Slavimir Stojanovic: Beauty and the beast

Graphis, Nov/Dec 2001 by Dzamic, Lazar

Anthropologists, social scientists, historians, media experts and psychologists, not to mention linguists-who had readily coined "balkanization" as an expression for splitting an organic whole into smaller pieces-have had a unique opportunity in the last 15 years. That is, to observe a European society-once the most advanced within the communist political paradigm-falling apart. A real, live laboratory with 20 million subjects, bursting with all sorts of anti-civilizational behaviors. There were many witnesses, willing or unwilling, of that indigestible cocktail of half-consciousness, emotional immaturity and pure ignorance known in the black chronicles of world media as the "Yugoslav situation."

Serbia, now a sovereign country, was once the easternmost and largest republic of the former Yugoslavia. In a deeply politicized society, such as Serbia, everything can have a political meaning: words, pictures or even music. Surprisingly enough, it is a place which, until recently, stimulated ugliness and baser instincts, while encouraging a state-Mafia controlled economy to impose isolation and pure physical force as proof of its competence. Yet, Serbia has always had a small but vital stream of visual masters keeping the flame of innovation alive. Fighting visual (and real) death all around them, design was an antidote to decay. The delivery of top-notch, stylish and wellcrafted works have had a therapeutic effect for artists and followers, replacing mass-marketed visual "escapism" of, say, Sony's PlayStation in developed countries. And this, in part, is due to the lack of money to afford such toys.

The undisputed hero of the Serbian design scene in the last 10 years is Slavimir Stojanovic (pronounced "Sto-ya-no-vich"), a dynamic and sophisticated art director responsible for raising the standards not just in his native country, but in Eastern and Central European advertising as a whole. A keen soccer player with almost professional-level skills (at times torn apart over whether he should leave design to pursue a sports career), Stojanovic blossomed as the chief art director at S. Team Bates Saatchi & Saatchi Balkans in Belgrade. Being by far the largest advertising agency in the region-with a strong creative culture and a fanatic mission to push the boundaries of artistic influence on advertising in a highly non-commercial market-S Team was a perfect window to showcase his ideas. Several big-name, international clients offered the agency a substantial budget, allowing Stojanovic to work without pressure and to have creative control over his ideas. All of this led to a steady stream of work that literally transformed Serbian graphic design and advertising. It also reaped a rich crop of major international ad and design awards (over 150), making him one of the most lauded designers in Central Europe. Stojanovic is, perhaps, best known for his Radio B92 logo, the leading independent radio station in Serbia, for which he has, twice, received the MTV Free Your Mind award.

The impact Stojanovic has produced in the ex-Yugoslav region is multifold. His portfolio was, first, a mirror to international trends. With a focus on mature and sophisticated imagery, he got rid of local advertising's heavy copy and hard sell approach inherited from excommunist times. Instead of reasoning a consumer to submission, his ads hit heavily on a symbolic level, triggering a beauty nerve with a purely visual composition that was often based on a pun or a paradox. He's a master of this symbol-based approach and what is often referred to as no-copy advertising-best seen in the Sony Walkman campaign (pg. 143), awarded best print in Saatchi worldwide network in 1998. Sometimes, his work appeared to be mood pieces without proper scripts-difficult to explain to someone who wouldn't have seen them. And yet, one look at it and even the most advertising-illiterate, socialist, managing directors-with whom Stojanovic has had to deal with as clients-admitted that there was something to it.

Secondly, he opened doors to the modern use of typography in Serbian design by choosing type carefully, introducing some hip fonts for the first time and considering type not just a conveyor of a verbal meaning but as a crucial part of a visual definition. He also admits to being influenced by Mirko Ilic, Paul Rand, Tibor Kalman and Woody Pirtle, but remains somewhat critical of David Carson. Speaking of which: Stojanovic and a group of fellow designers did a series of posters announcing the famous designer's visit to Belgrade. Made and placated as a series of questions and answers to their internal cues-and establishing something that might be called the "epistolary poster" form-the exercise provoked some publicity for all the participants.

As a result of consistently ground-breaking work, Stojanovic has built a cult status both within the industry and in artistic circles, and at the same time, become an internal Serbian benchmark for gauging quality design. No one serious enough would think of submitting anything abroad unless it matches his standards. He became a handy, almost in-house, measuring device on what's considered quality in the world of design. Western designers had magazines; Serbian designers had Stojanovic.