Odesa City Letters
When the streets speak
Letters in the City, otherwise known as Odesa City Letters, is a project initiated by Sergii Rovenskyj, a designer and art director of the Green Theatre in Odesa.
For quite a while now, Rovenskyj has been redrawing signboards, stencils, tags, announcements, and other typographic forms that one can find on the streets of Odesa. Started on July 8th, 2019, the digital archive in the format of an Instagram account now counts over 2,000 signs. A short description in Ukrainian languages, together with the location, accompanies each drawing. The signs vary greatly: from Tsarist-era instruction on "how to swim in the sea" to modern-day "your mom likes my poems" line.
The project maps all the changes happening in the city right now: the first letters redrawn were usually in russian, some originating from the 20th and 19th century, often witty and light. Modern letters are mostly in Ukrainian, often referring to the war.
