SL Comrade typeface was firstly used as a gesture of solidarity in our „In Solidarity with Ukraine” campaign. As a continuation of fellowship with Ukrainian designers we started to work on Ukrainian fonts.
SL Comrade is a sans serif, two-element title typeface. It is characterised by high contrast, the thickness of the lines deriving from the way a human hand would draw them with a wide-cut pen, yet maintaining the mechanical character. SL Comrade juxtaposes forms taken from handwriting with rigorously technical ones. The italic letterforms have been woven into the typeface, corresponding to the natural slants of such straight letters as “A”, “W” or “V”. SL Comrade consists of Latin script, including a full set of capital letters, with Polish and German diacritics, a set of punctuation marks, as well as mathematical and currency symbols.
We have used SL Comrade on “KYIV not KIEV” charity t-shirts and joined forces in Tu Mariupol and Dnipro Center for Contemporary Culture support.
The t-shirts related to the “KyivNotKiev” campaign, which is part of the wider “CorrectUA” campaign. Their aim is to remove linguistic relics of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union by promoting the use of Ukrainian transliterations for Ukrainian place names. Influencing and erasing the language of conquered societies is an action used for centuries by colonisers. The current use of the Russian spelling (pushed by Russia) is particularly painful for people from Ukraine.
Photos
Yulia Krivich
On the photos
Zoi Michailova, Taras Gembik, Kostya
Screen printing
V9 Gallery, Warsaw
The design of SL Comrade is in progress.