To mark the fifth anniversary of Peter Bankov’s Poster School, designers Mikhail Lychkovskiy and Anastasia Temirkhan are proud to launch a heartfelt creative tribute.

Much like the film Paris, je t’aime, our motion poster anthology brings together twelve graphic designers – all alumni of the Bankov Poster School (BPS). Some teamed up with motion designers, while others animated their own visions, each crafting a unique 8-second poster. No clients. No briefs. No limits. Just pure design freedom and gratitude to the BPS and its values: love of aesthetics, weird cats and tasty fish.

Each piece is a personal ode, a moving image, and a moment of reflection – all celebrating the mentor who shaped our creative paths: Peter Bankov, renowned Czech-based designer and AGI member, whose influence echoes through poster festivals from Toyama to Chaumont. With support from Art Innovation Gallery, for one week – from June 23 to 29 – the project was displayed every hour in the iconic Times Square in New York. These animated posters are not only creative works, but living thank-yous, pulsing with the energy Peter taught us to channel into our craft.

Thanks a million to Contemporary Type for the typeface support.

Here’s a list of the participants with the respective fonts in use:
01 Peter Bankov ft. BC Brief and Helvetica
02 Mikhail Lychkovskiy ft. Onlysans
03 Anastasia Temirkhan × Enrico Gisana ft. Acma, Right Didone, and Fugue
04 Alisa Frolova
05 Elena Byalaya × Seo Hyojung ft. Onlysans
06 Yuliya Ratnikova × Tanya Ermolaeva
07 Ira Goryacheva
08 Anatolie Micaliuc ft. Druk
09 Anastasia Nechiporenko × Vyacheslav Vaganov ft. CoFo Sans VF
10 Nelli Kamaeva ft. Mega
11 Nikita Gavrilenko ft. CoFo Kak and CoFo Sans Mono
12 Olga Severina ft. Alfarn 2
13 Anna Striuk × Ivan Buka

In addition, FL Art Grotesk is used for the layout on the sides of allmost all the works.

These pages are from The Culture Keeper, the 2022 edition of the Kresge Foundation’s Eminent Artist Monograph. I was the designer, photographer, and production artist for the book.

The book tells the story of artist Olayami Dabls, whose work often uses found materials such as mirror shards and urbanite. The typography of the book really began with the blocky letters of Alfarn, which was surprisingly similar to the signage on the outside of Dabls’ African Bead Gallery. I utilized the multiple capital widths available in Alfarn, and also created my own extreme letter variations for some of the titles. In April, about midway through production, Alfarn 2 was released, which was carefully lightened a touch to open up the counters, and features a full lowercase and a few new capital glyphs. Stunned at my second instance of Alfarn’s good fortune, I re-set most of the type in Alfarn 2.

For the body text, I used Fern Text, leaning on its translational contrast to offer a friendly anchor to the wild menagerie of type and collage-like art that dominated the reading experience. I set the optical size at 14, four points larger than the text itself, which tightened the justification behaviors very effectively. Subheads in New Spirit complemented Fern’s humanist touches, and I used Skolar Sans Extended for the captions and sidebars.

I found Alfarn’s punctuation somewhat wanting, so I manually replaced each punctuation mark with Ohno Fatface. Even though Fatface doesn’t really fit the whole geometric vs. translational typography of the book, the quotation marks bounced against the hard corners of Alfarn, in the same irreverent way that the artist Dabls would use clashing colors and materials.

This book is available for free to US residents. You can order a printed copy by completing this form. The book is also available as a pdf download.

Event graphics for the book's launch party were designed by Alejandro Herrera, senior graphic designer at the Kresge Foundation, based on the book's design.

Upon learning that the African Bead Gallery would be the subject of the book, my first idea was to create a digital font that followed the cues of this iconic hand-painted sign. Then I found Alfarn, which was shockingly (and blessedly) exactly what I was thinking of.

A spread from the book, title in modified Alfarn. The photo is of a work called Iron Sticking Out Of Wood, part of the African Scripted Language Wall

Fern Variable at work, showing off the small cap numerals

An introductory page showing the use of Ohno Fatface for punctuation with Alfarn