RT launches #VictoryPages – a digital art contribution to 75 years of Victory in WWII
#VictoryPages is a versatile documentary project to play out on five social media platforms. It offers an opportunity to look at the historical magnitude of May 9, 1945 through the personal impressions of our contemporaries.
The story will unfold predominantly in Russian on Facebook, YouTube, VK, Twitter and Instagram starting January 13, 2020 and will run until May 9 – the day Russia celebrates Victory over Nazism.
The project’s first release, a ‘smart’ font available for free download, became an essential part of the project’s design identity.This font, called ‘May’, is based on inscriptions Soviet soldiers left on the walls of the Reichstag in Berlin in spring 1945.
Dutch company Animography animated ‘May’ for #VictoryPages.
“For me, the most interesting aspect of the May typeface is the sentiment it carries. When you type, you are borrowing a piece someone else’s personality. Their handwriting. It is imbued with their emotion from that specific day. It makes you think twice about the words you type, because you want to respect that piece of history. No other typeface has that quality," the company's founder Jeroen Krielaars says.
The font is now available for free download on the #VictoryPages project’s webpage. Behind each font character there is a real letter, handwritten by soldiers 75 years ago. These inscriptions are the voices, words and memories of the victors.
With its handwritten characters and symbols, calligraphic and rough, neatly styled and expressively sharp, the font creates a visual link between the past and the present, between the heroes of the Victory and their descendants.
“The font of Victory ‘May’ is a kind of living graphic monument to veterans. But we want to believe that these letters that came to life, will also serve as a reminder of the price of victory,” the project’s Creative Producer, Kirill Karnovich-Valua, explained.
“We managed to put together a unique creative team of young artists, designers, illustrators, composers and directors. Digital art is a modern and universal language that the youth speaks. Therefore, we thought that on the 75th anniversary of the end of one of the worst wars, it was important that we should try talk about the war’s legacy in the language of modern media.” Karnovich-Valua went on to say.
The font was created by Contrast Foundry. Each letter has several alternate forms and sits in line somewhat unevenly, creating a handwritten effect similar to the style of inscriptions on walls. A larger font size displays rich texture, similar to something written on a rough surface, while smaller lettering hardly shows any texture at all, making it easier to read – this is possible due to a special algorithm that modifies the outline of the letters.
The project comes from the team behind #1917LIVE and #Romanovs100 and will be rolled out primarily in Russian from January to May 2020. On Twitter, #VictoryPages will relive the last months of the war in real time, Instagram Stories will feature quotes from thousands of actual letters exchanged between the war front and home with illustrations by RANEPA students and a score from Maxim Makarychev (On-The-Go, Sirotkin).
A YouTube documentary series will tell the stories of soldiers and officers who made it to Berlin in 1945, and young graphic designers and digital artists will present their interpretation of the legacy of the Great Patriotic War using Facebook, while producer Anna Fedorova will team up with musician Maxim Makarychev to create a series of Podcasts for VK.
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