ZHANNA SMETANA
Brand Identity, 2025
Brand Identity, 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.
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)
ROLE: Visual identity, art direction, graphic design
CLIENT: Zhanna Smetana
TYPEFACE: Euclid Circular A, Euclid Mono Vanguard (Swisstypefaces)
