Visaginas Visual Identity. Research by Design
Keywords: Collaborative design, Participatory Approach, Sustainable Design
Participants: Visaginas House of Culture, European Humanities University' students from BA Visual Design and Media, Laboratory for Critical Urbanism, EHU.
Project Concept and Organizer: Alla Pigalskaya, Benjamin Cope.
Participants: Visaginas House of Culture, European Humanities University' students from BA Visual Design and Media, Laboratory for Critical Urbanism, EHU.
Project Concept and Organizer: Alla Pigalskaya, Benjamin Cope.
RESEARCH & PUBLICATIONS:
Visaginas history and public space communication, mapping stakeholders.
Alla Pigalskaya. Hand-Making Modernist Forms: The Visual Environment In Visaginas From the 1970s to the 2010s In Re-Tooling Knowledge Infrastructures in a 'Post-Nuclear' Town. Vilnius, 2021
This article invites the reader to explore details of typefaces used in local newspapers published in Visaginas from the town’s founding in the 1970s onwards. These newspapers, published in Lithuanian and Russian under such titles as Energy Worker, Peaceful Atom or Peaceful Energy Worker, reported on progress in building the Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant (INPP), achievements in constructing the physical and social infrastructures of Visaginas and the advancements thus being made down the path towards the realisation of the communist ideal. At first glance, the design of the newspapers’ titles seems to reinforce the notions conveyed by their content: that the newspapers in this multi-lingual nuclear town are at the forefront of the construction of Soviet nuclear modernity. However, carefully looking at the forms and rhythms of the letters in which the newspapers’ names are written reveals that improvised and hand-drawn creativity had a strong part to play in their production. The article proposes that the unexpected reappearance of traces of artisanal work in the graphic design of Soviet nuclear modernism is worthy of further reflection.
Benjamin Cope, Oksana Denisenko, Alla Pigalskaya. TYPO VISAGA - a Collaborative Design Project, In Re-Tooling Knowledge Infrastructures in a 'Post-Nuclear' Town. Vilnius, 2021
This chapter reports on the Typo Visaga exhibition produced by students on the B.A. in Design at the EHU, and held in the exhibition space of the Visaginas Regional Museum at the Visaginas Cultural Centre in December 2018. We make the report both to document the projects exhibited, and also to record and reflect on the processes of work through which they were produced. For the exhibition emerged as a result of a collaboration between courses held at EHU and a group working on the Project for a Town Museum at the Visaginas Cultural Centre. The project appeared to all of us as a fruitful experiment in collaboration between university learning and a local cultural institution. We therefore describe the different aspects of the project beneath, in the hope both that the mode of work and the fruits of these endeavours can provide inspiration for further iniatives of a similar nature.
Alla Pigalskaya (2016) Public Space Typography in Visaginas, in Mapping Visaginas. Sources of Urbanity in a Former Mono-functional Town. ISBN 978-609-447-217-6
Action Research
2nd Step: Meeting stakeholders (municipality, public organizations, local people of different generations.). Interview. Exploring participatory approach, and sustainable design concept.
Development
Students were asked to develop projects in small groups. Silk-printing on second-hand surfaces were proposed to them as a technique of sustainable design.
Project of 7 groups are presented on the web-site
Project of 7 groups are presented on the web-site
FEEDBACK
Reviews for the exhibition "Typo Visaga" in Visaginas' media
Grafinio dizaino paroda „TYPO VISAGA"
Kviečiame į grafinio dizaino parodą „TYPO VISAGA"
Можно ли модернизировать Висагинас с помощью графики?
«Типо Висага»! Идеи молодых графических дизайнеров
Facebook chronicle
Grafinio dizaino paroda „TYPO VISAGA"
Kviečiame į grafinio dizaino parodą „TYPO VISAGA"
Можно ли модернизировать Висагинас с помощью графики?
«Типо Висага»! Идеи молодых графических дизайнеров
Facebook chronicle
