ZHANNA SMETANA / 2025
Client
Zhanna Smetana is a product photographer and visual consultant working with brands on intuitive, set-driven shoots. She reads a brief in seconds and acts faster than most people can describe what they want — but the work behind the speed is precisely structured. The brand had to hold both sides at once: the intuition and the discipline.
Assignment
Build a personal identity for a photographer whose practice resists the usual photographer-portfolio defaults — minimal serif logo, oversized hero image, restraint as aesthetic. Zhanna's work is faster and more constructed than that. The identity needed to behave like her: structured underneath, intuitive on the surface.
Solution & Process
The grid is the foundation — a literal reference to the set-design grids Zhanna builds her shoots around. Everything sits inside it; nothing floats free. Against that structure, the typography pulls the other way: a monospace face that should read as technical, but is cut sharply enough to feel playful, almost handwritten in places. The zs monogram works on the same logic — z stacked over s, joined by a single line, reading at once as a ligature, a numeral 3, and a handwritten z depending on how you approach it. A lightning bolt picks up the speed in her process: not as decoration, but as a second mark, used where the wordmark would be too much. Across applications — business cards, social, web, set visuals — the system stays consistent: grid holds, monospace speaks, monogram or bolt signs off.
Client
Zhanna Smetana is a product photographer and visual consultant working with brands on intuitive, set-driven shoots. She reads a brief in seconds and acts faster than most people can describe what they want — but the work behind the speed is precisely structured. The brand had to hold both sides at once: the intuition and the discipline.
Assignment
Build a personal identity for a photographer whose practice resists the usual photographer-portfolio defaults — minimal serif logo, oversized hero image, restraint as aesthetic. Zhanna's work is faster and more constructed than that. The identity needed to behave like her: structured underneath, intuitive on the surface.
Solution & Process
The grid is the foundation — a literal reference to the set-design grids Zhanna builds her shoots around. Everything sits inside it; nothing floats free. Against that structure, the typography pulls the other way: a monospace face that should read as technical, but is cut sharply enough to feel playful, almost handwritten in places. The zs monogram works on the same logic — z stacked over s, joined by a single line, reading at once as a ligature, a numeral 3, and a handwritten z depending on how you approach it. A lightning bolt picks up the speed in her process: not as decoration, but as a second mark, used where the wordmark would be too much. Across applications — business cards, social, web, set visuals — the system stays consistent: grid holds, monospace speaks, monogram or bolt signs off.
YEAR
2025
ROLE
Visual identity, art direction, graphic design
CLIENT
Zhanna Smetana
TYPEFACE
Euclid Circular A, Euclid Mono Vanguard (Swisstypefaces)
2025
ROLE
Visual identity, art direction, graphic design
CLIENT
Zhanna Smetana
TYPEFACE
Euclid Circular A, Euclid Mono Vanguard (Swisstypefaces)
photographs you want to get stuck in" — copy from Zhanna's brand
