Heorhii Narbut is one of the most prominent Ukrainian graphic artists. This story of this art monograph begins before Narbut’s death. The best-known experts were invited to participate and contribute articles. But the Soviet censors “trimmed” the texts to their liking. When it was finally published in 1933, nearly all the authors had been repressed or executed. The anthology was destroyed in the printing house. Only two incomplete copies remain. Even the original cover of the book is lost.

So the first edition was 1000 copies with 1000 of collectible covers. A huge variety of cover illustrations have been generated using the specially created algorithm. The algorithm randomly composed compositions from author's works, varying their size, position and quantity. After that, the best ones were manually selected by the designers, and were printed digitally.

As a result, hundreds of readers got involved in an unplanned flash mob: they posted photos of their covers on social networks.

https://narbutxxi.rodovid.net/en/book.html

Sasha Bychenko

Oleksii Salnykov