Fifty/Fifty | Project dedicated to 24 May
2026.05.20
Exhibition project of students and lecturers in the Department of Poster and Visual Communication at the National Academy of Art in Sofia and its Burgas Branch on the occasion of 24 May – Day of the Holy Brothers Cyril and Methodius, of the Bulgarian Alphabet, Education and Culture and of Slavic Literature
The traditional exhibition project of the students of the Department of Poster and Visual Communication, dedicated to 24 May, this year is in direct symbiosis with the International Student Competition Fifty/Fifty 2026, organised by the Association Typographique Internationale. The participants responded to the challenge to design one letter in accordance with the competition regulations and this was an occasion for them to discover essential connections between the individual, national and global aspects of the font.
Primary and spontaneous memories of a warm and happy childhood, of community, belonging, security, home comfort; of the people who are dear to us… Or of some events that have shaped us (directly or indirectly) as who we are… Expressing all that with the help of the letters we grew up with is not only a way to share emotions with others – it is above all a path to ourselves, to our roots and to what each of us really is.
Fifty/Fifty 2026 unites students from different cultures who use their writing systems in a shared exhibition format and create a global typography field of diverse scripts and design approaches. Each depicted glyph belongs to a specific written structure and is subject to proportion, rhythm, spacing, balance and emotion. The participants design a letter from their own script, which is an association to a place, language, culture, personal history or simply a memory of home. Each idea becomes a typographic expression of identity and belonging within the global network of scripts.
The project and the competition involvey 3rd-year students of the Department of Poster and Visual Communication (Sofia and Burgas Branch). The final exhibition features the designs of doctoral students and lecturers from the Department, as well as one student studying under the Erasmus+ programme.
The leaders and coordinators of the exhibition project are Prof. Christina Borissova, PhD, and the doctoral student Lyuboslav Boyanov.