Ilia Bazhanov

MgA. Ilia Bazhanov *1994

Prague, Czechia

Ilia Bazhanov is an artist, type and graphic designer. His fascination with street art has led him to typography and visual arts. He graduated from the Faculty of Arts and Design in Ústí nad Labem with Bachelor degree and from Academy of Arts, Architecture, and Design in Prague, UMPRUM with Masters degree, at the font and typography studio, in 2022. An interest in history of type design and cultural impact on identity led him to a PhD at UMPRUM where he discovered one of the largest archives of emigrant publications located in the Slavonic Library in Prague. His thesis project was also devoted to historical research and processing of discovered periodical typefaces. Ilia has exhibited his works on exhibitions nationally and internationally. Today he works as an independent graphic and type designer and Cyrillic specialist.

ÉMIGRÉ. UKRAINIAN, BELARUSIAN AND RUSSIAN EMIGRATION PERIODICAL PRESS TYPEFACES AND TYPOGRAPHY OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY.

Research project and typeface based on Ukrainian, ****Belarusian and Russian emigrant periodicals of the first half of the twentieth century in Europe. In the form of a historical study of twentieth-century emigrant publications abroad, the typeface seeks to analyse and understand the schemes and stereotypes by which emigrants sought to preserve their own identity and originality. The result of the research is an interpretation of the concept of preserving one’s own culture in a foreign environment, the appropriation of the outside world into one’s own work and vice versa. Following this research, I am developing a typeface based on historical models, which aims to build a clear idea of Ukrainian, Belarusian and Russian emigration as a cultural phenomenon in the context of the Western world.