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Nostalgic Sweet Treats: Soviet Candy Wrappers
Custom Lettering
Graphic Design
Visual Storytelling
A tactile exploration of sweet childhood nostalgia as it stretches across multiple generations and cultures through form and custom lettering.
This personal project analyzes how physical artwork can become the foundation for a cohesive visual identity. I created and hand-painted three paper-mâché pieces, photographed the finished work, and developed custom lettering to create a series of graphic compositions.
Custom Lettering
Graphic Design
Visual Storytelling
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The Concept
I grew up in American culture as defined by American-born children of immigrants. My identity and the way in which I relate to the world around me were heavily molded by the Russian-speaking community.
Background and Roots
Immigrant communities are interestingly frozen in a cultural snapshot. The progression of language and subsequent slang, pop culture, and social norms leave behind a time capsule culture that immigrants continue breathing life into.
Many generations of post-Soviet countries are bound by nostalgic, bittersweet memories of their youth reflected in cartoons, movies, illustrated books, down to candy wrappers, amongst the sobering reality of culture and language erasure.
Culinary connections hold together generations as a pillar of cultural identity. Passed down comfort food recipes; shared meals to enjoy around the table; food that sustained generations.
Soviet candies, a special and treasured treat, are attentively illustrated by artists, holding dreamy fairytales, magical folk art, and ornamental decorations.
In this project, I aimed to create a larger than life depiction of these small decadences, including two personal favorites, and another widely popular choice.
Folding the Wrapper:
Design Thinking
Every few months, a new wave of inspiration brought another dimension to the project. What started as a physical creation gradually expanded into photography and custom graphics, allowing the idea to evolve across different creative mediums.
Pencil sketch of the front painting and side patterns on the primed paper mache candy structure next to the real candy reference.
Sourcing, Sketching, and Handbuilding
As references, I picked up the candies I was replicating at my local Eastern European store I grew up shopping at and pulled images online of several iterations of the wrapper throughout the decades.
Having the physical piece in my hands allowed me to study the structural and illustrated forms and my interpretation of the visual language. From the smooth, creased paper to the shiny, crinkled foil adorned with folk-inspired, precise embellishments and vibrant colors, I honored these characteristics in the scaled version while incorporating an organic, handmade quality and texture to the pieces.
Precision with the measurements and scaled proportions allowed the rawness of the handmade layers shine, speaking to the personal, warm moments of sharing tea and desserts with loved ones and guests.
Constructing the artwork by hand using a cardboard inner structure and paper mache, I layered the form to introduce texture to the surface before also layering the colors, guided by pencil sketches. The palette and organic texture later informed the graphic design.
Icing on the Cake: Adding layers with acrylic paint to the candy pieces.
Final five selected photos of the candies at a teatime table setting.
Frozen in Time: Photography
For the photos, I wanted to capture the warmth of sitting down for teatime. The overgrown candies sat at the center of a mock table with Soviet-era teacups. Arranged outside as the sun was setting, I experimented with the table setting in the glow of the rays versus the muted glow in the shadows.
Ultimately, the selected photos that best communicated the desired coziness were in the sunlight, as it drenched the stitched table runner and lit up the vibrant colors, highlighting the ornamentation of every detail. For the composition of the shots, I toyed with the scale and perspective as I went in tighter or pulled back to capture all of the candies at once.
In the editing, I pushed up the warmth of the sunlight and the coolness of the shadows, and recreated a film look as if one were looking back on captured video memories. The resulting imagery became the foundation for the project's graphic applications.
Custom Ornamental Cyrillic Lettering
With recent experimenting with angular Russian Vyaz-inspired lettering, a cyrillic calligraphic style, I refined hand-drawn lettering reading "Candy", thin and wispy, that complements the bold color palette, patterns, and illustration and considers contrast in visual weight.
Carrying the handmade, human element from the paper mache pieces and the warm moment captured in the photos, I emphasized the roughness and imperfections of the otherwise fine lines, swirls, and gradients.
The first iteration felt too heavy against the artwork. I refined the letterforms and reduced their weight to create a lighter, more balanced relationship between the lettering and the sculptural forms.
Process Timelapse of Initial Lettering
Process Timelapse of Refined Lettering
Hitting the Sweet Spot
Reflecting on bringing together physical form, photography, and graphic design to create a luminous visual narrative, capturing the nostalgia and idealism embedded in these candy wrappers.
Developing a Visual Language (Eye Candy)
Rather than eliminating the imperfections of the handmade process, I incorporated the artwork's texture and materiality into the visual system. Close-up photography of the paper texture and layered brush strokes preserves the tactile quality of the pieces and adds depth to the graphic compositions. The layer of hand-drawn lettering preserves that imperfect texture, tying together the aspect of human connection as the primary motif.
