eternal sleep
in deadly silence.
in strange forgotten place.
here birds stopped singing long ago.
here only cold wind howls
and carries
everything
away
eternal sleep
in deadly silence.
in strange forgotten place.
here birds stopped singing long ago.
here only cold wind howls
and carries
everything
away
sometimes people are lucky enough to meet it on their way through darkness and hollowness.
from the check-list of an emergency evacuation bag: put your documents into a protective plastic bag and keep close.
The visual style of the 52nd Molodist Film Festival is based on the relentless struggle for truth and against fakes.
The light piercing through the chroma key (a tool for manipulating reality) can be seen as a symbolic victory over deception, illuminating the commitment to truth.
This creative solution aligns with the festival’s mission—to showcase emerging auteur films, celebrating raw talent over technical prowess.
Made with Vova Alyanov (instagram → @alyanov.vova)
SUNNY BUNNY, a standalone LGBTQ+ film festival in Ukraine, got its visual identity.
With these photographs, the Hexagon reduced the distance between society and the LGBTQ+ community, showing they are no different and deserve equal rights (this problem became more acute during the war).
With the logo, designers created a system of symbols that works with the festival’s central theme—visibility. And leave a lasting mark on the international queer film festival scene by its graphic quality.
The creative solution for the “Molodist” Film Festival aimed to capture the “spirit of the times” by avoiding obvious imagery related to war and crisis. It utilized an abstract sculpture set against a pattern—representing an absence of background in digital images.
The abstract figure represents cultural processes that win uncertainty—highlighting that culture would persist despite any circumstances.
Made with [Masha Dmitrowa](https://www.instagram.com/mashadmitrowa/).
The creation of the graphic style of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine was a very important part of the development of Ukrainian identity and the return of its history. In 2018, the Ukrainian Church returned under the omophorion of the Patriarchate of Constantinople after being occupied by Moscow for more than 300 years. A general design was created, which includes: signs, crosses, ornaments, diocesan logos and fonts at the intersection of Ukrainian and Greek traditions of sacred design.
A project was initiated to incorporate Ukraine into the digital lexicon by designing emojis featuring the most renowned images of Ukraine’s traditional culture.
The creators submitted these emojis to the Unicode committee, believing that Ukraine’s fight for independence has been a significant event in world history and should be represented even in basic elements like emojis. These images are a vivid part of our identity, which aggressors aim to mock and even strip away from us.
The Kyiv-Mohyla Academy hosted its second TEDx conference in 2021. To give the event a fresh look, Hexagon created a new visual identity that stayed true to TED’s global brand while incorporating its style.
The conference theme was “ambiguity,” which was creatively represented through the idea of removing graffiti.
This distinct visual identity helped set the event apart from TED’s past conferences and allowed for more creative expression through shapes and designs.
The cover for project about Kharkiv art school for the book about the Kharkiv Higher Art School (1921–1962) by Ludmila Sokolyuk. Kharkiv artists worked in the field of avant-garde, experimental typography and graphics within the Ukrainian identity. Publisher Oleksandr Savchuk (Kharkiv)
Design for Opera “Vyshyvanyi. Der König der Ukraine” by Alla Zagaykevych with the libretto by Serhij Zhadan took place in Vienna as part of the UStream Fest festival. The design uses the Wilhelm font, at the junction of Ukrainian avant-garde and Austro-Hungarian modernism.
The premiere of the opera took place in October 2021 in Kharkiv and became the most anticipated and most discussed event in domestic academic music.
Together with friends from Design for Ukraine and Yaroslav Belinsky, a style was developed for the presentation of Ukrainian design within the framework of the design week in Zurich at ZURICH DESIGN WEEKS and in Kyiv at KYIV DESIGN WEEK. The combination of font geometry and chaotic strokes emphasizes individuality and national character. Additional font Kyiv Type Sans by Dmytro Rastvortsev.
The work is dedicated to the atrocities that Russian soldiers committed in Kyiv suburbs (Bucha, Irpin, Borodyanka) in Ukraine in 2022. The signs of the real genocide of Ukrainians were revealed after deliberation of the villages. The terrible photos of the victims were contrasting with the blossoming spring – the time when the war crimes became public.
Typography on 4 glasses and 1000 year old olive. Lettering and font design for a large investment project in the Ukrainian economy. Poems of my wonderful and brave friend by Belarusian poet Dmitry Strotsev
THE FUTURE WILL EMERGE
FROM A UKRAINIAN SHELTERS
SQUINTING INTO THE LIGHT
COME AND SEE
Fixel is a multifunctional and flexible font that is suitable for any task. The font offers Text and Display width options, with nine weight options from Thin to Black. Boasting over 11 000 symbols, Fixel is one of the most extensive Cyrillic typefaces, with characters for all possible modern Cyrillic-based alphabets. With Fixel, designers can create effective, timeless visual content for any environment. Fixel not only enables impactful designs but also honors Ukraine’s graphic heritage.
This variable font was developed specifically for military projects related to the Ukrainian army and the Ukrainian resistance. The aesthetic basis of the font was influenced by the traditions of the Kharkiv avant-garde.
This variable font was developed specifically for web design and publishing projects of the Kharkiv State Academy of Design and Fine Arts.
The Polyglots font is being developed as part of the idea to find calligraphic similarities in different scripts from east to west. It is very interesting for a designer to create such a font approach when Hebrew, Greek and Cyrillic (and other scripts) look harmonious side by side, without losing their structural and elegant qualities and without turning into sterile geometry. The design is created for publications and projects of multi-writing and cross-cultural orientation. (Custom font)
36 Days of Type is an annual creative project launched by the community of designers and artists on social networks, especially on Instagram. In this project, participants create the alphabet, “A” to “Z” and numbers “0” to “9” in 36 days. Each day is dedicated to a new symbol or number. The final result is an interesting accidental font.
Cover design of the reissue of the memoirs of the Ukrainian actor and director Joseph Hirniak. He played at the Berezil Theatre and the Kyiv Theatre for Young Spectators, and from 1947 in New York he headed the Ukrainian Theatre in America, Theatre of the Word. Publisher Oleksandr Savchuk (Kharkiv)
This is a creative interpretation of my own world and the idea that you should never leave the path to your dreams.
“The Ukrainian: Life And Culture” is a quarterly print magazine for an English-language readership in the US and worldwide (2018-2021). Certificate of Typographic Excellence by Type Directors Club (2023). Editor-in-Chief: Inna Golovakha
Ukrainian Editor: Katia Klim
Contributing Editors: Will Hicks
Birgit Meade, Joseph Green, Penelope Bell
Artist/Designer: Oleksii Chekal
Poster for the Ukrainian-Swiss music festival in St. Gallen (Switzerland), dedication to anniversaries of composers Valentin Silvestrov (85) and Adolf Karl Zwicker (70). TRISTIUM
– the entire program of the concert was dedicated to the music of the modern Ukrainian composer Victoria Vita Poleva, who is celebrating her 60th birthday on the same day.