During the week of November 30, 1998, when the judging was taking place at Kyrillitsa ’99, an international competition in type design, the outdoor temperature in Moscow dropped to minus 25 degrees Celsius (minus 13 Fahrenheit), and the ruble exchange rate plummeted to twenty for one US dollar. The market for graphic design continued to dwindle, due to a deep recess in business activities.
In his recent letter from Moscow, a friend of mine wrote, rather sarcastically: “All the designers are busy exchanging New Year’s cards. As if the 17th of August, the crisis, and the [government’s] default had never happened; as if the client is still there for them, at their threshold, stomping impatiently his fat hoof.” The date of August 17, 1998 (a.k.a. Black Monday), has acquired a special meaning: that was the day when the financial market took a bad plunge, and Russia’s economy began spiraling downward. After August 17, the average wage fell by more than fifty percent; that threw dozens of millions of people below the official poverty line.
The autumn of 1998 saw a huge number of companies going out of business, reducing staff, revising production and sales quotas. The demand for design services began to shrink. Who would need them anymore – those logos, cards, letterheads, packaging, ads, signage, etc.? During the last few months of 1998, a number of studios, printshops, and service bureaus were downsized, their staff either laid off or forced into leave without pay.
The design community started to circle the wagons. November of 1998 saw the creation of a new trade association, the Art Directors Club. A design annual was put together in a big hurry, to promote the services that the club’s members can offer to the business community. The talk of the town was the preparation of a portfolio – a portfolio! – by a major studio that had never before felt the need for self-promotion. (Word of mouth had kept its doors rotating under a heavy flow of clients for many years.)
Many public activities that until now had attracted mostly young, aspiring designers gained in importance in the eyes of practicing professionals who used to neglect or snub them. Participation in exhibitions, competitions, seminars, workshops, etc., surged. All of a sudden, the exposure, the coverage in the press, and the awards acquired significance. Kyrillitsa ’99 was no exception to this new trend.
The tourney
Forty-nine designers took part in the competition. One hundred and forty-two submissions came from eight countries – Belarus, Canada, Germany, Japan, Russia, Ukraine, United States, and Yugoslavia.
In general, competition conÞrmed that Cyrillic type design closely parallels global trends. The design of display fonts is most popular with the beginners, while more experienced professionals are involved in creating typefaces for text composition. At the same time, there were some original, pioneering designs that seemed to challenge or defy common international conventions.
The fact that many non-users of Cyrillic contributed to the event testifies to the increasing internationalization of typographic communications, and to the growing demand for Cyrillic type worldwide. With Cyrillic and Greek characters constituting an important part of the expanded, Unicode-compatible character set, many designers are now trying their hand at shaping those glyphs they did not care about, or did not know of, only a few years ago.
I see a special significance in the awards given to two Western designers, Matthew Carter and John Hudson. There is more to their work than typeface design: they have both made substantial contributions to the integration of Cyrillic script into global communications. The expansion and improvement of those communications are vital for the future of Russian culture, starved by the decades of isolation from the rest of the civilized world.
An uphill battle
The daily life of the type business in Russia is influenced by conflicting tendencies. The demand for digital type is high, yet sales are low – most of the fonts used are illegal copies. Public awareness and appreciation of type is growing fast, yet the profession of type designer is not seen as prestigious and does not attract many young people.
There are only a handful of die-hard type design professionals in Russia – the most dedicated, enthusiastic bunch. Many of them, but not all, live and work in Moscow. Some of them get knocked out of business; new fighters take their place. They care about succession; many of them teach. Their courageous and selfless service is both a sacrifice and a way to keep sanity in the warped and treacherous world of the post-Soviet Neverland.
In the midst of the long and cold Russian winter, Kyrillitsa ’99 felt like a forecast of brighter days. Let us hope we all will live to see them.
More information on Kyrillitsa ’99:
The Winners
The Judges
Kyrillitsa = Cyrillic
The Death of Dumbadze
Kuznetsova’s Birthday
The Zapf Calendar
The Future of Kak Magazine