“I try to always be diverse in my work, not following any particular style, but rather combing stuff I admire”, Anna Pravorotskaya explains. Instead of assigning her work to a certain style, the Zurich based model and graphic designer who is currently studying at the Zurich University of Arts describes it as intuitive and experimental with a strong focus on details. Being born in Moscow, Russia, she remembers being fascinated by books at an early age: “Since I was a tiny girl I always loved books, I started to read at the age of four and since then my passion for typography began.” This passion did not stop, when she moved with her parents to Zürich in 2011. “Being a teenager I always remember myself paying huge attention to the street signs, commercials on the tv, magazines, and, I guess, from that my passion for graphic design began to grow.” Now she has worked on several design projects and collaborations during her studies – among them a concept for the redesign for the “Züricher Tagblatt” and animated posters for the fashion brand Bally.
For the redesign of “Züricher Tagblatt”, the official weekly newspaper of Zurich, in 2018/19, Anna teamed up together with three other designers: Livia Benz, Anna Tuena and Stefan Hürlemann. The new design is clear and simplified, with a beautiful use of typography and a visible love for details. “The entry into the newspaper makes a picture series, with references to the corresponding articles. Articles of each category are summarized on one page spread. Texts run across the entire width of the format, the structure within a category is achieved by means of different numbers of columns.This leads to a strong horizontal alignment, which follows though the whole editorial, giving the newspaper a digital look,” Anna tells us about the concept behind the redesign. “The redesign of Zürcher Tagblatt I was able to do in a team with my best friends from my University class. Before starting this collaboration, we already studied together for almost 2 years and knew that we have a similar vision on the process, like the same things, and are all ready to invest a lot in this project. Working together was a lot of fun for all of us. What I personally find great, is that each of us was able to invest himself fully in this project, even thought sometimes working in such a big team might be challenging for all the members.”
In the same year when she worked on the redesign of “Züricher Tagblatt”, Anna also produced an animated poster series for the high-class shoe and clothes brand Bally, together with Serafin Gerber, Sara Nygard and Anina Weidmann. After their series being presented online and in stores, they teamed up to develop the scenography for the Bally stores in Zurich, Geneva and Lucerne as well. “Bally wanted content and values from their archive to be reinterpreted. In our videos we show the two sides of Bally: traditional, classic, noble, as well as young, innovative, dynamic”, Anna explains, and adds: “The classic Bally site is embodied with sharp macro videos. The ZHdK site shows itself in the form of abstract, alienated 3D scans of Bally shoes. In the store, the videos are played on large screens. The shoes are presented with 3D holograms.” The mix between high-resolution marco-shoots of Bally shoes and 3D animated sculptures, can be seen as an interaction between eye-catching details and new technologies.
In order for a collaboration to be successful, it is important to her that everyone respects the opinion of the others and is being ready to go for compromises. “I think in every collaboration you learn something new for yourself, plus it’s very interesting to observe the working process of the others,” she explains further, “In my opinion, any collaborative working has its positive and negative sides. The most difficulties I met were when I was working with my boyfriend at that time on the project for Bally, because then it was pretty hard to push my own vision and be able stay objective to the criticism, and not to get too personal. But on the other hand, I guess the love and feelings to each other made this collaboration unforgettable and successful.”
Before approaching the actual design of a new project, Anna starts with an intense research in able “’understand’ the client, get his way of thinking and come out with a successful result.” She never has a clear vision in mind when starting a new work, instead she prefers to listen to her intuition and to experiment before deciding on one concept. “In my opinion, it’s very important to try many different concepts, to see all the options you’ve got, to come to the only right and fitting one in the end.”
