AlphaDesigner Blogue

It’s only 350 km away from my hometown. Maybe that’s the reason I always postponed going there. It’s a short ride, there’s always a possibility, so why not go to Rome first?

Istanbul, as many people know, is the Second Rome, so it actually makes sense. It’s full of history just like its predecessor. Perhaps, in its early days as the new Roman capital, it was just an extension of Rome but as time passed by, it took a separate way – first because of the Byzantines themselves and then under the influence of the Ottomans. The result is the same enchanting mix of cultures but with significantly different taste. This is not a place when Europe meets Asia. It seems like a place with its own distinct cultural taste, a place where Europe and Asia complement each other. It’s strikingly apparent when you look at the mosques – those enormous structures with their bulky cake-like Byzantine bodies garnered with the thin, elegant Ottoman minarets.

I must be back for more.

An illustration I made in the beginning of 2009 made its way to the pages of the largest German daily newsletter

When one of the visitors to my photo stream in Flickr told me Süddeutsche Zeitung published my European map, I wasn’t only surprised, I was genuinely shocked.

The map is among the type of work I do spontaneously and without a certain purpose. I can’t recall exactly why and how I made it, I just remember it was during the winter, in one of the most severe gas crisis Europe has ever known and the news reports obviously had some influence but it wasn’t a serious, deliberate attempt to be politically provocative. I uploaded it to Flickr exchanging few laughs with my online friends and that was all I ever expected from it.

Strangely, a month later it began accumulating visits from various social network sites. Then the blogosphere kicked in. It culminated in a feature in Boing Boing which made me glue myself to the screen, following the statistics in Flickr. It was really something I hadn’t experienced before – it can be seen in this short video, made of screenshots of accumulating views. For a period of 15 minutes, it got more than 2000 views.

I still kept on asking myself what’s so interesting about this map. It sure is funny (to me) and a bit provocative (to other people) but If I had known it would become my most popular image online gathering almost 200,000 views, I would have certainly made it much better. But maybe that’s how the Internet works – no matter what plans you make or whether or not you think something is worthy of your public’s attention, such things can’t be predicted. What’s left for you is to just enjoy the party, even if some people in the room look rather suspicious. Like those who think I was paid by the CIA to participate in anti Russian propaganda.

In a centrally planned economy things like branding and advertising are close to irrelevant. Goods are often labeled just for convenience and people don’t have a variety to choose from, they consume what they are offered by the state committees.

I spent my whole childhood in such a world and (shockingly) it wasn’t as bad as it sounds. We didn’t have ads on TV. We didn’t have ads in newspapers. I can’t remember seeing them on the streets either. Modern pseudo-diseases like shopping mania or its universally efficient treatment called shopping therapy were beyond science fiction. It’s not that we didn’t enjoy an occasional purchase, we just didn’t make a fuss about it.

If I remember correctly, the word “logo” wasn’t part of our language. Several years ago, before I began to produce logos myself, I could have sworn that they didn’t exist in communist Bulgaria. But I would have been wrong.

They were all around us. We didn’t notice them consciously because brands didn’t compete with each other as they do today. Usually you could spot an occasional logo on the back of a poorly designed package, the problem was few people really cared to see that back.

You may think those logos were ineffective and poorly designed, too. But here’s the paradox – they weren’t. Few years ago I stumbled upon a summary of the works by one of the greatest Bulgarian designers, Stefan Kanchev. And as I went from logo to logo I had a flashback after flashback – not just about the products but about events in my life that were absolutely unrelated. It was one of the first times when I realized how powerful symbols could be, not just the obvious ones that we notice consciously but the more subtle ones, which are lurking underneath your attention threshold. And when they come from someone who is so immensely talented like Stefan, they become part of your own identity. A part so deep that it remains rooted in your mind forever.

His tribute site is online now, showing many of his truly amazing projects.