Nizhny > 800. Greater than Celebration
Concept
In Soviet times Nizhny Novgorod was a closed territory, forbidden for foreigners and common people. But now it remains hidden for both locals and tourists; it disappeared between Veliky Novgorod and the Soviet past. Time collapsed, turning NN into terra incognita. Not only potential guests don't know why to go there, but locals also cannot formulate the city's identity, insisting on its fragmentation and introversion. Even the location of the city at the confluence of two great rivers — the Oka and the Volga isolates its parts from each other. Nizhny Novgorod needs to be discovered for itself and mapped for the world. For this purpose, the celebration of the 800th anniversary of the city in 2021 turns out to be a convenient tool. This celebration has to become greater than just another date on the calendar with a salute and parade.
Using conventional symbols in an unusual context is one of the most effective visual communication techniques. The solution is based on the unique Greater-than sign, in which an object on the map (rivers confluence place) turns into a symbol. The Greater-than sign represents an arrow pointing to the right. The sign is used as a graphic object and as the universal > sign in a text set. The glyph table has this character as U+003E. The Greater-than sign, using its exclusive symbolic and graphic functionality, creates the preconditions for universal and convenient use in the system of visual communication as a basic constant.
Nizhny Novgorod (in the Soviet years: Gorky) is famous not only for the car factory that produced the best Soviet cars but above all for the people who lived there. The great Russian human rights activist and scientist Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov (1), writer Maxim Gorky (2), politician Boris Efimovich Nemtsov.
System
The color system is based on a balanced set of seven colors, divided by functionality. Blue, the primary color for universal use; six complementary colors are used in various directions as dominant and complementary. The system is a table in which the colors are distributed in harmonic adjacency, forming harmonic groups. The matrix serves as the basis for creating patterns and dynamic decorative compositions with > sign, giving an infinite number of variations. The coloristic solution of the patterns is based on the system of color groups.
The sign carries in itself the possibility of various dynamic use as an element of the pattern. Logically, the multiplicity of the > sign is provided by the multiplicity of comparison elements, and this legitimizes its multiplication in the pattern. For quick work, there is a ready-made set of universal patterns for color groups. By moving and scaling a vector texture, you can get a huge number of different combinations without creating new ones.
To show how the system works on different formats we applied the set of ratios. Key formats are presented in the set from extremely narrow to extremely wide. The way of applying the system to each specific format in practice determined by the measure of its convergence with the key ones.
Photo by Dima4
