Behind the Iron Curtain: Forgotten Female Designers of the USSR

Adel Cynolter

Behind the Iron Curtain: Forgotten Female Designers of the USSR

Fall 2024InDesign
Photoshop
After Effects

This project encompasses a poster and promotional video about an overlooked part of design history. I researched and assembled a list of female artists from the 20th century from post communist countries whose work was either overlooked or not credited to them at the time of production.

The selected designers belong to four different artistic movements. The information on the poster is organized accordingly into four sections. Each section includes a paragraph about the movement in red, which differentiates it from information about each designer and their artwork. To differentiate each section, the system draws from Constructivist poster design and relies on alternating ninety degree angles to divide the information into different sections by artistic movement.

The font used is GT Eesti Sans Serif, which is adopted from books from Soviet occupied Estonia for modern uses for both Latin and Cyrillic letters.

The promotional video adopts the system of the poster by showcasing the women’s names and faces at alternating angles. After each group of designers, organized by artistic movement, is revealed, their works are rapidly overlaid. A wall of red draws over the works, undoing the erasing done at the beginning of the video. This makes a nod to the iron curtain by concealing the work of the forgotten female designers.

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