NAO

nenets autonomous okrug

NAO

Minimalism philosophy, unofficial branding and tundra

Nenets Autonomous Okrug is the region in the north of Russia and the least populated federal subject of the country. The vast territory of the region is almost entirely located above the Arctic Circle. The last snow melts here at the end of July, and winter lasts 220-240 days on average. The region is known for its tundra landscape and natural wonders like the northern lights and the polar day.

Client: NAO Business Development Center

Work: Research, branding, design, maps, wayfinding, illustrations, 3d and whats not

2018 … 2023

The largest of the ethnic groups of the north — the Nenets live here. There are ~7000 of them in the NAO out of 43 thousand of the total population of the region. If to speak about tourism, then we'd better not to speak about it — there were almost no tourism at all, but the single cases. Common visitors were the shift workers on oil producing workings who had to stay in Naryan-Mar, the only town in the region before moving on to somewhere else further to tundra.

We had been actively working with NAO Business Development Center for almost 5 years, starting with 2018 including the covid epoch, 2021. Later the pace slowed down with us and we have a story, why.

NAO as seen by many photographers, courtesy of Center of Arctic Tourism

In 2018 Business Development Center was challenged to create several projects with local businesses of Nenets Autonomous Okrug. Asmysl was challenged to start developing projects with business.

Elena Ermolina

BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT CENTER

We love NAO because it's like a successful ideal case of what we believe territory branding is. It all starts with diving in territory, following by the surfacing with ideas, friends and projects all connected with the single philosophy and vector, both literally, economically and visual.

Natalia Rybalchenko

ASMYSL BRAND STRATEGIST

NAO business development center

Our client on most of projects in NAO is "My business" department that helps entrepreneurs in Naryan-Mar. It deals with branding, consulting, financial modeling and many other things. Such centers are the well-known project of Ministry of Economic Development of the Russian Federation.

Business can refer on many questions or ask for help on extremely favorable terms. Most of the requirements are limited to the regional benifits: like tourism attractiveness, whatever, you name it. Think of it like you give 10% price and you get 90% from the center. If to be honest, such conditions make business less appreciate the work done for them. In our case, all the projects remained useful for regional promotion in terms of branding, though we haven't officially developed NAO brand, which we will tell you about later on this page.

NAO Business Development Center which is local department of My Business infrastructure

You can think of moving to Naryan-Mar just to open your business there, because of those set of tax benefits and special pricings, that you have if you live in behind the polar circle.

Igor Makovsky

ASMYSL ART DIRECTOR & CO-FOUNDER

The first contact

A nomadic soul is in the heart of all people living in the region — it all started with a research. First half-of-the-year was all about communicating administration, entrepreneurs, tour operators, local museum, restaurators, and those nonindifferent to changes:

We have found deep connection with entrepreneurs, yet haven't been introduced to the governor team

Meet NAO people

Natalia Rybalchenko
Olga Sukhovarova on gastronomical tourism
Big Arctic Adventure concept
1-day tour in Arctic concept
Polina Pavlova, head of Udmurt tourist center on tourism in NAO
Natalia Chursina, her vice-head of Udmurt tourist center on tourism in NAO
Northern initiation procedure in Tourism Arctic Center
Meat processing plant director on NAO tourism
Viktor Taratin, head of Krasnoe settlement on potential tourism
Oksana Kurlenko, CEO of Zapolyarnaya Stolitsa hotel on tourism development
Irina Martynova, local touroperator on NAO tourism
Aleksander Chersanov, head of Telvisochny Selsovet
Andrey Nikolaev, local touroperator Arctic is Near
Ilya Kadikin, CEO of Bolshukha theme park
Vyacheslav Erekhinsky, captain of the transport ship
Sergey, works in lore museum, on tourism
Elena Menshakova, director of lore museum
Evgenia Kolesnikova, works on development dpt in lore museum

One thing was in common across all the people we had interviewed: they are not overwhelmed with things around, and have to pay close attention to what they obtain. Airplanes and navigation is a pretty much costly affair, so people used to choose wisely what they buy or can afford here. As old Nenets proverb says:

You're rich when you have all you really need

Nenets nomads are masters of movement and relocation. Their life and culture is based on constant movement along the tundra with their reindeer herd. The rhythm and duration of roaming is determined by the state of the reindeer pastures, their ability to feed the animals. As soon the herd eat all the food, they have to move on further. Since the Nenets move around all the time, it is important for them not to carry to much with them. We had to share this idea with the community:

Everyone's pretty happy with this minimalistic idea.

Community reactions:

NAO philosophy of minimalism
Naryan map
Pustozersk museum
Four routes in NAO
Frigate in Pustozersk restaurant and hotel
Bolshukha concept

And now for the visual part. When you speak about lack of unnecessity, you'd definately won't use a lot of expressive elements, so we stick to — you've guessed it right — minimalism technique.

Somebody call it an insight — we call it a philosophy

Local people and museum administration supported us with the imagery and minimalism in everything. If to speak about citations, then this proverb says it all.

Time is tangible. In the tundra, a second stretches out into eternity of the polar night and shrinks into a shot of tynzei (lasso for catching a deer). Therefore, tundra people do not rush time.

Vlad Vyucheisky

HEAD OF REINDEER HERDERS

Shapes that matter

Three letters that make it work — N A O. Purely minimalism, the source of everything, the iconic Bauhaus.

Square
Raindeer and nenets
N is for nenets people and their reindeers, who live in tundra. Brave and strong.
Triangle
Choom, oil
A is for a place to live in tundra. Choom is the place nenets people used to live in. It is save, cozy and warm.
Circle
Sun
O is for energy and sun in the sky, that makes warms up and keeps life.

NAO region was lucky with the minimalism in its name as well: sometimes I even can't believe no graphic designer found out that before me. Square-triangle-circle. That's not a unique combination, but that doesn't matter. Choose wisely what matters you most.

Igor Makovsky

ASMYSL ART DIRECTOR & CO-FOUNDER

N A O — the essence of minimalism

Slogans that matter

Naryan-mar, choom and tundra

The local priest has almost anathematized us for using these symbols, where each of them meant worse things than the previous ones. Since then, we carefully watch for abstract shapes, keeping in mind their unorthodox meanings. You can't just wipe out the fate of constructivism artists and their relations with the church easily.

Igor Makovsky

ASMYSL ART DIRECTOR & CO-FOUNDER

Official branding vs unofficial

So we've got a unifying idea for the NAO projects as a side effect of our first step in getting familiar with NAO without anybody asking. We called it a philosophy of the projects, yet some can call it a brand idea. We were very happy with the result and were ready to share it with the residents. Thing is that in parallel there was an official project of the governor administration of creating regional brand with other team, in no way connected with us. Commisioned political branding was ultimatively taken in NAO with our initiative became totally unofficial from the very beginning, though it got social support.

NAO branding 2011
Notamedia
First regional branding. One of the first examples of the territory branding in Russia, which is pretty widespread.
NAO branding 2018
Notamedia
Official rebranding. Has very nice communication strategy that, sadly, hasn't been to much involved.
Our NAO philosophy
Asmysl (us)
Our insight and side-effect of working and communicating with the territory and people of Nenetsky District.

Lack of connection between teams with each other is faced pretty often and makes things worse. Though, NAO branding 2018 got a nice external communicating strategy slogan idea that we really loved: "the land of the white" that sound minimalistic and could suit our way of the territory vision.

"The land of white" communication slogan in official 2018 branding strategy

As a result, our concept unofficially became an oppositional branding, not getting official support from the administration. Moreover, officials adviced not to use the square-triangle-round visual logo, not to confuse communication.

The odor of non-officiality has significantly decrased the results of the projects, that lost support of sinergie between initiatives of local communities.

Igor Makovsky

ASMYSL ART DIRECTOR & CO-FOUNDER

Manifestation of the three shapes

No matter what, the idea was manifested across projects with the business. As of 2023, the most visually notorious are these ones:

Tundrafest
2019 … 2023
Annual food festival became one of the main widespread events in the region
Tundra merch
2021 … 2023
Mascot project that was used as part of the merch branding on request of one of the entrepreneurs that made it personal and thus difficult working on official level

Current results

No matter we haven't got support on logo visual basis from the officials, nobody argued on the utility of the minimalism concept that got manifested across all other projects we've been developed in NAO. So technically speaking, minimalism philosophy was a success.

We got up to 20 projects connected together in the region through 4 active years including shitty covid epoch. We consider it a successful example of interaction between participants of the active community. One of our local victories could be the series of project with the NAO Museum Association that gave us support from the museum community we were needed.

21 projects in NAO as of 2023

In territory branding, success comes to those who can wait. Not all projects had been launched immediately. It took some of them a time to be finally born in real world. Yet, all of them did and that's great.

Natalia Rybalchenko

ASMYSL BRAND STRATEGIST

Future

Our brand took a place among finalists at international City Nation Place Branding Awards. We plan to continue working on this comprehensive minimalism idea with the major official support in near future, because we've learned that community support without financial help and the blessing from above wasn't enough in reality.