Ukrainian Artbook Wins Silver at European Design Awards
The Ukrainian art book Zagrava by illustrator Serhii Maidukov (published by ist publishing) won the silver award at the European Design Awards 2025 in the “Book Illustration” category.
The Gaze reports on this with reference to Chytomo.
The art book “Zagrava” documents experiences from early February 2022, when Russia's large-scale invasion of Ukraine began, to the massive shelling in May 2023.
“In more than 50 illustrations, Serhii Maidukov recreates the events of a year and a half of full-scale war, working with various media: pencil, ink, paper, and tablet. The visual publication is based on images from Serhii Maidukov's weekly column for the German publication Zeit Magazin. The art book is also supplemented with black-and-white sketches and drawings that expand the narrative. Thus, drawings that work with private reflection are transformed into pages of a large-scale war: the first strikes on Kyiv, the defense of Bakhmut, daily shelling of the country in the spring of 2023, and the changes taking place in cities and people,” the annotation reads.
The publication also includes a conversation between journalist Oleksii Tarasov and Serhii Maidukov, which is a kind of continuation of their dialogue from the first art book KYIV by Serhii Maidukov, published in 2021.
Sergei Maidukov is an illustrator from Kyiv. His clients include Google, Adobe, the Royal Academy of Dance, Kyiv Central Department Store, and other brands and corporations. He collaborates with foreign magazines and media outlets, including The New Yorker, The Guardian, The Wall Street Journal, and The Financial Times. Maidukov has also illustrated several books, including “The Shot Renaissance” (Osnovy), 2001: A Space Odyssey (Moppet Books), and is the author of the art book KYIV by Serhii Maidukov. Some of his illustrations are stored in the Library of Congress (USA).
The European Design Awards (ED-Awards) competition is one of the main annual European events in the field of communication design. It was created as a joint initiative of leading European design publications and the International Council of Design ico-D (Icograda). The ED-Awards was founded in 2007, and each year the awards ceremony and design festival takes place in a different European city.
This year's awards ceremony took place on June 7 in Ljubljana.
Only designers from Europe are eligible to participate in the competition. Every year, specialists from 50 countries take part in the competition.
As The Gaze reported earlier, four design projects from Ukraine — Sivak+Partners, Yod Group, Balbek Bureau, and ISTO — were shortlisted for the prestigious Best of Year Awards 2023.