Literary places on the map of St. Petersburg in the XIX century
Headline typeface for ‘The Way Home’,
a St Petersburg based literary street paper
D&AD 2014, the Monotype Brief
Develop a new typographic system for a local street paper which is distributed by homeless vendors, thereby supporting homeless community. Improve the connection between the vendors and their customers, and integrate the paper into digital media.
The idea is based on the existing title of the paper – ‘The Way Home’. Each letter is constructed of a piece of St Petersburg map demonstrating the way to actual locations from Russian literature related to homeless, poor and miserable people. In fact, the places where characters lived, suffered and killed each other, are real and still exist.
19, Grazhdanskaya st., the Iohim’s house aka ‘the Raskolnikov’s house’ from ‘Crime and Punishment’
‘On an exceptionally hot evening early in July a young man came out of the garret in which he lodged in S. Place and walked slowly, as though in hesitation, towards K. bridge.’
15, Srednyaya Podyacheskaya st., the Valch’s house aka ‘the old woman’s house’ from ‘Crime and Punishment’
‘He had not far to go; he knew indeed how many steps it was from the gate of his lodging house: exactly seven hundred and thirty.’
The Voznesensky bridge across the Griboedov Channel, mentioned in a variety of sources.
‘It was past ten when he came out into the street. In five minutes he was standing on the bridge at the spot where the woman had jumped in.’
Latin and Cyrillic alphabets
This is not only a literary paper, but also a tourist guide to the sights that you are unlikely to visit in traditional city tours. So, you can unfold the paper and use it as a map.
Each issue has got a fragment of a map and an iconic quotation as a prompt of how to find the way to this site. The quest involves customers in experiencing #thewayhome in real life. Finally, people can check-in and collect Foursquare badges according to the number of quests completed.
