Annet Shubina is a young designer working across visual storytelling, illustration and poster design. Her practice is rooted in the idea that graphic communication can do more than deliver information: it can establish an atmosphere, shape perception and become part of the cultural experience itself. This approach is particularly evident in her work for festivals, cultural programmes and independent projects, where the visual identity has to exist simultaneously as a functional system and as an expressive, self-contained world.
One of the most telling examples of this approach is her identity for Northside Festival in Ankara, an independent music and arts festival bringing together experimental musicians, illustrators and contemporary artists. Rather than treating the festival identity as a collection of promotional assets, Shubina approached the project as an opportunity to construct a visual language capable of reflecting the openness and eclecticism of the programme.
n 2025 and 2024, Shubina was commissioned to develop the festival’s visual identity across a broad range of applications, from posters and social media graphics to environmental signage and merchandise. The challenge was therefore not simply to create a striking poster, but to develop a system that could remain recognisable while adapting to different scales, formats and contexts.
It is within this broader system that Shubina’s posters become particularly interesting. They operate not only as announcements of an event, but as independent visual statements—images designed to attract attention, communicate the character of the festival and invite the viewer into its atmosphere before the event has even begun.
The main festival poster became the core of the campaign, while other smaller compositions were made for the promotion through Instagram posts, artist line-up and programmes. In addition, Shubina created stickers and T-shirts from elements of the main poster, adding another dimension to the design identity.
This is one of the most intriguing things about Shubina’s posters. At the times when it is possible to come up with the graphics of any festival with the same ingredients — bold sans-serif font, gradients, 3D objects and well-controlled colour palette — the designs created by Shubina seem more personal. She doesn’t seem to be very concerned with achieving perfection in design.
Instead, she allows herself to leave some elements of the process visible in her compositions. The fact that she is working with hand-made drawings also plays into this aspect. Her approach is closer to traditional graphics and printing than to computerised modern posters.
For Shubina, the task of the project is not limited to the creation of a strong poster, but the formation of its own visual language, which would help the artist to convey the idea of the event from the very announcement until its execution. The same visual solution must work equally well on a large poster, on a smartphone screen, in a programme, on a sign, and even on a T-shirt.
However, in such freedom, it is also quite easy to see some of the drawbacks in the projects by the author. Composition of some posters is overloaded, several thoughts compete for the viewer’s attention. Typography, although expressive, may often be difficult to perceive due to its nonstandard form, especially when seen from afar. That is an important aspect for any festival poster: the image must attract the visitor’s attention and give practical information at the same time.