The making of the Beautiful Places of Russia 2015 calendar

Receiving the task: we need to make a cover for the Beautiful Places of Russia calendar.

Starting to generate ideas.

“What If”

Mixing it all together: geography, culture, history, architecture. A totally alternative outlook. Making a sample cover.

Mixing up the usual views. Replacing the wooden Kizhi with St. Basil’s Cathedral, placing Kremlin Embankment behind the Shaman Rock on Lake Baikal, etc.

“Before and After”

It is extremely interesting to look at the details and compare the eras. You can really spend a lot of time doing it.

“The Overlapping Effect”

Making use of the technology created by the photographer Prokudin-Gorsky. Getting color pictures by masking and combining three colored films (RGB). Trying to show different cuts or maybe stages of construction. Pure analogue coolness.

Art director: Come up with more ideas. These aren’t exactly exciting.

“Night Aerial Photographs of Cities”

Each city has its own image. Adjusting the pictures by slightly shading out certain regions to reveal a certain image of each city. Perm, for example, looks like a woman’s face.

“Toponyms Revealed”

With manuals, blueprints and advice.

“Moscow—Vladivostok Train”

The views outside the window, the time of day and the interior of the train car are changing.

“Tattoos”

American-style tattoos. Each one is a generalized image of a place. Each page of the calendar is a part of a body and the cover shows all of the tattoos together.

Art director: This one we’ll show to the client. I think you’ve got something going on here.

The client likes the idea with tattoos. Making sample cover and a page.

Art director: Right now it looks like a tattoo catalog. Search for beautiful skin photos: drops of water, models, heat, nice lighting. I think trendy photographers can show tattoo masters what’s what.

Art director: The cover is weak, it’s incomprehensible and unattractive. The inside pages are OK.

Art director: Number 4 is OK. Showing the faces makes it lose its edge, and the black girl close-up is simply not nice.

The client approves the idea with tattoos on women’s bodies, but insists that we mention geographic locations. We need to get back to the idea of illustrated landmarks.

Designer: Maybe we can show a combined image of all stereotypes about Russia on the cover? Move on from seriousness to humor? Otherwise it will look totally sad.

Art director: I really don’t want to go into political satire: everything would depend on the quality of realization making it easy to screw-up. Let’s have another more straightforward idea, we’ll offer them both.

The client sends another message: they like body art better than tattoos.

Designer: Here it is, more straightforward and closer to body art.

The client likes it, but wants the drawing to be a size of a flower on a shoulder.

The client ultimately doesn’t like the reference style. OK.

Designer: I’m all for dense color spots.

The client doesn’t like it. He wants the tattoos to be in the style of classic watercolor paintings and sends over the examples.

Designer: This Kremlin wouldn’t look ice on the cover, and neither will Christ the Savior Cathedral.

Art director: These local watercolors look like bruises with their dark yellow and blue stains. They are trying to justify the technique that isn’t really worth it. I can’t see why they would defend it like that, watercolor is not the only style there is.

After lengthy negotiations with the client we arrive at a compromise: we can use beautiful places for lettering or calligraphy. And another unexpected update: we will have to make the entire calendar. Using sample photos to check out how the month pages would look.

Distributing the months among the type designers and starting to take pictures.

Choosing the best photographs, assembling the calendar. Presenting and discussing the result at a client meeting.

It’s all good, but it’s better to tune down the pages with bright backgrounds.

Taking photographs again.

The final version is ready. Traditionally pinning all the pages on a wall and looking at them in real size. Looks good, preparing the files for printing.

The client suggests to remove underwear on the pictures, remake the calligraphy as well as to retouch and replace almost all of the photos.

Removing the underwear and convincing the client not to change anything else.

Printing. The models are eagerly waiting for their moment of glory.