, balance of shape, counter shape and rhythm.

Interactive animation (2014)

Series of posters
Silkscreen on paper

The series of posters is an imaginative proposal of a topic for the Brno Biennial 2016. The approach in the posters was to create and interpret movement and sensation of the digital screen on paper. The end approach to this was an experimentation with moire effect.

It serves both goals - creating a movement illusion and clearly reference the digital image language. The process of silkscreening with different colour combinations became an exciting approach to the topic, which lead to unexpected, intuitive results.

The city puzzle (2015)

Interactive installation, Series of posers
Wood, paper, cyanotype

The city puzzle is an interactive installation that was made for an exhibition “Moving Type, Moving Cities” (14 December 2015, Fokker Terminal, Den Haag).

The work is concentrated on the unnatural conditions, which influence the development of modern cities. It questions the idea of seeing the city as just a set of separate pieces, which have to satisfy someone’s personal needs, but not as one organism.

The series of posters was made as a sketch for the installation and refers to the fact that sometimes what state is not what we actually do. The installation itself is a 3-dimensional puzzle, which give a player an opportunity to experience how it feels, trying to make one construction out of separate pieces. Is it going to turn stable or beautiful? That’s up to you to decide.

movingtype.net

Paper size (2015)

Publication 200 by 274 mm
8 pages

This short publication is a part of a bigger project - "Typographic Fundamentals". It’s a 43 chapter reader, that covers most of the topics related to typography and editorial design. Each chapter was designed by a different person. All together they appear to be a full typographical guide.

Oracle (2016)

Interactive installation
Fabric, wood, Arduino-based electronics

Love in all its appearances is one of the strongest human desires, but also the greatest human weakness. We can’t control it, can’t predict it. Love drives even the most rational people crazy and leaves them blind. Being desperate to fulfil their desire, people start looking for supernatural signs.

The “Oracle” installation is a prediction machine that gives people random prophesies about their coming future. Some of them make more sense than the others, but at the end of the day the question is how far would go you to see a meaning behind a random selection of words.

Watch video

Classical series of books (2016)

Book 240 by 160 mm
292 pages

The series include 3 books - “An Ideal Husband” by Oscar Wilde (1895), “Theatre” by W. Somerset Maugham (1937) and “Tender Is the Night” by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1934). The design of the books shares common solutions in typography and layout. The choice of the typeface and general appearance of books reflect my personal response to the pieces.

“Tender Is the Night” by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1934)

Classical series of books (2016)

Book 240 by 160 mm
102 pages

The series include 3 books - “An Ideal Husband” by Oscar Wilde (1895), “Theatre” by W. Somerset Maugham (1937) and “Tender Is the Night” by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1934). The design of the books shares common solutions in typography and layout. The choice of the typeface and general appearance of books reflect my personal response to the pieces.

“An Ideal Husband”
by Oscar Wilde (1895)

Classical series of books (2016)

Book 240 by 160 mm
232 pages

The series include 3 books - “An Ideal Husband” by Oscar Wilde (1895), “Theatre” by W. Somerset Maugham (1937) and “Tender Is the Night” by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1934). The design of the books shares common solutions in typography and layout. The choice of the typeface and general appearance of books reflect my personal response to the pieces.

“Theatre” by W. Somerset
Maugham (1937)

Manifesto (2016)

Book 285 by 200 mm
80 pages

This book is an outcome of a collaborative research project done together with Jungeun Lee and Dora Kerekes. It’s a collection of design manifestos and a series of essays on the historical and cultural role of manifestos in the contemporary art and design scene. The book includes folded in poster.

Vertical, horizontal,
half circle (2015)

Book, 135 by 198 mm
140 pages

This experimental typographic project was inspired by the observation of differences between communication to humans and to computers. While the instructions given to computers should be precisely defined and give an expectable and constant result, instructions to humans are personal, built on anticipation of knowledge and its correctness is barely questioned. Therefore we will always get an output on our instruction given to a person, but often not what we imagined. We gave formalized instructions to people describing the letters of the alphabet. Since people all understood the instructions in a different way, they created several new alphabets.

Collaboration with Jungeun Lee,
Nora Bekes and Ies de Jong

Colour book (2015)

Publication, 130 by 190 mm
78 pages

A process book of four works, united by the topic of colour. Each work is focused on a particular aspect of colour, but are united with how people perceive such colours, and reinforce it in their communication. The cover of the book is fully embroidered in different colour patters, adding to the experience of what colour communication.

Osman (2017)

Poster, digital print
Video

Osman is a work in response to the Ultraclub project, which is a non-profit advertising agency, ran by students for one semester in Boekhorstraat, Den Haag. The goal was to collaborate with the local community in Den Haag, by creating visual identities for the local shop merchants. This in hand, created a network between the artist and public space, as well as telling the locals’ stories as a result of this merge.

Osman is a restaurant owner (Osman), where the owner collects random objects for years and places them in the space. Each item is sentimental to him, since he remembers exactly where each item was purchased or found, and how much it had cost. At first, he is reserved when meeting people for the first time, but he opens up when it comes to his possessions, opening a new world for the listener. With his objects and stories, you are no longer in the kitchen anymore with him, rather in his gallery space, where objects are valued not by the price, but by the story the leave behind.

Watch video

Modular typeface (2015)

Typeface
Video

A typographical system, based on simple collection of shapes. The amount of shapes is limited to six modules, but they are universal enough to build the entire Latin alphabet out of them. The shapes are reusable and applied to different parts of the letters.

The starting point for this typeface were letters that one can draw with fat marker using one line. During the process, all the letters were deconstructed in simple shapes and categorized according to differences and similarities.

Watch video

Richard Bach (2014)

Poster
Mono-print with tread

The enlarged portrait of American writer, Richard Bach was made with thread and mono-printing. The starting point was a photograph, taken from an online source with the intention to find a unique approach to scale it higher. The method I used was measuring the face shape on the original image by thread and multiplying it’s thread count, according to the scale of the finished print.

The name of the writer on the poster is displayed as an anagram. As well as the portrait itself, the anagram is precise. It uses the same amount of characters as the original words, but in the end it is still hardly recognizable.

Explore patterns (2014)

Poster, offset
Series of experiments

This is collaborative poster, as a result of different people focusing on different compositions. The main premise of the work was to explore peculiarities of the offset printing and to explore its usage for the benefit of the design. All the sketches and tryouts were made with risograph, in order to explore how the overlap of shapes might influence the final outcome.

Havana nights (2013)

Series of posters
Paper, digital print

A series of posters for Cuban salsa events. The typographical composition is inspired by the song “Represent Cuba” by Orishas - the Cuban hip hop group from Havana as well as the rhythm of salsa music.

Expressive making (2015)

Series of posters
Mono-prints

The poster series is an outcome of a one day workshop on expressive making. The main premise was to work large, quickly, with simple materials and not to think too much during the work process. Later on, the compositions were mono-printed on a large scale (841 x 1189 mm), using cardboard cutouts.

Contrast module (2015)

Publication 270 by 145 mm
36 pages

The publication is a study of the process of exploring broad nib pen calligraphy and type contrast. It includes all stages, starting from the first trainings in writing letters, moving to drawing and finally to producing a collection of designed letters with normal, hight and low contrast. The set of letters were also digitized and tested in different sizes and compositions.

Digitizing (2015)

Publication 145 by 197 mm
32 pages

This publication is an essay and series of practical exercises, giving a brief idea of how to manage the process of digitizing typeface. It gives overview of software and defines several steps of digitizing, starting from gearing original material and ending up with a finished product. It serves as a technical guide, taking an example of digitizing a historic Baroque typeface, but also pointing out several design issues appearing during the process.

Mi'kmaq lab (2016)

Publication 148 by 210 mm
40 pages

The Mi'kmaq lab is a project, telling the story of Mi’kmaq script in a sarcastic way. Historically, it was only a spoken language and didn’t have a visual representation until the 17th Century French missionary came up with a hieroglyphic system for it.

The result of the project, is a suggested idea of a crazy laboratory which cultivates a script. The publication is a study book, which offers a series of trainings and theoretical material on how to produce Mi’kmaq script yourself.

Ultraclub promo video (2017)

Video

Ultraclub is a non-profit advertising agency, which was coordinated and led by graphic design students for one semester in the Boekhorstraat, Den Haag. The goal of Ultraclub is to form a collaboration between artists and the local community, by trying to develop a visual identity for local store owners. During the process, the amazing stories of the locals united the artists and the public.

The promotional video was meant as the introduction to the public exhibition in the space, which involved various people in the street. It is meant as a teaser for the exhibition, in order to give the viewer an idea on what Ultraclub is doing.

Watch video