Solovey is one of the most iconic cinemas in Moscow. It was built in the 80s and has always been not only very loved by people but also very profitable.

One of the coolest things about Solovey was that you could see some old movies there which you couldn't find in any other cinema. Also, because of the amount of cinema halls in it you always had a ton of movies to choose from.

Even though Solovey has become a very important place for people in Moscow, in 2019 a company bought it and decided to build another shopping mall instead. It will also have a cinema inside but it will never replace the iconic Solovey for the locals.

People started protesting against the demolition and signing petitions to stop the demolition which got over 100k signs. There was a very strong reaction of the community. However, it only postponed the demolition for a half a year.

For this project I decided to think of what Solovey could become if it wasn't destroyed.

Basically, there are 3 groups of cinemas: huge franchise (Karo), independent cinemas (Illusion), middle-ground (October). Solovey is closer to middle-ground and there are way more directions to go in. Also, the amount of competitors in this group is significantly less compared to others.

There are also indirect competitors which are mainly streaming services. Solovey could possibly have its own streaming service. It would be even more fitting for pandemic times.

This would be the new message we'd want to convey. Meaningful stories means tested by time and / or recognized by people and the story itself was what actually mattered. To those who seek means that we would encourage exploration and curiosity.

Based on that, I've come up with 4 principles for the new brand:

"Create an exciting adventure from entrance to exit"

People go to cinemas not only to watch a movie. It’s even more about your experience outside of the hall than about the movie itself. We want to make the most of it and bring more to this journey.

"Forget and watch again"

Everyone thought to themselves at least once “Damn, I wish I could forget this movie and watch it again”. Unfortunately, that’s not possible, so you go and find new ones. We want to translate this feeling of satisfaction and will for more throughout the whole brand.

The next step was to create a visual language for the new brand. That included colors, typography, logos and the usage of everything combined.

I started by looking for inspiration and found it in the word "solovey" itself. In russian it means "nightingale", a little bird which is famous for its powerful and beautiful song.

The bird itself is generally gray with hints of brown, but male birds also have a very intresting blue and red throat. That's how the colors for the new brand were created.

The logo was also based on the bird's head with the layers of colors on the throat.

Keeping in mind the colors and the bird's throat colors I also created some decorative elements that could be used in different assets in various combinations.

The typeface for the new brand is called Zeppelin created by Storm Type Foundry. I focused on the ciryllic alphabet as the whole thing would be used in Russia, so good support of cyrillic alphabet was an important criteria for the font. Zeppelin is a very simple sans-serif typeface which has an extended font that I ended up using in with the biggest text sizes and forthe logo lockup.

For the logo the most obvius thing was the bird. It has never been used by the brand before, so I went for it. Now when you say "Nightingale" you also have a clear picture in your head.

The symbol is very minimal and usable. It's still recognizable in smaller sizes, but in the large variant it also has the waves of colors which refer back to the birds actual feathers.