Designing Ukrainian’s soft power. Could type design influence national identity?

Abstract

Through the idea of my thesis, “Designing Ukraine’s soft power – Could type design influence national identity?” my goal in the visualization part was to build Ukraine’s identity by creating a typeface. How the language sounds is the main core of this identity. In my design, I have created a system that introduces sound to every letter. I tried to find a way to match sound with the looks, not only in the letters themselves but also when they turn into words. In the modern design of Ukraine’s alphabet, the letters don’t sound as they look, especially compared to Russian. The Ukrainian alphabet looks the same as the Russian alphabet but has some extra letters. These letters are the only things that distinguish these two languages in the visual way. People could hear a difference in the language but not see it, for example, on the street. Rits Grotesk is a typeface based on the rules of phonetics and personal life experience of the Ukrainian language.