Solvychegodsk design code

RUSSIA, ARKHANGELSK OBLAST

The salternative town guidelines

Solvychegodsk is the historical town in Arkhangelsk Region that was very well hidden in its vast woods since the prosperious period of being one of the main merchant outposts of Stroganov Dynasty. The outstanding sublime and light architectural style that was later called the Stroganov baroque was named after the local architectural style that present in this smallest Russian town. There is both the place of exile of Joseph Stalin and the soviet mud resort placed next to each other. And the one hundred anniversary of the resort became the event that launched the massive set of events that took attention of the regional administration and got proper financing. Our team had been commisioned to develop the town brand, a tourist map and the design code, to keep the historical town from the graphical and visual elements. And there were some problems to deal with:

Client: Ministry of Culture of Arkhangelsk Oblast

Work: town guidelines, editing, design

2022

The problem photoset was put on an interactive map

Interactive design code

Final design code is an online webpage, that consists of set of interactive articles with active links to the assets, used in examples and recommendations below. All the information was put in four categories:

Brand fundamentals
Summary of the brand and the visual content from the design guidelines. Easy to access assets, such as logo, font, colors, maps and illustrations.
Basic design code rules
The overall rules for design code, such as the lists of approved materials, graphical plaques of all sorts and general rules of placing them on the building facades.
Specific solutions
List of personally elaborated objects, such as administrative buildings, churches, museum, shops, schools, hotels that need special attention. Every is bundled with before-after comparision images.
Solving general problems
The set of articles with detailed description of found problems in town and the ways of getting rid of them with examples, references and lots of illustrative material.

Interactive Solvychegodsk design code is available for everybody

Visit solvychecode.ru

Branding guidelines

There is common problem that brand guidelines could be hidden from the public. We're against it and try to make it as public as possible. That's why we've taken all what is most important and put it online for easy access and downloading.

Download entire guidelines or its elements separately like logo, colors and graphic design.

Handy way of downloading special font for using in Solvychegodsk

Allowed elements

The most requested part of the design code is the ruleset that had to be respected by the business owners and social institutions in town. It's all about what elements can be used on the façades, what information allowed to be printed on them, where to take design and how properly mount elements on the building.

There are 6 elements in total: large signs, facade, hanging, standalone, small signs and adress plaques

Check for allowed content you can use, put it in the appropriate templates

And learn how to mount ready elements on the building properly

Address plaques

Unique design of the address plaques pays respect to the brand guidelines and takes away all the redundant content that was confusing town visitors before.

The existed typical blue plaques had awful typesetting, decorations and the presence of the old style street names that confused tourists.

Colors & materials

It becomes even more easy to send a link to the specific color or the material, when it comes to communicating with the production. Rules are pretty simple: no vivid colors, no artificial materials and you're good to go.

Check the colors and materials you can use

Don't even think about using these

Specific solutions

20 specific buildings had been chosen for the close-up detailed examination and working through. Besides the facades, we had gave recomendations for the territories around and got inside museums. Because there will be only one chance to fix the overall cituation.

Every asset that is present or recomended for installing is available for download

General problems

Other than that, we have recommended on how to deal with the common problems, found globally in Solvychegodsk.

Frequent occuring problems got recomendations and references to how other towns cope with the same problems

Historic elements

It is easy to wipe something valuable that looks old. All the important elements that present today and must be kept had been put in a special list of special care.

Hands off these awesome relics of the past!

Results

The first iteration of design code implementation was set for the first Saltfest and took place in the middle of 2023. Plaques of all sorts, a few most notorious positive changes on the façade designs, as well as wayfinding, maps and installing of a few art objects. Good for a start, yet the main thing for it is to take roots, rather than being a decoration for the one-day festival.