Интервью с Митей Харшаком
«Everything that seems to a high-minded professional designer profane, anti-artistic, the opposite of what we are drowning in, can turn out to be absolutely enchanting beauty».
Designer, photographer, researcher, founder and editor–in-chief of the magazine «Projector», previously — editor-in-chief of the online magazine ART-1, Visual daily, the magazine «Antiqua», art director of the magazine «Addresses of St. Petersburg». Author of the book «From the psychology of everyday typeface to graphic archaeology» (2006). Head of the HSE Art and Design School — St. Petersburg.
Mitya Harshak is an organizer and a member of the jury of many professional design and art exhibitions, festivals and competitions, a member of international design groups organized by the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation. His works are in the collections of the Russian National Library, the Museum of Political History of Russia, the State Museum «Tsarskoye Selo Collection», etc.
The author’s concept of «graphic archaeology» is based on the borrowing of graphic artifacts from the urban environment and their reinterpretation in the context of modern design and art.
The cover of the French issue of the magazine «Projector», issue № 2(32), 2017. The cover of the Projector magazine, issue № 1(35), 2019
Beginning
I come from a family of artists, designers, architects, grew up with my parents in workshops, I had no other picture of the world in my head, except to continue the family tradition.
In 2008, I created a studio that became one of the most «museum» studios in St. Petersburg. Working with leading Russian museums (the Russian Museum, Gatchina, Peterhof, etc.) is a special design happiness.
Spreads of the Projector magazine, issue № 1(14), 2011
Endorphins and creative work
There are a lot of endorphins in our profession — hormones of happiness. For someone, they are produced under the influence of chocolate, long sleep, the sun and the sea, but for me they are produced when I make a magazine, a book, a high project.
If we talk about the main professional quality of a designer, then I always call curiosity and the desire to stick my nose into some areas adjacent or even far from design.
Designers can be called architects, artisans, and artists — all around are designers who are engaged in creative work.
The cover of the Projector magazine, issue № 1(26), 2014. The cover of the Projector magazine, issue № 2(27), 2014
«Graphic Archaeology»
For design, it is very important to look with wide open eyes at all the visual signals that the city, the surrounding space, and the people we meet send.
Everything that seems profane to a high-minded professional designer, anti-artistic, the opposite of what we «drown» for, can turn out to be absolutely enchanting beauty. I remember Lao Tzu: «Every thing, having reached the absolute, turns into its own opposite.» If something is monstrous, ugly, anti-design scary, it already turns into a work of art that you want to dig out of the urban environment and exhibit in the white cube of an art gallery.
The spread of the book «Boring places», 2018
A designer or an artist?
I am not an artist at all, for me there is a fairly clear distinction between the fields of art and design, although I know a lot of my wonderful colleagues who work somewhere between or in both territories. But I definitely never called myself an artist, I shun the word «inspiration» — I am an absolutely pragmatic, project-oriented person.
Design is hardly possible without a customer, without a technical specification, without solving one or another equation. Art, on the other hand, does well without a customer and can exist as a thing in itself, solving philosophical and ideological questions that the author poses to himself. Art can be easily directed inward, but design, it still appeals to a certain target audience.
The cover of the Projector magazine, issue № 2(34), 2018. Poster for Hans Gremmen’s exhibition «Failure is an option», curated by Mitya Harshak, 2011
About teaching
I am a committed progressive. Children should achieve more than their parents, and students should surpass teachers, and the fact that our graduates are already cooler than us as designers means that we, as teachers, did everything right, and that they should throw us off the ship of modernity and dance on the mounds of our professional graves.
Spreads of the Projector magazine, issue № 4(21), 2012
High and success
In my opinion, you can achieve success only in those areas that you get high from. You will not achieve success in what is across the character, and if you enjoy what you are doing, if you are eager, then success will not keep you waiting.
The cover of the magazine «Projector», issue № 2(23), 2013. The cover of the Projector magazine, issue № 3(24), 2013
«… The fact that our graduates are already cooler than us as designers means that we, as teachers, did everything right, and that they should throw us off the ship of modernity and dance on the mounds of our professional graves».
