Ostap YashchukBorn 1993 in Kolomyia
1/5 of Prykarpattian Theater
ostapyashchuk@gmail.com
StudioGraphic design & typography
Kyiv
This website brings together the documentation of commissioned projects, collaborations & self-initiated works
Instead of a Statement
Without criticism we will never have a profession. [...] We also need documentation. We need to document everything we do. We need to find out. We need to perceive ourselves as steps in a historical process.1
Somewhere, very often at an intermediate stage, there are people who are responsible for coding information and ideas, using patterns, styles and sequences that are at once conventional enough to be understood, but also sufficiently novel to attract our attention. It is at this intermediate stage that what we call graphic design happens.2
Graphic design is a form of popular entertainment, something the field has mixed feeling about and frequently downplays. Design’s out in the world, offering accesible visual gratification. That’s no small task and nothing to be ashamed of. [...] It’s no obstacle to also being relevant, profound, desirable, and useful.3
Any universal ‘language’ will always stop just short of where real communication begins – in difference, deviation and distinction.4
What good is readability when nothing in the text attracts one to even read it?5
Typography is an art not in spite of its serving a purpose but for that very reason. The designer’s freedom lies not at the margin of a task but at its very centre.6
Every artist struggles with the twofold determination, to reflect his personality and his time.
Typography is artistic expression, and it is not presumptous to elevate these two demands also for the designer compositor.
Personality and typography cannot be separated. The designed work reveals the creator’s inner self, it reflects it’s maturity.7
Real typography works and continues its tradition and purpose. It’s not a narrow-minded, detail-obsessed, rule-conscious typography I have in mind, but a typography which fuses mathematical precision and organic vitality. A typography in the beauty of the completed incomplete. A typography in the beauty of the perfect imperfect. A typography that lets the message talk.8
I think it’s essential to allow imperfection into your work; it’s an important component of visual quality. That’s a different thing from striving for imperfection, incidentally.9
Between the extremes ‘optimal legibility through clear, purely functional arrangement’ and ‘emotional legibility (relative non-legibility) through purely accidental form’ there are numerous variants and stages of typographical arrangements. ‘Accident’ in the sense of ‘chance’ is in any case a misleading concept, because chance or even chaos has to be designed and needs decisions.10
In building, there is a structural member or a joint. In print, there is a white space.11
For as long as we continue to inhabit our bodies and navigate a path through the material world, no digital simulation will ever compare with the intense, unique, sensorial pleasure of being somewhere and making a mark.12
I wonder whether it is not precisely these decisions, which cannot be explained rationally, that create the particular charm and unique, unmistakable character of a book.
[...]
In this case — if we accept spontaneity, the uncounscious, gut feelings as system-immanent, so to speak — we might be able to do without question makr after the title of this talk...13
1 Massimo Vignelli, ‘Keynote Address’ in Graphic Design: History in the Writing (1984–2011), eds. Sara De Bondt, & Catherine de Smet (Occasional Papers, 2014), 7
First published in The First Symposium on the History of Graphic Design: Coming of Age (Rochester Institute of Technology, 1983)
2 Jeremy Aysnley, ‘Graphic Design’ in Graphic Design: History in the Writing (1984–2011), eds. Sara De Bondt, & Catherine de Smet (Occasional Papers, 2014), 21
First published in Design History: A Student’s Handbook (Allen & Unwin, 1987)
3 Kenneth FitzGerald, ‘The Graphic Equalizer’ in Volumes: Design Reviewed Remixed Revealled (Set Margins, 2025), 154
First presented as a lecture at the Intent/Content: AIGA design conference, 2007
4 Johanna Drucker, ‘The Critical “Languages” of Graphic Design’ in Graphic Design: History in the Writing (1984–2011), eds. Sara De Bondt, & Catherine de Smet (Occasional Papers, 2014), 195
Presented at Looking Closer: AIGA Conference on Design History and Criticism, February 2001
5 Wolfgang Weingart, ‘How Can One Make Swiss Typography?’, Octavo 15, nº 87.4 (1987)
Originally an Illustrated lecture manuscript, 1972
Originally published in 1964 by Arthur Niggli
7 Quote by Emil Ruder from 1946 in Ruder typography. Ruder philosophy, ed. Helmut Schmid (Lars Müller Publishers, 2017), 38
First published in ‘Ruder typography. Ruder philosophy’, Idea Magazine, Nº333 (2009)
8 Quote by Helmut Schmid from ‘Japan Typography Annual 1998‘ in Helmut Schmid. Schmid Typography Typografie, eds. Kiyonori Muroga & Nicole Schmid (Lars Müller Publishers, 2023), 209
9 Karel Martens ‘Designing the Word’, interview by Kirsten Algera & Sandra Kassenaar, MACGUFFIN The Letter 191, nº 13 (2023/2024)
10 Hans Rudolf Bosshard, The Typographic Grid, (Verlag Niggli AG, 2000), 20
11 Richard Hollis, ‘The Modernist Grid’ in About Graphic Design, (Occasional Papers, 2017 (second printing)), 214
12 Rick Poynor, ‘Being Somewhere’ in Why Graphic Culture Matters (Occasional Papers, 2023), 44
13 Jost Hochuli, Systematic Book Design? (B42, 2020), 58
Written for a lecture Jost Hochuli gave for the first time in Munich in 2007, and then at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris in 2011 on the initiative of F7. The text has been first published in Back Cover magazine in 2011