Orest Pidlisetskyi, Head of the Design Department at Svidomi, joined the design of a new visual style for the Armed Forces of Ukraine

The communication strategy of the Armed Forces of Ukraine for 2023 was approved on February 22 - the Commander-in-Chief's Advisor on Strategic Communications, Liudmyla Dolhonovska.

Orest Pidlisetskyi developed the visual communication templates.

"My main task was to develop templates that would perform two functions:

1) visually simple and readable for anyone who would see them on social media.

2) understandable and easy to use for anyone who would create them," says Pidlisetskyi.

The idea of the visual style belongs to graphic designer Taras Ishchyk, who joined the Territorial Defence Forces before the full-scale invasion and is now a soldier with the 103rd Brigade. 

"The first thing you might think is that such things as identity and design are unnecessary in the Armed Forces - they don't shoot, they don't physically destroy the enemy. But we shouldn't forget that we live in a period of information warfare, and the army that will bring victory to the entire democratic world should look its best," says Ishchyk. 

The designer explains that the design code is embedded with symbols that have a historical background: The Military Trident, the basis of the visual style, and the trident of the first cadre army of the Ukrainian People's Republic. 

"Such design systems exist in all modern armies and allow us to communicate more effectively and clearly with civilian audiences, to build a high-quality brand of the Armed Forces of a country. We need to build and develop our own, to become an example for others. Therefore, there are no unimportant details for the Armed Forces of Ukraine," says the designer. 

Ishchyk began to develop the concept and involved Dmytro Rastvortsev, who created a unique font, and Orest Pidlisetskyi, who was responsible for digital design. The team worked on a voluntary basis.

"The most difficult thing was probably to redesign the daily reports of Russian army casualties. It also coincided with the time when I was redesigning the same template for Svidomi. It was also important not to repeat myself," recalls the head of the design department at Svidomi.

The Ukrainian Armed Forces are already using the new visual style.

Source: Presentation of the Ukrainian Armed Forces identity (photo: Kostantin Liberov)