On March 18, 2017, an open defense of diploma projects of students from the Identity and Brand Design faculty took place at the Moscow Academy of Communications Wordshop. The training took place in Cheboksary. This is the school’s first project in the regions; its preparation took a year and a half.
Teachers: Mikhail Gubergrits - course curator, head of diploma practice, Dmitry Chernogaev - typography, Nikolay Oblapokhin - composition, Aram Mirzoyants - packaging, Sonya Shmatova and Alena Golubeva - strategy, Svetlana Maybrodskaya - naming.
Why Cheboksary
Russian ballet is to blame for everything. In 2014, Maxim Nilov (the organizer of the regional Wordshop) called me and asked how I felt about the idea of holding Wordshop in the regions, and specifically in Cheboksary. And am I not afraid of a crisis? I said I'm not afraid of anything. And the crisis... In besieged Leningrad, ballerinas continued to rehearse in the unheated rooms of Swan Lake. So it doesn’t matter where and when, what matters is the desire to do big projects and believe in big goals. It further became clear that in 2018 and 2019 two major events will be widely celebrated in Cheboksary: the anniversary of the Chuvash region and the anniversary of the city of Cheboksary. And it is necessary to prepare local specialists for these dates - strategists, designers, advertisers. This is how the idea arose, and then the program and two year-long courses: on brand design and brand strategy.
Svetlana Maybrodskaya
About the course
The group mainly consisted of guys from Cheboksary, but there were three people from the city of Yoshkar-Ola and one from Kazan, who came to every lesson, despite the distance of 100 kilometers. Of course, there is now a lot of interest in this specialty: as far as I know, all agencies constantly need people, and everyone is constantly asking each other for good designers. I think there is the same demand in the regions. This year, several topics were proposed for the thesis: territory branding, HoReCa and retail. Together with the guys, we decided that it would be HoReCa, and the overwhelming majority voted for it. Firstly, we always choose some very large and necessary topic, in which there is a trend of growth and interest. The topic of territory branding is already a little boring, everyone is tired of it, there are too many low-quality projects around. The topic of retail probably seemed complicated and too “distant”, and HoReCa is hotels, restaurants, cafes - in general, those companies that are actually their customers on the same freelance basis or in the agencies where they work. The topic is truly complex and not everyone, of course, managed to cope. But at least a few people whom we brought to open defense are not ashamed, and they showed a very good result.
This year there was a serious and strict jury consisting of: Sonya Shmatova - Brave Red Market Intelligence, Alena Golubeva - McCann, Dmitry Chernogaev - Artonika, Alexander Kovalsky - Creative People, Vladimir Samoilov - Matveyev Samoylov Concept Development, Vasily Omelye - Weavers Brand Consultancy, Anna Bolshakova – Depot WPF, Maria Loshkova – Prime Star, Denis Goloveshkin – Teamwork, Talli Kelmi – Ampersant and Aram Mirzoyants. As a result of the discussion, the work of Maxim Kuptsalov (Moscow Country Club) was collectively recognized as the best project. I would also like to note the works of Dima Zhelonkin (you should remember him from his course work “Corporate style of the Modigliani Museum”, silver at Fakestival 2016) - rebranding of the cult club Propaganda, as well as Evgeny Kanashin (chain of sushi bars "Wabi-Sabi") and Asya Akhmedzyanova (Two Sticks restaurant chain).
The nightclub and cafe Propaganda has existed since 1997. Pros: parties every day, constantly new DJs, high-quality club music, underground, a gathering of connoisseurs and clubbers, a daytime cafe in the same atmosphere of the club. Cons: there is no single visual style that unites the online and offline environments; the interior design has not changed for ten years. Tasks: to bring it into a single visual style, remove the “oldness” of the club, and bring back “propaganda”, and interest “strays” to stay and come again. The essence of the brand: Propaganda is a guide to club life. Positioning: the center of club life, one of the first clubs with electronic music, rare and best DJs, excellent sound system, in the city center, daytime cafe, affordable prices, parties every day. Personality: experienced, discriminating, stylish, charismatic.
The concept of rebranding the Propaganda club caused the most fierce debate. The goal of the project was to refresh the perception of a club with almost 20 years of history, not to lose regular visitors and attract new adherents.
Despite the brightness and modernity of the decision, the jury was divided into those who highly appreciated the proposal to shorten the club's name to PRO and those who found this decision controversial. There, no less, the work aroused interest and was highly appreciated by the professional jury. This work is interesting because an essentially very simple graphic solution (active typography with an expressive dot, a branded frame a la MINI, all in a stylish black and white color scheme) can be very effective, flexible and work on a large number of media, every time reflecting certain properties and character of the club in a new way.
Here, a strong move is the controversial copywriting decision to shorten the name to PRO, while gaining the opportunity to use a huge number of words (PROGRESS, BREAKTHROUGH, PROCESS, PROPORTION, PROVECTION). The prefix PRO means a lot of things, but it is definitely associated with expertise in one’s field (PROfessional, PRO-rider, etc.).
In essence, this gives the PRO club the opportunity to gain cult status both visually and verbally. Personally, I think that Dima has a great future, I advise you to pay attention to him. This work is far from the limit of his capabilities and I hope that soon we will hear about him more than once.