Projector magazine. Issue #15
Section #1 «Personification» opens with Anna Kozhara’s article on the work of Charles and Ray Eames, the recognized classics of American design. Over forty years of partnership, they created several dozens of objects, many of which are considered to be iconic. However, furniture is far not the only legacy they left. Combining idealism and rationality in an astonishing way, they sincerely wanted to change the world using a very wide range of tools — design, architecture, art, cinema, photography and educational activities.
Next, there’s an interview with an outstanding Portuguese poster designer João Machado. Olga Severina did an interview with the maestro: «Portugal is a child of the Atlantic, spoilt with the warm breath of the Mediterranean only in its southern part. Its dry and hot climate in the south is very different from what we have in the center and the north of the country, where I’ve spent most of my life. Here, the cold winters and rainy autumns are as customary as the midday heat at the seaside in summer. In a nutshell, our climate is very similar to most European countries, located near the shores of the Atlantic. You may ask, what is this colourful entry for? It’s to say that color comes in paint, and it is the most often subject of analysis, when it comes to my works».
«Lettering» consists of the three publications. The first one is next chapter of the «Chehonine» series by Alexei Dombrovsky: «Theatrical alphabet was the last bright work of the artist in the field of decorative types. At the beginning of 1928, the fifty-year-old Sergey Chekhonine went on a business trip to France and did not return to his homeland. At first, having settled down in Paris, he maintained business relations with the Soviet publishers, but it didn’t last for long».
The second publication on lettering is the story of Crooswijk type by the Dutch designer Roger Teeuwen. Any interaction can be seen from different perspectives — «I», «you», «everyone else». These three points of view, the three social positions have been interpreted by graphic language.
The third publication is simply called 1926. «The first post-revolutionary decade in Soviet Russia comes to an end. The New Economic Policy is at its height, both the political and ideological dogmas are not so inviolable as they will be a decade later. It’s amazing how time stamps itself in the smallest manifestations of material and textual culture. The publication features a small book-calendar of the New Economic Policy newspaper The Commercial-Industrial Courier».
I’m lucky to open section #4 «Object» with the interview given by Eero Aarnio. Unfortunately, there are not so many living designers, whose name will forever remain in the history of the XX-century design. That’s why the fact of master Aarnio’s arrival in St.Petersburg is even more surprising. Here’s the only interview given by Eero Aarnio during his visit. «I do everything alone. I do not understand how you can hire another designer. I can not. What do I do with them? Give them a pencil and say, „Draw me a chair— the world bestseller“?! So what? For the same reason, I do not take any trainees, and I’ve never been teaching, although I keep getting a lot of requests from young designers who want to work with me».
Section #4 continues with the Pavel Ulyanov’s of one XX-century design masterpieces: Z-Down chair: «For me, a designer masterpiece is an object which equally combines the three components: functionality, aesthetics and technology. Flawed functionality makes it impossible to use the object. Flawed aesthetics deprives it of emotional sense and does not give the joy of interacting with it. Flawed technology eliminates seriality, and therefore accessibility. One of the things that, in my opinion, meets all the criteria of a designer masterpiece, is Z-down chair by the Danish designer Erik Magnussen, created back in 1968».
And Pavel Ulyanov moves on to section #5 «Environment». That’s he who’s the ideological driving force of one of the Modernariat Gallery. «The main exhibition space consists of three rooms, where we have tried to maximally preserve the features of an apartment as a historical architectural object, at the same time using minimal decoration. Walls and parquet floors were cleaned, stucco mouldings and massive fireplaces — the heritage of the tenants’ house of 1912 — were preserved. This resulted in a laconic, lively background, conveying a dual function. First, it feels more like a living space than a standard exhibition format „white cube“. Secondly, we demonstrate the visitors the opportunity to create a spectacular interior with minimal investment in finishing facilities».
Further on, Olga Bezruchko presents The Seventh installation by Federico Diaz. This is a corridor-like, which illustrates the designer’s favourite subject — disorientation in space and sounds.
And there’s a publication of Konstantin Kotov, who took a very nice picture of «Monsieur Paul» and wrote a lively text about him: «I met Monsieur Paul in Strasbourg, where I’d come not on a very interesting business connected with the Council of Europe. The street version of the object made of steel turned my walk on the upper terrace of the building of the European Parliament into something amazing. Chairs, organized sometimes orderly, sometimes chaotically, illustrated the busy everyday life. It seemed that people had been cut out of the landscape at once — they even hadn’t finished their wine!»
«Photography» presents a series of works by Vitaly Smirnov. Here’s what the author says about his project: «I’d seen these houses out of the train or car window many times: randomly scattered over the fields, perched on the hillsides, they would always quickly pass by, but were remembered for long. I was thinking what had motivated these anonymous authors of folk architecture to create both unique and similar to each other houses. An unexpected and, in fact, a rare opportunity to express yourself in creative work of building a house-out-of-what-you-can-find on your tiny piece of land, the house not for yourself but for garden tools, allowed the construction, utilitarian in its idea, to acquire the features of a peculiar house grapheme».
Section #8 «School» congratulates a wonderful educational project Children’s Design Center with its the twenty-fifth anniversary. This is a unique educational program, which started in the Palace of the Pioneers in the late eighties, when the word «design» sounded romantically foreign, and hadn’t been devalued by thousands of media repetitions and the combination of «Palace of the Pioneers» and «Design Center» was one of the signs of dramatic changes.
Section #9 «Books» opens with Mikhail Karasik’s Sacred typography, dedicated to the typographic illustrations in the Soviet book of the 1930s: «In 1920—1930s, iconic images of the leaders were created not only of feather, but also cereal, flowers, yarn, threads, veneer and even typesetting. Portraiture captured the broad masses of the working people of the Soviet Union, from amateurs to professionals. Those years, gardening became the most massive and popular initiative. The portraits of Lenin, Stalin, Dzerzhinsky, Gorky were laid out in flowers on the hills and lawns of parks, on the grass of squares. In the printing industry, which provided propaganda solutions, ideology was included into every printed word, but creating an ideological portrait required special skills».
Projector continues its historical research in the field of Russian design periodicals of the past twenty years. This issue presents an interview with Eugeny Spiridonov and Alexander Leenetsky, the creators and thought leaders of World of Design magazine. By the standards of design periodicals, World of Design lived a long life. The pilot issue came out in 1995, and the last one was published in early 2001. Over five years of existence, 18 issues, celebrity editorial board, well-deserved prestige and, alas, the magazine is almost completely forgotten today.
And, of course, Projector could not ignore the magazine being published for over a year by the cutting-edge Loft Hostel. This is a guide of St.Petersburg, illustrated by Nastya Beltyukova. «Nastya’s graphics, lively and light, in combination with the scanned artefacts of St.Petersburg culture life, such as the tickets to Dom Kino or the Railway Transport Museum, creates an amazingly accurate and attractive image of the city. This isn’t classical St.Petersburg described by Pushkin, but the city for life, walking, drinking wine, visiting strange and beautiful places, which aren’t always shown in conventional guidebooks».
