E Majta
Strategy, Design, Production
HL Branding and Friedrich Ebert Stiftung have enjoyed a long working relationship with The Authority for Information on Documents of the Former State Security in Albania since its founding in 2015, having previously designed their identity and other major projects. Last summer, HL Branding was commissioned to design a book and an animated series for ten left-winged political activists between the two World Wars.
The left before comunism
The book includes short historical bios for ten left-winged political activists, their rise to prominence, and their fall because of Communism. Packed with original documents coming from the Sigurimi files during the early days of Communism in Albania, this publication sheds some light on the history of the country from the last century. There are also essays by historians as well as some context on how the left thought evolved in Albania, how it was affected by European movements, the different political camps within it, and how the Communists eventually prevailed over all of them.
Inspired by history
The book was designed in two versions, a long one for history enthusiasts and one shorter version. Both versions came also in English with all of them using decidedly extra whitespace.
The typographic styling of the book is inspired by the typography born in the ‘30s, the bold, sans-serif letterforms printed on the placards carried by protesters, and a widely publicized SPD election poster from 1932, with Three Arrows symbol representing resistance against reactionary conservatism, Nazism and Communism. Those three arrows became a symbol of the social-democrats around Europe.
The entire set of publications is printed in two colors, red as the main color used by Social Democrats and left activist posters at the time, and a very dark blue to create contrast and drama throughout the project. Pictures used were applied an effect that resembled the early days of lithographic printing, born also at the time.
Animations as digital activation
Both Friedrich Ebert Stiftung and The Authority for Information on Documents of the Former State Security in Albania agreed when we presented the idea of short animated movies for some of the political activists from the book. These videos would follow the visual style of the publication and the storyline would be based on the book. However, due to the goal of reaching a younger audience, the stories would be focused more on the personal perspective of the characters. This would create an alignment between two different periods of time, while also becoming more relevant for these younger audiences. There were produced five animated videos being introduced at two public events organized by FES and then shared on social media.
