Dima, have you ever studied art or design?
You could say that I am self-taught. After my military service, I studied at Goznak for three years. That was a bit of a weird option which resembled an internship at an entity that teaches artists to produce various kinds of security products.
Alongside this, around the same time I was attending
What were working and studying at Goznak like?
During our first three years, we passed exams once a term. We drew and painted
At Goznak, I happened to witness a period of a serious work restructuring process. They changed historical
How’s the situation with typefaces at Goznak? Do they get purchased?
When I joined the enterprise, they used to buy type from Paratype foundry. There were two official CDs with fonts, the black one and the red one. There was practically nothing left when it came to handmade type.
What were you doing later, between Goznak and Enthusiast?
While still working at Goznak, I took a great interest
I never dreamt of launching my own design studio and then constantly taking commissions on corporateidentities. Even though I am still doing those things today, I had quickly realised that I liked to view design as a certain application-oriented thing. That is, first there is some framework that
Well, I was completely consumed by all this, and I didn’t have much to work on at Goznak. Plus, I needed to somehow fulfil myself artistically, while at Goznak there wasn’t even a dialogue with
Well, Clevermoto won. Then there was Solyanka Club with which we truly bonded over scooters precisely, and that is how about seven years have passed. And then Enthusiast arrived.
How did it happen?
It was quick: we were approached by our friends from the FOTT store who rented a space before us, and a month later we moved in there with a readymade project, the designed logo and a very low-key interior. And when it was time to inform people that we had beer, soda and sandwiches, I thought that I could simply design a poster to do that. I wouldn’t say that in the age of Solyanka where I was doing design quite a lot, I specifically enjoyed the genre of posters. But it seems like in the early days of Enthusiast I found a key to it. Like something got into me and I realised: I wanna speak that language. And I still can’t get enough of it.
After Enthusiast, we saw two more places appear on Stoleshnikov Lane, ToTo and Krugly Shar. They appear to be a part of a single system, yet you see that those are three separate places.
I call it the genetic code of places. It all began as far back as at the time of Solyanka, where we organised scooter parties. We designed a neon sign in the form of a traffic light and some stickers, just little
For example, with Krugly Shar it was like this: we discussed what our billiard tables should look like and got very beautiful baize cloth
Same with ToTo. There are moderate, discreet accents: a green air vent stack, red-yellow-green faucets in the restroom. It is easily captured and read, especially by attentive people. Which is why I believe that is just the question of a proper prioritising, properly choosing accents in an interior, in design. And it is really not necessary to introduce a whole bunch of posters in each of these three places, like we did with Enthusiast.
Why is it the aesthetics of the Enthusiast place that become so popular, what do you think?
First of all, if you’re up to something and you do it regularly and long enough, this enterprise of yours will eventually have fans. It works like an ad: if on your way from the airport you see a Snickers ad about 60 times, it will get stuck in your head, whether you want it or not. Well, obviously, we are more delicate than that. I wouldn’t even say that we are good
And, secondly, it is perhaps that we are no stranger to aesthetics. If our place was called Bublik (Russian for
While you were designing Enthusiast, have you addressed certain Soviet artists or typographers? Or some foreign artists of the same period, perhaps?
I have no favourites. While I studied design, I was looking at plenty of stuff, and I have already stopped enjoying many of those things. But, for example, the posters by Shigeo Fukuda and Ikko Tanaka have not lost their magic for me at all, I still consider them as powerful as I did back then.
Shigeo Fukuda. Victory 1945 (1975) Ikko Tanaka. Kanze Noh Play (1973)
I believe that I am also very well visually experienced, since childhood, and I have a great visual memory. And I have always been attracted to letters, one way or another, even though I wouldn’t want to be a type designer, sometimes I make or remake certain letters.
So, you don’t directly associate what you do with Soviet aesthetics?
No, I wouldn’t exactly say that I don’t relate these two things one to another. For a long time I hadn’t had my own signature style as a designer, and that is, perhaps, only natural. Especially if you exist on your own, without any specific school. I did a lot of thinking and realised that after
I’ve never wanted to look Western, I always understood that for a foreigner who came to Moscow it would be way more interesting to see the word Enthusiast written in Russian than some attempt to reproduce something from New York or LA in Russia. I want to do what I was raised with, and I was born and raised in the USSR and, willingly or not, I’d been absorbing its
It is obviously uninteresting to copy Soviet design, you’d want to introduce something new. Yet I often hear ‘Oh, those are like Soviet posters’. Clearly, it is a convenient way to have
What is your way of working with typography? How do you know where you need to draw lettering for your poster and where it’s OK to take a ready-made typeface?
When I came up with this poster thing for Enthusiast, I knew right away that I would be making lots of posters, and that it was completely wrong, unproductive, to waste my time on finding a typeface for each of those posters. So, I chose two typefaces.
The primary font was called ITC Machine, it is brute, block-lettered, with skew angles in rounded letters. It reminded me of the Enthusiast logo, so I was quick to opt for it. That was the main font which I used to set all the large phrases, slogans. And I picked the second one, additional, to go with
And I still live with those two typefaces. I apply OrenburgC to set dates and addresses. It is a bit more complicated with ITC Machine, though.
About five years after Enthusiast was launched, I visited
In other cases, if there’s a need to set a certain large text, I mostly design something myself. And apply some super neutral helvetica to captions.
And your modified Machine is just an Illustrator vector, isn’t it?
I even have no idea how to make font files. One day I will probably create one of those According to the license, a user is not allowed to transform the font’s modified outlines into a new font file, unless there is an exclusive permission granted by the author, but I redesign this font all the time. I am currently making a poster, and its letters are not at all like those you might have seen on certain previous posters. So, it doesn’t yet make sense to release a finalised font version.
Does all this mean that you do not keep an eye on foundries and do not check on new type releases?
I practically don’t. The things I’ve just told you about two typefaces for Enthusiast also goes for my ways to produce posters. At some point I decided that there would be these basic
I do run into things, sometimes, obviously. Yet old design has lots of great things to offer, tons of it! And in general the design field has brought so many great things into the world! Sometimes Pinterest just drives me crazy. You say ‘new typefaces, new
But the technologies used by type designers change and evolve over time, and fonts get better in terms of quality. For example, you took Helios for the posters made for a party at Found. I mean, that’s almost Helvetica, but revised and more advanced technically.
It is clear that Helvetica, Futura and the same OrenburgC are very different fonts, when viewed from the perspective of an expert. But I use these typefaces as an addition, for setting small texts. And in this case I don’t care much about the font, that is just a very neutral and capable font. So, when I speak about fonts like these, I wouldn’t say that it took me a lot of time and effort to choose Helios, I took it just because it happened to be there, on hand.
I like serifs as well, but now is not their time for me. I used to apply more of those back at the time of Solyanka. But I will start using them again, once in a while, I think. I want to find my own ideal serif typeface, where I would like every letter and every figure of it.
In this sense, Woody Allen did the right thing. At some point he chose one typeface for all the titles of all of his movies and has no more worries in this regard. I relate to this approach, because I’d prefer to waste my energy on the general idea, design of the poster itself, but as for additional fonts, I will try to use it as an organic and inelaborate, uncomplicated addition to what is designed.
Woody Allen, film titels. Windsor typeface
And when it comes to today’s graphic designers, do you keep an eye on someone, maybe?
I barely do. I followed a designer some time ago, his name is Aaron. In the past two years he has shifted his focus to a slightly different design style, but when it comes to things he was doing three years ago, I really like literally everything, for some reason. I also follow a poster designer based in Poland, Jakub Kamiński — I relate to him even more.
But I don’t seek to subscribe to all the interesting designers. Yes, that’s what I do for a living, but it’s not that I participate in the design world somehow. I go to art shows less, and I am certainly not a part of any community. It is often the case that in order to end up in a certain community, you either have to dream of studying at some school or to graduate from this school that has professors who organise those shows. But I never wanted to be a part of such a community, which is why I exist in a certain isolation. But I’m quite OK with the way things are.
Do you follow what is happening in the notional commercial design? On the eve of the New Year everyone was criticising the new logo of KinoPoisk, and before that they criticised the new Beeline typeface…
I do not deliberately spend my time monitoring design websites, but I clearly see everything. For example, I am on the subway, and I see the Beeline’s poster set in their new typeface. I am looking at it and I am thoroughly scanning it, because I tend to analyse
But other than that, I live my life and don’t really care about all that. If I was approached and asked for my opinion, I would probably give an answer, I guess. But we have lots of clumsy design in our country, awfully clumsy. But you can’t always reflect on that, otherwise you won’t have any energy left on other things. Which is why I simply got used to living with that. I analyse, I observe, I think. Just because those things interest me. I looked at KinoPoisk, it took me one second to think ‘So, what would I have done to keep it just like that, but still make it clear and so that the letter К is easier to read?’ I gave it some thought, and then I live further my life, done with it.
Beeline Sans by Contrast Foundry Kinopoisk new logo. ByContrast Foundry, Tuman Studio МТС Social Media. Set in CSTM Xprmntl 01
Could you imagine what design we will have in our country in 10-15 years?
I am not very good at those things. By and large, it is clear that design is developing, and things have changed for the better over the last 20 years. When I was a student, all we had was the [KaK) Magazine (Russian for
The visual world has actually changed a lot — all you need to do is walk into a grocery store and look at the packaging. Or take
Poster for the Green line project. By Tatiana Egoshina Poster for the Green line project. By Natasha Djola. Set in Base&Bloom
You have a music project. Do music and design somehow relate to one another in your life?
They do. Therefore I don’t play my suggestions on music for each new track to Sasha Lipsky, but I tell it and describe. And that is how the first track of the
Enthusiast Poster book
Technically, there are layers in music, too, there’s dramaturgy. The language of images and all sorts of associations is equally important, fantasy is important. As in any kind of creative process, it is very important to trust your gut, to understand what you wanna do.
Dima Pantyushin and Sasha Lipsky album cover
And what about you personally, can you imagine what you’ll be up to, in design and music, in ten years?
I don’t have a clue. I don’t set those kinds of bars for myself. Those sorts of things can be very restricting, I think, while we are changing and growing. If you exist in a certain visually saturated environment, your eye is transforming. Same with music: if you don’t listen to the very same song your whole life, but somehow try to expand your audio horizon, you might very well suddenly like something
Therefore I am not even interested in making plans and forecasts, yet I know for sure that design and music will most likely be in my life forever, I can’t live without them. My texts, probably, will get more serious over the