Geometric mischief: Elya Akateva’s posters prove how much you can do with the default

There’s a playfulness to Elya Akateva’s posters, and the way they bend the the flatness of digital type design; they burst expectations of what graphic design should look like. “Posters are my primary and beloved medium,” says Elya. “I treat them as containers for thought rather than announcements.” Challenging the authority of language through what some may call ‘low-brow’ digital typography, Elya’s posters become terrains of fascinating shapes that are defined by their digitality. Perfect angles, hard lines, computerised gradient and bevel effects are all used to inspire curiosity and humour. Letters and meanings are sometimes dissolved into an amusing, textureless languor – other times they mutate into a formidable physicality.

“I like structures that break and accidentally reassemble into something new and systems that glitch into poetry,” says Elya. In one poster, Elya incorporates a hilariously frank ‘Untitled’ text box, toying with the idea of the digital default, systematic fonts, automatic leading – Elya forces the viewer to recognise that she is always working from the starting point, smashing it and glueing it back together to create new bodies of forward-thinking graphic design. “In my work, letters are not neutral carriers of meaning but active participants,” says Elya. “I see language as a system that can be broken apart and reassembled – liberated from its original function.” From patchwork orgies of shapes, created from manipulated line and selection tools, to experimentations in minimalism and geometric mischief – Elya’s posters contain the thoughts of a well needed prankster.