Virtual museum of socialist era graphic design in Bulgaria | Hacker News Reader

Virtual museum of socialist era graphic design in Bulgaria

socmus.com

151 pointsNaOH16 comments

That's a great idea, but missing one of the best categories there - book covers. With that regard there's one particularly special category - Sci-Fi. In my opinion the work of Tekla Aleksieva in that period is one of the most influential and inspiring works I ever seen regarding book cover illustration. I'm still looking for a complete online gallery of her amazing work, but here're some places one can check about what she was bringing: -https://sarieva.org/artists/tekla-aleksieva/selected -https://artviewer.org/tekla-aleksieva-at-sariev-gallery/ -https://blokmagazine.com/artist-feature-tekla-aleksieva/ -https://openartfiles.bg/en/people/3567-tekla-aleksieva

Damn, there's even pixel art from 1986 in there: http://socmus.com/past/ppc/27.jpg

It says '13th Congress of BCP' (an abbreviation for Bulgarian Communist Party)

here all the .bg LP and cassettes produced:

https://balkanton.su/

is there a list of virtual museums? a museum of museums?

and if so, will this museum itself be included in the list?

Or even better, a virtual museum of all virtual museums that don't contain themselves, perhaps named in honor of Bertrand Russell.

Soviet states always had a great taste in graphic design.

They did- they are so catchy, there recently was a post about Vietnamese graphic design - spectacular stuff and colors. This poppy propaganda plus the space tech is what generated the self-image of a "loosing" system capitalism in the west.

I think Poland and Yugoslavia also have great graphic design from that time - especially theatre posters.

None of these countries were Soviet states of course - they were a part of the socialist block.

Any thoughts on why this is the case? I have the same impression, but now I'm wondering if its survivor bias. I never lived through it, and have only been exposed to the best of it on the Internet.

Well, when the Soviet Union was starting out illiteracy was high because Tsarist Russia had a shortage of public schools. So propaganda that worked even if you couldn't read was important. And later states in the Soviet sphere like Communist Bulgaria got much of their cultural cues from the Soviet Union even if the reasons for them didn't necessarily apply.

But it’s all very much brutalist isn’t it? So perhaps brutalist as an art movement was just really appealing or was taught extensively …

Excellent collection of work

fantastic - thanks for posting

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