Studying the world experience: the westernization of Soviet logos (1960s –1980s)

Globally, the establishment of the modern logo was already noticeable by the 1st and 2nd decades of the 20th century, as seen in the works of the German designer Wilhelm Deffke.¹ Usually considered as the “pioneer of a modern logo,”² Deffke is often acknowledged with the creation of a reductive logo – a specially designed corporate stripped from the excessive ornaments and details so prevalent during the previous era.

The spread of a modern logo was in part determined by the visual culture of the era, which was defined by the newly emerged avant-garde art and design movements such as Bauhaus. The idea of “a brave new world” was soon reflected in graphic design along with corporate marks, becoming part of the modernist aesthetics established within the art world.

Although isolated from the rest of the world, the Soviet Union participated in the creation of the new visual culture. The Bolsheviks created not only an entirely new regime but essentially transformed visual culture. Along with the transformation of arts, the view on applied arts was altered as well: graphic design became a special medium that relayed the Soviet State’s progress. Posters, books and newspapers together with the inception of modern logos reflected the age of technological progress and machine development.

However, further development of the modern logo in the USSR was halted for almost 30 years. Processes of the 1940s and early 1950s, often referred to as “the golden age of corporate logo design” in the Western world, did not happen in the USSR. The rapid development of arts and design was suddenly halted as Josef Stalin took power. Arts turned back to retrospectivist social realism while the country completely isolated itself from the outside world. Industrial and graphic design was almost fully neglected, as it could not develop in this an economic and social environment.

With the death of Stalin³ and the new “Thaw” Era initiated by Nikita Khrushchev⁴, the concept of the modern logo finally came to the Soviet Union. Together with Khrushchev’s inner political reforms, outer economic and cultural connections also developed.⁵ The increase in Soviet production exports to the Western world accelerated the development of graphic design and encouraged the boom of logo design in the Soviet Union.

The application, registration, and protection of logos was taken care of at the highest levels of USSR government. The minister councils resolution “Regarding Trademarks”⁶ signed on May 15, 1962, stated that every organization operating in the USSR had to have a specially designed trademark registered in the State Committee for Inventions and Discoveries of the USSR. Given that hundreds of post-war organizations did not possess registered logos, the unprepared USSR graphics industry was flooded with new trademark orders.⁷

However, because of the stagnation of commerce-related graphic design during the 1940s and early 1950s, little was known on how to design modern logos. In order to catch up with the capitalist world, a special exhibition of trademarks was set up in Moscow: “the work was launched on a broad scale and with thoroughness: it started with scrupulously studying the world experience in the field, with a special retrospective exhibition of trademarks in Moscow and a scientific conference devoted to the subject, serving as the cornerstone.”⁸ It seems that the Soviets had not meant to create their own version of a “modern” socialist logo but instead were cutting corners by examining logos designed in the capitalistic world. While the function of a Soviet logo was fundamentally different, the visual appearance always followed the tendencies established in the global design discourse.

Although in the beginning of the 1960s, one can still feel an illustrative quality left by socialist realism, only a few years later, the characteristics of the soviet marks barely differ from the tendencies seen in capitalist countries. Laconic, abstract shapes begin to rule, clear lines and dynamic black and white shapes dominate.

Analyzing the Soviet logos from today’s perspective, it is almost impossible to determine whether a logo belongs to the communist or the capitalist system by simply evaluating its visual appearance. One would expect for a Soviet logo to feature some sort of socialist iconography – a star, a hammer and a sickle or Lenin’s profile, but the truth is that only a very small amount of Soviet logos had any socialist iconography inclusions.

If we take a closer look at the logos designed in the USSR and capitalistic countries such as Japan or the USA, we will notice that all of them were constructed within the same modernist spirit. Even if these logos served very different systems, their visual appearance is practically identical, suggesting that the Soviet designers had always aimed to become part of the global design context Fig. 1.

It is hard to tell whether Soviet designers actually copied the works of their western colleagues. Since the modernist logo aesthetic was limited to a very small amount of visual solutions it is quite possible that Soviet designers came up with their designs independently Fig. 2. Although there have been many stories about Soviets copying the advancements of capitalist technologies, in the case of logo design it is always worth analyzing the context in which the logo was actually designed. The graphic features of the mark designed for the publishing house “Mokslas” (“Science”) by Kęstutis Ramonas can be compared to a well-known mark of the US telecommunication company “Motorola” (auth. Morton Goldsholl) Fig. 3. The letter “M” in both logos is constructed out of several elliptical arches and sharp line crossings. Both marks, in essence, reflect the futuristic aesthetics that is typical of their era. The dynamic nature of the “Motorola” (1952) mark somewhat reminds us of “streamline modern,” which was widespread in the USA during the 1940s and 1950s, or the “raygun gothic” style, which was at the time widely used as a way to visualize the progress of society and its future. Meanwhile, with the same graphic features, the mark of “Mokslas” (1975) reflects the technological progress of a yet another era – the beginning of the Space Age which the Soviet Union entered in the 1960s and 1970s.

Of course, the influence of Western graphic design did not necessarily reach the Soviet land directly. Due to conditionally closer connections with the Western world, the “brotherly” nations of Bulgaria, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and East Germany felt the winds of modernism a bit earlier than Soviet republics. While the re-modernization of graphic design took place earlier in the Western socialist Bloc, in the USSR the Stalinist aesthetics were replaced by modernism only in the middle of the 1950s. Contrary to the USSR, where graphic design was isolated within the country, other countries of the socialist bloc had a limited international exchange. Some designers even managed to become singular global stars of graphic design. For example, Stefan Kanchev, a prolific Bulgarian designer who created trademarks in his home country, in time became famous worldwide. Kanchev’s marks, which were used by provincial Bulgarian companies, were later published in the most famous graphic design magazines such as the Japanese Idea. Modernism-filled works of Kanchev and other socialist bloc creators rapidly spread in the USSR, in part “westernizing” Soviet logos as well.

Even if created more than 50 or 40 years ago, the majority of Soviet logos still fit perfectly within the idea of a “contemporary” logo. Their laconic visual language has managed to stay fresh over the years as it was built not on some exotic spirit of socialism, but rather followed the global graphic design tendencies.

Marks, which were created as a part of the Soviet system to serve its interests, after the change of the economic, social and cultural environment, quickly took on the roles delegated by the new era. Contrary to many other relics of the Soviet era, which in their form and content still transmit the Soviet ideology, logos have become an exception due to their universal graphic expression.