1984 poster

Once upon a time in the summer of 2016, I was sitting and reading the news about the Yarovaya's laws, which were adopted just the other day. Under the pretext of protecting the country from terrorism, Russia introduced another batch of censorship on the Internet.

By that time, Roskomnadzor had been created for many years. And although the new agency had not yet managed to attack Telegram (this happened a year later), dozens of sites were blocked. In principle, even then it became clear that Roskomnadzor is the very same Ministry of Truth from George Orwell's 1984 novel (“One Thousand Nine Hundred Eighty-Four”).

The book is an outstanding work in the genre of dystopia. The story is about the future, where “English socialism” won in Great Britain, countries are waging an endless war, and society is under the total control of Big Brother. Non-switchable propaganda screens, newspeak, doublethink, rewriting of history, thought crime - it all seemed so strange in the novel and turned out to be so real in Putin's Russia.

Then I wanted to hang a poster on the wall, which would have the most famous phrase from the novel: “War is peace, Freedom is slavery, Ignorance is strength”. This motto was written on the wall of Roskomnadzor, that is, the Ministry of Truth, speaking in terms of the novel.

I started searching for the poster. And soon found out that there's no Russian version. Then I decided to draw it myself, well, I'm a designer.

Here is how the phrase is described in the book:

I started with the English version because there were samples. I picked up the fonts, worked out the typography, and only then translated it to Russian.

It turned out that words are much longer in Russian. Who would have thought? Ok, that was easy to fix, but there was a second problem: what to do with the dash?

In English version, the dash is replaced with the particle “is”. In Russian, you can’t do this: their word “is” still requires a dash. And this dash by no means could be placed on the poster in which letters should pack as close as possible to the edges, along the ruler, chasing step. Moreover, the dash should be long because the sign - is not a dash, it does not even reach the width of hyphen and placed to keyboards by mistake.

After long searches, a solution was found: cut the dash into two parts, one of which is left on the first line, and the second is moved to the next line, to the beginning of the text. Thus, something like an optical illusion turned out: the dash is short, but it seems to be stitching through the poster, which makes it seem longer and organically connects two lines of text.

What a good placard. I wanted to post it, but decided to re-read that part in the book. Read it. And couldn't believe my eyes: according to the plot of the novel, the inscription was on a white wall, not on a red one! Then why all posters are drawn on a red background? I guess it is a Mandela effect.

The white poster was easy to make.

All 4 versions of the poster are included in the set: red, white, in Russian and in English. Format is tif, size is A1. Everything is ready for printing.

The poster can be used free of charge for any non-commercial purposes: hanging in apartments, office, on the facade of the Ministry of Truth, for distributing leaflets and printing in the media (with attribution).

Commercial distribution of the poster, its copies and reproductions is possible only with my written permission. Just email me. I almost always allow usage for free, but like to stay informed.