Cyrillize it!: A guide on Cyrillic typographyfor graphic designers

by Yana Vekshyna

Cyrillic is a script used in numerous primarily eastern and southern Slavic languages in Europe and Asia. "Cyrillize it!" is an introductory work for graphic designers who are not native to the Cyrillic script, and cannot read Cyrillic-based languages. The book offers a method of dealing meaningfully and successfully with writing systems other than your own. The approach is based on constantly drawing parallels between Latin and Cyrillic, thus making a foreign script more familiar to non-native users. The author reflects about the relevance of Cyrillic in the modern world, looks at the history and currrent design trends, provides an overview of the typographic rules, and provides examples of Cyrillic graphic design works. With a playful and esthetically appealing design, the publication is also of interest to non-designers who are generally curious about the topic of Cyrillic script and related cultures.

Genres: Design

160 pages, Hardcover

Published February 28, 2023

Reviews

[Amadeus Cameron · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fairly practical and nicely designed book about the ways that Cyrillic as a script was created, used, butchered, and where it ultimately landed. Also provides some good ways to approach designing with Cyrillic - history influences the liberties you can take as a designer, and the book gives some examples of how to approach these novel (to a Latin-based designer) letterforms.

Selfishly, I bought this book because it mentions the Glagolitic script, but I was attracted to it’s great printing and interesting layout - now I walk away with a book full of inspiration of contextual Cyrillic uses.

[Estuardo Choc Salazar · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very informative and well designed book. For a Latin American everything was new and interesting, specially the Bulgarian Cyrillic part.

[Joana Diniz · Rating 5 out of 5]

A good book about Cyrillic type and it's history. It helped to remind me of what I've learned in my Russian language classes.