After several centuries of total russification of Ukraine by the Russian Empire, the reverse process – derussification – is finally taking place. Hundreds of thousands of names of cities, streets, metro stations, and brands are either returning their original Ukrainian names or getting new ones.

On 29 April 2024, the metro station Пушкинская (Pushkinskaya) in the city of Kharkiv was renamed to Ярослава Мудрого (Yaroslava Mudroho, in English: Yaroslav the Wise, Grand Prince of Kiev in the XI century). In July 2024, Kharkiv Metropolitan employees installed eight sets of letters with the new name on the walls of the station.

For the inscription, the Kharkiv Metropolitan used Sealt, a font family developed by Michael Rafailyk in 2021. Sealt is inspired by the oldest saltworks in Eastern Europe, founded in 1250 in Drohobych, Ukraine. Sealt means salt in Old English, so most letters are rough and sharp like salt crystals and seem to be carved out of the rock.

The book Фіолетова тінь (“Purple Shadow”) is a collection of mystical Ukrainian prose, compiled by Anastasia Bidonko.

A fairy tale intertwined with reality, a belief lost in history, magic hidden in a story. Ukrainian classics have created stories that will make you fall in love with the atmosphere of the Ukrainian mystical night. The selection includes texts of short prose by Ukrainian writers of the 19th and 20th centuries. Among them are Hryhorii Kvitka-Osnovianenko, Natalia Kobrynska, Bohdan Lepky, Svyatoslav Olshenko-Vilkha, Anna Barvinok and others.

The book was designed by Anna Gavryliuk, using illustrations by Masha Foya and Sealt by Michael Rafailyk for the cover, headlines, and page numbers. The text typeface is Fiorina by Andriy Konstantynov. Фіолетова тінь was published by One more page.

Photography by Ola Rafailyk