Design for Represii.net website

Represii.net is a service which provides access to the database of Belarusian citizens who were persecuted during the Soviet times

The virtual museum of communism-period repressions is a site which hosts photos, video interviews and audio stories of people who suffered during the so-called “overzealous actions”, copies of documents and maps of places connected with repressions in Belarus, family stories and a lot of other materials collected over the five years of hard work. The website of this project simply had to be non-trivial but at the same time it had to be extremely convenient because the resource provides the search for persecuted relatives, repression stories and feedback forms – these things do not tolerate any violations of usability rules.

Graphically sharp barbed wire and the dramatic character of the main illustration add to the tragedy and tension

To meet this objective, the studio decided to use the traditional architecture of the website and to base the original visual appearance on the contrast between rigid geometric figures and real photos of that period. Important things are emphasized by means of the orange and red Crayola which contrasts with the general monochrome appearance. Each section of the museum has its own distinctive “introduction” which briefly describes the display. The layout, programming and content were provided by the customer.