Book Arsenal 2021

The International Festival Book Arsenal is an annual project of the Mystetskyi Arsenal.

It's an intellectual event in Ukraine, where the book, literary and artistic scenes develop and interact with each other, and important issues of human existence, as well as society and culture are raised, prompting the proactive position of the participants and visitors.

➢ 2021

In 2020 we developed a conceptual identity frame to work in future years.

So this year, we started with a search for a precise metaphorical language of the Festival.

The Festival's focus theme in 2021 was Optimists Skeptics.

We chose this palette to remind our visitors about the main location of the tenth edition of the Festival: the Mystetskyi Arsenal. Ochre color for brick walls of the 18th century former military building, fluor yellow for optimism, and black color for contrast.

An idea behind the key visual and animation was to show the transformations a visitor goes through when entering the Festival's doors. The words magnetized to the compositional center hinted at the Festival guests' different positions, opinions, thoughts, and discussions that would change one's point of view and meet in some specific place. Whether you are optimistic or skeptical — you definitely can't miss the biggest intellectual event in Ukraine, that peculiar intellectual center, the Book Arsenal.

Site and social media templates

The idea behind merch was a proverb: "When life gives you lemons, make lemonade."
We lived distanced life but taught ourselves to work remotely. We had to leave offline and discover new forms of interaction in the online world (especially in professional programs and networking with colleagues far and wide). We spent more time with our families, doing sports and reading books from home libraries. We looked for positive shifts in our habits with an optimistic viewpoint. So the concept of merch finally juxtaposed our design team's reflection on a new normal of a post-covid life and the focus theme of the Festival.

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After a year of pause due the COVID-19 pandemic, the Anniversary 10th International Book Arsenal Festival returned to offline format. The Festival brought together over 200 publishers, illustrators and cultural institutions. More than 300 events and 16 exhibitions took place within the framework of the Festival, adhering to quarantine norms. This year, the guests from other cities and countries who were not able to come to Kyiv had an opportunity to watch most of the festival events online in a free broadcast on MEGOGO.