До. Прикосновение. После (“Before. A Touch. After”) is a graduation work by HSE School of Design student Daria Levashova. During her research, she watched films directed by Ingmar Bergman and attempted to figure out what the nature of touch has to do with what happens before and after it. Oceanic Text by Interval Type is used in the resulting book’s typography.

Ivan Davydov’s book Люди и города. Путеводитель по русскому Средневековью (“People and Cities: A Guide to the Russian Middle Ages”), published by Individuum, is a guide to the forgotten pre-Petrine Rus’, an invitation into the rich world of Old Russian literature, and a reflection on how to remain human in inhumane times.

The typography on the book cover designed by Maxim Balabin features the typeface Zhivov by CSTM Fonts. The fonts are free of charge for scholars working with Old Church Slavonic language and literature. If you’re looking to use Zhivov in your work, please contact yury@type.today to receive the files.

Golova showcases its brand with PragmataPro as the default typeface across its app, websites (golova.ai, golova.one, golova.io, golova.help) and social networks.

The combination of this font with geometric and minimalistic illustrations creates an impressive visual identity that enhances user engagement and brand recognition.

The secondary font used for the website menu is Roboto Flex.

When developing the visual identity for the Moscow-based dental clinic OrthOffice (Ортофис), Holystick took a contemporary approach, departing from the traditional look often associated with medical environments. The aim was to create a clear, professional appearance that remains approachable and relevant to the practice's predominantly young patients.

The team selected the Halvar typeface for the typography. The slanted technical construction of the letterforms suggest precision and efficiency, aligning with the clinic’s professional character. Halvar Breitschrift was used for display and headlines, bringing a fresh, modern tone to the visual language. Meanwhile, Halvar Mittelschrift served as the text typeface, ensuring readability and consistency across applications. The Halvar typeface was also a practical choice due to its comprehensive Latin and Cyrillic support, making it well-suited for a bilingual identity system.

In the logo, Holystick played with the SuperSlanted style of Halvar to create a wordmark that conveys a sense of movement and direction. Overall, the typographic system proves a balance between contemporary expression and clarity, demonstrating how design can support aesthetic and functional needs in a healthcare context.

Source: www.ebay.com dailydimes. License: All Rights Reserved.

Архив Популярной Музыки (Arkhiv Populyarnoy Muzyki, English: Archive of Popular Music) was a series of twelve long-playing vinyl records issued by the Soviet state label Melodiya (Мелодия) in 1988–1989. Each volume compiled key tracks from a single prominent figure in British and American pop and rock music of the 1950s to 1970s and included extensive liner notes detailing the artist’s creative history, a rarity in the USSR at the time. This made the series a significant window into Western music culture for Soviet listeners, who otherwise had very limited access to such information.

The cover art and visual identity of the series were created by designer Andrey Gusev, whose work unified the releases and distinguished them from both original Western album artwork and earlier Soviet compilations like the three-LP Rock Archive line from 1987, which used the same music and text but different covers. The series occupied a complex space in Soviet practice: although it carried a higher retail price framed as a “foreign license” premium, the recordings were sourced from private collections and pre-1973 masters under a legal regime that did not require international royalties, leading some contemporary historians to describe the releases as bootleg-like products of their era. For a more detailed history of the series, see Artur Netsvetaev’s article for Soviet Rock.

For the bilingual typography, Gusev used ITC Lubalin Graph in all-lowercase letters. The series title and number are added in Helion.

[More info on Discogs]

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This book by Ernst Gombrich presents the history of art from the Stone Age to the 20th century, told in the simplest terms. All Russian-language editions of The Story of Art (in Russian: История искусства) available today are quite bulky and not really convenient to handle. This was the reason why the HSE Art and Design School student came up with the idea of designing a non-bulky version — a handy-sized book and a website where you can view in detail all the images mentioned in the book. The project’s typography is executed using Trola by Jordi Embodas.

Cпорт в Советском изобразительном искусстве / Sport in Soviet Fine Art was published in hardback by Sovetsky Khudozhnik, Moscow, in 1974. It comes with a text by A. Davydova.

The structure of the album—a system of two blocks, the inclusion of subjects not, at first glance, directly related to the main theme, and chromatic rhythmic contrasts—made it possible to convey the essential features of Soviet sport as an integral part of Soviet society, its social function, and its inherent dynamism. The album presents reproductions of works by A. Deineka, M. Manizer, M. Gerasimov, G. Savitsky, G. Toidze, S. Lebedeva, and many others.

From the publisher’s annotation:

The publishing house regards the reader as an active co-author of the album. By freely combining fragments of paintings in various arrangements, the reader will discover a wide field for imagination, construct their own rhythm, and independently create an image of a bright, joyful celebration—sport—one that most fully corresponds to their character, knowledge, mood, and emotional state.

Что такое красота (“What beauty is”) is a collection of essays and observations that explores the concept of beauty through the prism of personal memory, loss, and everyday rituals. Far from a theoretical treatise, the book treats beauty as a lived experience—connecting the ‘joy of recognition’ with moments of grief and nostalgia.

The text navigates through intimate topics, ranging from the ritualistic nature of washing hands to the connection between beauty and pain. The layout features the Kommuna typeface, complementing the stark, meditative, and deeply personal tone of the narrative.

The Illustrations are by Maria Rumyantseva.

The book measures 148×210×14 mm and was self-published in Tbilisi/Moscow in 2024.
ISBN: 978-5-6054095-0-2

Трендвотчинг: аналитика подиума (“Trendwatching: Runway Analytics”) is a practical guide to trend research, made as student project at HSE Art and Design School in Saint Petersburg. The scope of a trend analyst’s work involves studying societal changes and identifying emerging needs. The author of this educational guide is Rosemary Thurman, a specialist in trend analysis and forecasting.

The typography is handled by the antique-style typeface Wermut by Brownfox. It is paired with the monospaced IBM Plex Mono by Mike Abbink and Bold Monday to maintain the serious tone of the educational materials.

label=label is a visual study made at HSE Art and Design School in Saint Petersburg. In it, I’ve examined clothing labels as a medium for brand-consumer interaction. As a detail that is not always immediately visible, a label can act as an intermediary between the brand and its target audience. For this study, twenty fashion brands were selected, whose founding history spans from the mid‑20th century to the present day. The main selection criterion was their visual identity. A large number of labels were examined and analyzed in order to identify unconventional solutions in terms of design and concept.

The primary typeface is the neutral grotesque Cofo Sans, which is paired with CoFo Sans Mono for captions and navigation.

You can flip through the book on Calaméo.

Русские в Африке (“Russians in Africa”) is a book that explores — through art, poetry, and philosophy — how Soviet Russia of the mid-20th century tried to understand the culture of African countries. The book, published in 2023 by ABCDesign, was designed by Katya Yumasheva. The typography in the publication is executed using CSTM Xprmntl 02 Bold by CSTM Fonts and Geometria by Brownfox.

Альфа Центавра. Документальная поэма о космонавтах, которые не были в космосе (“Alpha Centauri: A Documentary Poem about Cosmonauts Who Never Went to Space”) is
a collection of real stories of Soviet cosmonauts, men and women, who for various reasons – dramatic or even tragic – never made it to space. From these, the author, Alexander Plotnikov, builds a saga of failure, defeat, and missed success. He talks about history written by the victors, weaving in 20th-century philosophy, the context of war, and the personal reflections of an émigré. The image of flight through emptiness emerges as a metaphor for human life and humanity itself.

The text is based on a monodrama, which the author (a theater director and playwright) performs in bookstores, bars, and small theatres while in exile during the war.

The typography on the book’s cover is executed through Roslindale Text by David Jonathan Ross, while additional typography (page numbers, chapter titles) is set in Elma Trio by Philipp Neumeyer. On Instagram, the book’s designer, Maxim Balabin, writes:

I thought that the cover needs to be about something that didn’t happen, and it shouldn’t use Soviet heroic space-conquest symbolism, because the book is about the opposite.

Anna Khabarova’s project, created as part of her book design course at Typomania School, covers two stories. The first one is about how fashion designer Dries van Noten worked on his brand’s Fall/Winter 2019 collection, while the second focuses on how, at the same time, the designer worked on his garden. The book’s text in both stories is set in Signal by Production Type.

The book История Русского Изразца (“History of Russian Tiles”) examines the development and cultural significance of traditional Russian ceramic tiles. SFT Royalbrick was originally designed specifically for this student project made at the Moscow State University of Printing. Tasya Petelina’s typeface draws inspiration from vintage brickmarks. Its distinct forms are used for chapter titles and visual accents, supporting the book’s historical narrative without dominating the overall design.

Путеводитель по конструктивизму Твери is a guide to Constructivist buildings located in four districts of the city of Tver. It was made as a graduation project by HSE Design School student Ksenia Malinovskaya, supervised by Yaroslav Subbotin. The book’s typography features six styles of Rooftop by Interval Type.

From Wikipedia:

The Return (Russian: Возвращение, romanized: Vozvrashcheniye) is a 2003 Russian coming-of-age drama film directed by Andrey Zvyagintsev and released internationally in 2004.

It tells the story of two Russian boys whose father suddenly returns home after a 12-year absence. He takes the boys on a holiday to a remote island on a lake that turns into a test of survivability of almost mythic proportions. It won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival (as well as the award for the best first film) and was nominated for the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film. The film was also selected as the Russian entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 76th Academy Awards, but it didn't make the final shortlist. It received widespread critical acclaim.

The Russian movie poster uses Minion in roman caps and in italic lowercase letters. The letterforms of the title are filled with the image of the sky above the sea. Note the treatment of the descending bit in the letter Щ (Shcha). The nominations at the Venice Film Festival are added in a bold condensed style of Myriad.

Redesign of the book Johann Sebastian Bach. Leben und Werk in Dokumenten (“Documents of the Life and Work of J. S. Bach”) by Hans-Joachim Schulze, a German musicologist and Bach scholar, first published in 1975 and translated into Russian in 1980.

The book presents a translation of an extract published in Leipzig from a three-volume academic edition of all handwritten and printed texts related to Johann Sebastian Bach from 1685 to 1800. In the layout, Bach’s documents are separated from all the others by a different type of spread.

The edition is supplemented with engravings, letters, musical manuscripts, financial documents and other images from the collection of the Bach Archive Leipzig.

Made as a non-commercial student project at HSE Art and Design School.

Она продолжается / A life continued is a book by photographer Alyona Kochetkova. From the website of designer Konstantin Eremenko:

This is a book about pain. About fear — fear of cancer, fear of death, and about what it means to overcome them. How does one overcome the fear of death? By living. By remembering that tomorrow will come. This book emerged from a series of photographs taken during an illness, with the author living in the midst of uncertainty. Photography filled the void, not as a means of fighting the pain, but as a way to displace it. It allowed meaning to take shape — meaning that felt indistinct, yet somehow akin to hope. — Irina Chmyreva

Texts are in Russian and English (translated by Tal Wood) and were edited by Tatyana Grablyovskaya. After a successful crowdfunding campaign, the book was published in 300 copies. It can be ordered from the photographer’s website.

Wild Snowboards is a snowboard label founded by two-time Olympic champion and bronze medalist Vic Wild. As the creative director of Wild Snowboards, Alena Spencer (née Zavarzina) developed a comprehensive brand identity with Vic Wild as the starting point. Both as an athlete and as a person, he can be described as honest, grounded, and captivating, which further describes his approach to building Wild Snowboards. It’s a snowboard label by riders, for riders, with respect for craftsmanship, community, and the sport itself.

The visual identity draws from two sources: the raw, authentic energy of 1990s skate and snowboard culture, and the sleek futurism of 2001: A Space Odyssey. With snowboarding situated at the intersection of technology and nature, the identity aims to reflect both. The result is a design language that can be described as organic, futuristic, and slightly bionic.

Typography plays a central role in the identity system. The primary typeface, Hofmann by Nguyen Gobber, with its fluid, generative forms and wide range of glyph variations, allowed for a near-custom visual signature across brand applications. Andalé Mono by Steve Matteson serves as the secondary typeface, used for tickers, metadata, and supportive branding elements. For wordmarks and product communication, Suisse Int’l by Swiss Typefaces is in use, offering a clean, precise typographic balance.

Вспышка (Vspyshka; “Flash”) is a non-fiction book by Irina Roldugina and Katerina Suverina. The softcover was designed by me, Maxim Balabin, and published by Individuum.

About the book (translated):

When HIV was first identified in 1983, Soviet authorities dismissed it as a “virus of drug addicts and homosexuals,” a biological weapon supposedly engineered by American intelligence. Facts were buried, sex education was nonexistent, and contraception was virtually unavailable in a society where “there is no sex,” as a popular Soviet catchphrase once declared.

Vspyshka offers a sobering documentary portrait of late-Soviet society on the cusp of an epidemic it refused to name. Drawing on a trove of archival records, press coverage, and firsthand accounts, historians Irina Roldugina and Katerina Suverina trace how doctors, activists, scientists, journalists—and ordinary citizens—grappled with a virus that seemed both inescapable and unmentionable. The Soviet Union ultimately collapsed, but HIV did not.

Richly illustrated with posters, collages, and photographs—many published here for the first time—this book brings into focus not only the human cost of denial, but the cultural and political systems that allowed the crisis to fester.

“Analyzing the mistakes of the Soviet era is more urgent than ever, as over one million Russians now live with HIV. What was once hypothetical has become undeniable.”
— Vadim Pokrovsky, Academician of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences, Head of the Federal AIDS Centre

“This book helps explain why, decades later, we still know so little about HIV.”
— Rita Loginova, journalist and host of ‘Одни плюсы’, a podcast about life with HIV

The title is lettering, derived from a 1980s Soviet booklet with flipped Latin letters.