Diary of Ukraine

Ukraine is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year. Some may wonder if this is a significant anniversary or not, considering the country's youth and lack of experience. However, when it comes to individuals turning 30, we tend to view them as having already gone through many experiences, including achievements, doubts, challenging situations, and self-reflection.

Imagine personifying Ukraine and hearing stories about her life. In honor of Independence Day, we created a project to unite millions of people worldwide and share personal histories in a unique narrative. What would be written in Ukraine's personal diary? Let's turn on our imagination and find out.

Our mission was to discover the ideal format that would let every Ukrainian, regardless of location, feel a strong bond with their homeland. We aimed to help them rediscover the things they take pride in and relate to the stories that unfold. Our ultimate goal was to create an interactive experience that felt genuine and human, crafted with great care and warmth.

Our goal is to involve everyone in shaping our shared history. To achieve this, we created a unique pop-up book that can be crafted by hand, allowing people to contribute and build it themselves. This book can be made individually, with a child, as a family activity, or with a group of friends anywhere in the world.

We've made it easy for everyone to create their book with our downloadable page templates and pop-up mechanisms. Print them at home and follow our detailed video instructions on how to cut and glue the pieces together. We'll be there to guide you throughout the process, so making your very own book will be a breeze. Let's work together to write our collective history 🙂

The book Personal Diary of Ukraine is meant to be assembled by hand, whether you do it alone or with your loved ones and friends.

Here's what you'll need:

• Printed templates
• You can easily print the book templates at home using a color printer or have them professionally printed.
• It's best to use matte paper with a density of 200 gsm (grams per square meter). However, any paper with a thickness ranging from 160 to 240 gsm will work just fine. You can find the necessary paper at your local stationery store.
• Avoid using regular printer paper with a density of 80 gsm for the inner mechanisms, as it won't hold up well and may tear quickly. Instead, opt for a sturdier paper option.

40 cm metal ruler.

A utility knife or scalpel.

A cutting mat (a regular piece of cardboard will also suffice).

Double-sided tape, 1 cm and 2.5 cm wide.

Scissors — regular and manicure scissors.

A ballpoint stylus — for scoring paper on folds (a regular credit card can also be used for this).

A good mood 🙂

Symbols used on the templates:

Solid line: Indicates where to cut.

Dotted line: Indicates where to fold.

Line with dots: Indicates where to glue.

Tips:

Use a utility knife on a cutting mat to cut along the solid lines more easily.

You can also score the folding areas on the cutting mat.

When cutting out the mechanism details, it's best to use regular or manicure scissors

while holding the paper in your hands.

The project was created by the team of the creative agency Arriba!

Max Burtsev — Creative Director
Oleg Mysyagin — Executive Director
Olya Burtseva — Account Director
Yulia Gapon — Account Manager
Dasha Starko, Olya Shevchuk, Roma Hlebov — Copywriters
Yulia Razvenkova, Yevgeny Babanin, Dima Alimov — Designers
Natasha Kuzmina — Craft Designer
Meriam Yol — Producer
Pasha Itkin — DoP, Photographer
Nastya Ivanchenko, Vlad Torsky — Strategists
Olya Pomeranska — Office Manager
Zhaba — Arriba’s cat

Special thanks to:

Svetlana Razvenkova for correcting the text of the book
Oleksandr Nagorny for help in writing the hand-written texts
Nina Ivanivna Tikhova for inspiration and help
Dmytro Rastvortsev for the Kyiv Type font
Museum of Childhood (Kharkiv) for providing props for shooting a promotional video
Baggage School of Marketing and Communications for providing a place to shoot a promotional video
Denys Halushka for help in filming the video
Hleb Lunaev for his help in shooting the promo video
Taisia Shevchenko for participating in the filming of the promotional video
Yulia Yermakova for voicing the promo video