Enjoy Sara-jevo

In 1985, three graduates from the Sarajevo faculty of fine arts formed the design team TRIO Sarajevo. The group created designs for bands, theatre companies and art and culture-based magazines.

“In April 1992 the Bosnian war began, and Sarajevo was besieged. Despite the obvious hardships of life in a city under siege for two and a half years, and although they had many opportunities to continue work outside Bosnia-Herzegovina, TRIO opted to remain in Sarajevo throughout the war. Faced with a market suddenly reduced to a 3km wide stretch of a city under siege, TRIO have nonetheless continued to earn a living as commercial designers, receiving payment for their work in food, cigarettes and (occasionally) small amounts of money. During the war TRIO have managed to assemble a computerised design office put together from various components which were borrowed or begged from friends and colleagues in Sarajevo.... In addition to their regular work, TRIO have also invested a great deal of time putting together a collection of graphic art aimed at raising awareness of the plight of their city throughout Europe. The work which has made them famous in western capitals is based on a series of reworkings of well-known advertising and pop-art images, such as the logos for Speilberg’s Jurassic Park, Coca-Cola, Absolut Vodka, Warhol’s famous Campbell’s Soup, and satirical adaptations of famous posters, such as Monroe’s Some Like it Hot, Your Country Needs You, Wake Up America!, Munch’s Scream, and many more.”

From The Design Group - TRIO SARAJEVO. The visual formula is direct and simplistic, but according to “Ironic Postcards from a City at War” the intent is to inject notice of the crisis into Western pop culture, to attach new associations to strongly recognized brands. My favorite is not one that uses the commercial brands, it is the stamp the group designed in 1995 with an image of one of destroyed post office buildings:

Found via OpenDemocracy