Title	THE ENDLESS LETTER: WEB EXPERIENCE
Brand	RT
Product/Service	CULTURAL WEBSITE
Category	B07. Use of Digital Platforms
Entrant	RT CREATIVE LAB Moscow, RUSSIA
Idea Creation	RT CREATIVE LAB Moscow, RUSSIA
Media Placement	RT CREATIVE LAB Moscow, RUSSIA
PR	RT CREATIVE LAB Moscow, RUSSIA
Production	RT CREATIVE LAB Moscow, RUSSIA
Post Production	RT CREATIVE LAB Moscow, RUSSIA

Name	Company	Position
Kirill Karnovich-Valua	RT Creative Lab	Creative Director, Idea
Gleb Burashov	RT Creative Lab	Social Media Strategy
Ivor Crotty	RT Creative Lab	Producer
Ania Fedorova	RT Creative Lab	Producer
Ivan Fursov	RT Creative Lab	Researcher
Lilly Kazakova	RT Creative Lab	PR
Ekaterina Kulikova	Red Collar	Producer
Denis Lomov	Red Collar	Creative Director of the Web Design Team
Maxim Makarychev	N/A	Music
Elena Medvedeva	RT Creative Lab	Producer
Ekaterina Motyakina	RT Creative Lab	Producer
Eldar Salamov	RT Creative Lab	Producer, Video Edit, Music
Revaz Todua	RT Creative Lab	Art Director
Margo Tskhovrebova	RT Creative Lab	Manager

Why is this work relevant for Media?

Digital media is a modern and universal language that the youths fluently speak today. Therefore, we thought that on the 75th anniversary of the end of World War 2, it was important that we should try to talk about its legacy in the language of interactive web experiences. The objective behind the project is not only to commemorate the veterans using innovative web development tools but to also remind the world what a terrible price has been paid for the most deadly war in history.

Background

Between 1941 and 1945, over 10 billion letters were posted and delivered in the USSR. To mark Victory Day celebrating the defeat of Nazi Germany, we researched a unique collection of 7,000 war-time letters stored for decades in family archives. From hundreds of emotional quotes, we created an “endless” flow of digital letters on a 3D canvas where stories of real people are given new life through interactive digital experiences. “Endless Letter” is a unique graphic series featuring hundreds of excerpts from original WW2 front-line letters with illustrations created by young design students. The triangular design resembles a historical fact - due to lack of envelopes and paper, soldiers folded pages of text into triangles; it was also easier to keep unsent letters uncrumpled in uniform pockets during battles. Letters from military schools, from the front line, from abandoned homes, some filled with hope, some carrying cherished last words.

Describe the creative idea / insights (30% of vote)

From thousands of such letters, we carefully selected piercing quotes to create an engaging web experience featuring a specially designed typeface. Every written symbol used in quotes is a precise copy of handwriting inscribed by victorious WW2 veterans on the Reichstag walls in 1945. “Endless Letter” web experience is an emotional bridge between today’s peace and the horrific times of war when, against all odds, people loved, dreamed, experienced faith and anxiety. With “Endless Letter” our objective was to link the generations by narrative and visual means, with the hope that our contemporaries and descendants will understand why this page of history should never be repeated.

Describe the strategy (20% of vote)

"Endless Letter" adapts historical WW2 family letters to an illustrative web narrative, giving these emotional artifacts a new life in digital space. Through this website, we wanted young people to ‘experience’ the sacrifices and struggles of millions to bring peace to their homeland by communicating the story in a simple yet striking audio-visual format. Curated short lines with illustrations transfer the emotional essence of those tragic times into the present. This project is about the fate of an ordinary person. A soldier. A wife. A mother. A child. A father. It is a story of families who had to face such a horrid burden - a story about millions of people who lived and died during the Second World War. One can only truly understand the full scale through emotional experience: through personal stories. And there is nothing more personal than letters.

Describe the execution (20% of vote)

The letters are displayed alongside a fixed range of objects: text, imagery, and a special particle system to create the atmosphere. The website features a range of effects that will appear depending on the context of an opened letter: raindrops, thunderstorms, fireflies, snowflakes, machine-gun bursts, sparks of flames. Human silhouettes that appear on screen after hovering on a letter as if from a mist or a cloud of smoke, are images of real people from that time cut out from archive photos. One of the biggest challenges was to create a realistic, almost photographic, motion of triangles (floating in a 3D space, shadows and angle changes upon hover, digital unfolding on-screen). We implemented a number of special algorithms to make the movement look realistic. For example, mathematical turbulence algorithms were used in modeling snowflakes and flames. Lighting effects enabled us to make the scenes more natural.

List the results (30% of vote)

The innovative approach paid off with the website being recognized by the world's most respectful communities of web developers. It was praised with "Website of the Day" honors by The FWA and The CCS Design platforms, also snatching top accolades from the Awwwards community (snatching Website of the Day, Developer Award and Mobile Excellence honors). The Endless Letter website became a final element of more-than-a-year-long digital project #VictoryPages which attracted almost 40 million impressions, 300,000 engagements and interactions, and over 4 million video views and page loads.