Lettering & Book Design
Mikhail Sokolov
(1885—1947)
Mikhail Sokolov
(1885—1947)
Titles and cover design for 3 volumes book
on graphic art of Russian artist
on graphic art of Russian artist
Mikhail Sokolov was an artist of an eccentric character and a complicated destiny who spent some years in excile for expressing his views and later he wasn’t allowed to come back to Moscow and lived far away from his friends and artistic life. He was very productive anyway and found materials and opportunity to draw even in the hardest situations. His paintings, drawings and some poems which accompany his drawings in handwritten little books are both romantic and tragic.
I can imagine Sokolov would be very strict and critical on a book design about his art, and I felt a great responsibility to find the most appropiate tone and gesture in my lettering.
The goal for this project I set was to design the titles which lead the reader into Sokolov's art, which don't distruct from artworks and make an accent on his art's features at the same time.
I started my work on lettering for these books with copy drawings and lettering sketches.
I tried different materials and techniques and finally chose a vector.
Vector letters bear a hint of pen line with a pressure and widenning at the end.
Books are devided into sections by decades of Mikhail Sokolov’s work and also by graphic series such as St Sebastian, Fair Ladies, The Death of Pierrot, French Revolution, City, Bathing, Landscapes, Book Illustrations and others.
I proposed the principle of section pages and covers design, which was continued by Igor Ermolaev who worked on the book design further.
"St Sebastian" series title:
Each section has a title page with an individual lettering. It’s a custom lettering drawn for this book, it hasn’t become a font and is not being used anywhere else.
Sketches were much more expressive than the final version of lettering which helped me to clarify the main idea and style. I gradually reduced the overwhelming expression into subtle hints.
"French Revolution" series title:
Many series together in one chapter:
Letterforms are adjusted to fit the rythm of every word individually.
"The Death of Pierrot" series title:
I'm grateful to Modern Art Consulting and Yury Petukhov personally
for this commission and collaboration.
The books can be purchased Here
