1984 poster

One day in the summer of 2016, I was reading the news about the Yarovaya laws, which had been passed just days before. Under the pretext of protecting the country from terrorism, Russia was introducing yet another round of internet censorship.

Roskomnadzor, the media regulator, had existed for many years by then. It had not yet gone after Telegram (that happened a year later), but dozens of websites had already been blocked. Even then it was clear that Roskomnadzor was the very Ministry of Truth from George Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-Four.

The book is an outstanding dystopia. It describes a future in which “English Socialism” has triumphed in Britain, countries wage endless war on each other, and society is under the total control of Big Brother. Propaganda screens that can’t be turned off, Newspeak, doublethink, the rewriting of history, thoughtcrime — it all seemed so strange in the novel and turned out to be so real in Putin’s Russia.

That’s when I wanted a poster for my wall with the novel’s most famous line: “War is peace, Freedom is slavery, Ignorance is strength.” In the novel, this motto was written on the wall of the Ministry of Truth, which is to say, Roskomnadzor.

I went looking for one and found that there was no Russian version. So I decided to make it myself; I’m a designer, after all.

Here is how the book describes the slogans:

I started with the English version because there were existing examples. I chose the typefaces, worked out the typography and only then translated it into Russian.

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

In English, the link between the words is the verb “is.” Russian has no such verb in the present tense, so the phrase needs a dash instead. And there was simply no room for a dash on a poster where the letters had to march right up to the edges in perfectly straight lines. On top of that, the dash had to be long, because the - sign is not a dash at all: it is not even as wide as a hyphen and ended up on keyboards by mistake.

After a long search, I found a solution: cut the dash in two, leaving one half at the end of the first line and moving the other to the beginning of the next. The result is a kind of optical illusion: the dash is short, but it seems to pierce the poster, which makes it look longer and ties the two lines together naturally.

It turned out to be a good poster. I was about to publish it, but decided to reread that passage in the book. I read it carefully and couldn’t believe my eyes: in the novel, the slogans were on a white wall, not a red one! So why are all the posters red? A clear case of the Mandela effect.

The white poster was easy to make.

The set includes all four versions of the poster: red and white, in Russian and in English. TIFF format, A1 size, print-ready.

The poster can be used free of charge for any non-commercial purpose: hanging at home, in the office or on the facade of the Ministry of Truth, handing out as flyers, or printing in the media with attribution.

Commercial distribution of the poster, its copies and reproductions requires my written permission. Just send me an email. I almost always allow free use, but I like to know about it.