• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

COWBOYZOOM

BUT IS IT ART?

  • Categories
  • About
  • Submit
  • Contact
  • Tumblr
  • Secret Email Club

VNIITE: Discovering Utopia: Lost Archives of Soviet Design

31 August 2018 in Books Comment

VNIITE: Discovering Utopia: Lost Archives of Soviet Design 001

VNIITE: Discovering Utopia: Lost Archives of Soviet Design 002

VNIITE: Discovering Utopia: Lost Archives of Soviet Design 003

VNIITE: Discovering Utopia: Lost Archives of Soviet Design 004

VNIITE: Discovering Utopia: Lost Archives of Soviet Design 005

VNIITE: Discovering Utopia: Lost Archives of Soviet Design 006

VNIITE: Discovering Utopia: Lost Archives of Soviet Design 007

VNIITE: Discovering Utopia: Lost Archives of Soviet Design 008

VNIITE: Discovering Utopia: Lost Archives of Soviet Design 009

VNIITE: Discovering Utopia: Lost Archives of Soviet Design 010

VNIITE: Discovering Utopia: Lost Archives of Soviet Design 011

VNIITE: Discovering Utopia: Lost Archives of Soviet Design 012

VNIITE: Discovering Utopia: Lost Archives of Soviet Design 013

VNIITE: Discovering Utopia: Lost Archives of Soviet Design 014

VNIITE: Discovering Utopia: Lost Archives of Soviet Design 015

VNIITE: Discovering Utopia: Lost Archives of Soviet Design 016

VNIITE: Discovering Utopia: Lost Archives of Soviet Design

Authors: Alexandra Sankova and Olga Druzhinina
Editor: Mark Sinclair
Design: Spin

Edition of 2000

We are delighted to announce that VNIITE – Discovering Utopia: Lost Archives of Soviet Design is now available to pre-order. Written by the Moscow Design Museum’s Alexandra Sankova and Olga Druzhinina, the book tells the previously untold story of the VNIITE – the All-Union Scientific Research Institute of Technical Aesthetics.

Formed in Soviet Russia in 1962, by the design visionary Yuri Soloviev, this vast network contained Moscow’s most progressive designers. The ‘Vniitians’, as they were called, designed for the future and developed new theories and approaches to design in the USSR.

But more than fifty years later, the organisation is all but forgotten. It’s hard to fathom how such an institution, dedicated to the promotion of utopian design, in theory and in practice, and the improvement of design standards within the Soviet Union, could have faded so far from view. After the disintegration of the USSR, the VNIITE and its library of images and prototypes were presumed lost.

Until now, that is. Thanks to the efforts of the Moscow Design Museum – and the discovery of the personal archives of some of the VNIITE designers – the story of this remarkable organisation is being pieced back together.

Alongside images of sketches, models and prototypes, the book also includes a selection of covers of one of the USSR’s hidden gems of graphic design – the VNIITE’s monthly journal, Technical Aesthetics. Showcased together for the first time, these covers chart Soviet graphic trends from the 1960s to the early 1990s.

In the pages of this book you can see some of the more compelling examples of utopian Soviet design. As the designer Paula Scher notes, the work offers a balance between ‘the communist desire for a perfectly-designed world against the real world of human competitiveness and inequality’.

Size: 240mm×170mm
Pages: 224
Print: Four colour litho
Cover: Foiled
ISBN: 978-1-9164573-0-0

Unit Editions

Tags design, Soviet Design, Unit Editions, VNIITE

Join the Cowboyzoom Secret Email Club

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Primary Sidebar

  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Pinterest
  • Snapchat
  • Tumblr
  • Twitter

Popular

  • Carmella Rose in LA – Emanuele Ferrari
  • Naked Fashion Girls by Mike Dowson
  • Natural & Naked — Girls Uncensored
  • Private Nudes, Portfolio Edition – Leonardo Glauso
  • Sexy Lingerie Girls – Tammy Sands
  • Treats! Magazine Issue 13
  • Young Casting Girls by Mark Novak
  • History of Sexual Punishment — In Pictures
  • Private Nudes – Leonardo Glauso
  • Peep Show — Uncensored & Beautifully Sexy
  • No Pants Are The Best Pants
  • P Nº7 Primal
  • New Fashion Nudes – Goliath Books
  • Treats! Issue 13 Jessica Goicoechea Cover
  • Kinky Super Beauties
  • Untitled Selfie #7
  • Marquis de Sade — 100 Erotic Illustrations
  • Treats! Issue 13 Kelsie Smeby Cover
  • Bad Seed
  • Treats! Issue 13 Viki Odintcova Cover

© Cowboyzoom

  • Ig
  • Fb
  • Tw
  • Tu