Love and culture in graphic design

If candidates for political posts would order design for their billboards from students of graphic design, they would significantly increase their chance for winning the elections. Meanwhile, young artists demonstrate their creative ingenuity not in politics but in “Love” and “Culture.” These two nominations brought together art works of the Third Ukrainian Biennale of Student Posters, which is now held in Mykhailo Boichuk Kyiv State Institute of Decorative and Applied Art and Design.

The total of 200 art works was submitted for the contest, 100 of which were selected by the organizing committee. Students from Kharkiv, Cherkasy, and Kyiv appeared to be the most professional and the most active contestants were girls. By the way, most of the posters participated in the nomination “Culture”: these were posters for theatrical performances, films, and art exhibitions, image-creating posters for circus and hairdressers, book advertising, and topical projects of modern life, such as “Spilnokosht.” The nomination “Love” turned out to be more difficult for the design students both in terms of quality and quantity of art works because in this nomination the jury awarded only one prize. “Overall, the level of art works is pretty good, there are many interesting ones, but there were also some that still needed to be finished,” summed up Mykola KOVALENKO, foreman of the jury, designer and head of the Ukrainian design studio “Saatchi & Saatchi.” The other members of jury were Lviv-based designer, member of the art association “NURT,” and adherent of Polish poster school Yarko Filevych and Serhii Chebotariov, founder and art director of the studio “Dorohaia,” winner of international design competitions. Although, this year the jury has not awarded the Grand Prix, every participant received a diploma.

“Poster art is fairly complex, synthetic because here there are symbols, metaphors, images, and text combined in it,” stressed Volodymyr HRYSHCHENKO, Dean of the Distance Learning Department at the Mykhailo Boichuk Institute of Decorative and Applied Art and Design at the opening ceremony. By the way, he was the initiator of the first biennale which was held in Khmelnytsky and caused a true media hype. Next festival of youth poster art took place in Kyiv.

“We have a narrow poster orientation, which allows to make careful analysis without distracting on other art forms. We thought that some university might pick up the idea of such contest, but so far no one has volunteered,” told another founder of the biennale, senior lecturer in graphic design Oleksandr MIKULA. “However, this year we decided to let young talented minds take over the organization of the festival.” To be more precise, the organization was taken over by Olena Staranchuk, designer, member of the art association “Val,” professor of the Department of Graphic Design at Mykhailo Boichuk Institute. Staranchuk is also the winner of Grand Prix of the previous Biennales. “It’s a great experience and also a great challenge. Of course, one needs to improve and work towards the creation of active and engaged environment. This requires support from people in various fields, people, who care about the cultivation of taste and culture of visual information in Ukraine,” said the curator. At the moment Staranchuk is looking for partners who would host the exhibition so that the topical and fresh designs, as opposed to boring and trivial commercial advertisements, could be seen by wider audience.