Serbian graphic designer
When I saw Jovan Rocanov I couldn’t understand which of my friends and acquaintances he resembled and why. After learning about his Serbian origins I immediately recognized in his appearance and manner of speech traits common to Zivota, one of my Serb friends. As in my talks with the latter, I and Jovan couldn’t omit the themes of languages, culture and outlook peculiar of Serbs and Ukrainians.
“My expectations about Ukraine came true and much more,” Jovan smiled recalling the time when he was invited by his friend Anze Jereb to work in the companies Kensu and Kaffeine about two years ago. Due to the fact that Serbia is a post-Yugoslavian country that belonged to the communist camp for a generation, many of things were understandable to Jovan during his period adaption to Ukraine. Moreover, closeness of Serbian and Ukrainian mentality and language made it easier for him to get used to life in Kyiv as compared to his former experiences in the USA, Hong-Kong, and post-Yugoslavian countries Bosnia and Slovenia. Another characteristic that draws Jovan to Ukraine is its quickly developing market and the constant “stresses and speed, the ability to improve all the time,” he noted.
That ability to improve, as Jovan said, arises not only out of the country’s advantages but of its disadvantages too. Take for example the absence a design and advertisement heritage and the absence of professionals in fast developing business spheres. Though it’s hard to work sometimes, Jovan has already conducted several training courses on branding for marketing directors and developing new ideas in design and advertisement. The gap in the education of young designers, according to Jovan, first and foremost in typography, which occupies the major part of designing process.
However I was stunned to learn that designers and marketing directors in Ukraine also need educated clients and consumers. “Creatives (meaning advertising and design professionals) think that it (advertising) should be nice, it should be some kind of art, while clients have their specific need to sell the service or product, here is the clash,” Jovan said about the main difficulty in building bridges with their clients.
On the other hand, people, the consumers, are still not used to buying and using anything new. Breaking this bias is one of the projects on which Jovan is working now. In one of their projects they “used quotes about bad predictions – even old ones about impermanence of television and radio,” he started on the explanation, “Most people don’t want to rely on new technologies – they are suspicious or they think it’s not the right time but we try to blow away all these prejudices,” Jovan said, revealing that the project will incorporate fresh advertising technologies.
Regarding Jovan’s work portfolio, he has worked for Kaffeine client Jeans for two years and Kensu clients Gorenje and Tetra Pack. With sister agency Skazka, in collaboration with industrial product designer Ora Ito, they launched the much talked about Gorenje advertising campaign. In the latter project, Jovan was responsible for banner advertisement organization.
As Jovan said, during the two years he has spent in Kyiv, the situation has significantly changed; for example many clubs and restaurants with innovative interior and architectural design have appeared. Yet the service, unfortunately, still remains on a low level. “In Serbia and all former Yugoslavia countries if you pay alot in a restaurant you receive the highest service,” adding that this is due to the lack of a chefs’ culture in Ukraine.
Jovan himself is fond of the Georgian and Italian restaurants Khinkali and Pantagruel, while saying the recently opened eatery Muka was a pleasant surprise due to the absence of “those annoying plasma TV sets.” With regard to local hang-outs, he prefers the less glamorous Xlib Club that tends to become an underground place and hosts some parties and projects designed by Jovan himself. “All the clubs like Barsky or Tsar Project have as the target audience, people who have money and don’t give a damn about culture,” he sharply marked.
Along with creating new projects and going to the movies Jovan is also real fan of heraldry studies. Proving this he told me a really interesting story about the origins of Ukrainian coat of arms. Unlike West European coat of arms, on which animals and birds of prey are usually placed, Ukraine’s contains the stylization of a signature of one of the Kyivska Rus kings. “In the Middle Ages European nobility was uneducated that’s why they used pictographs on their coats of arms, and here we already see a signature,” shared Jovan excitedly.
