Building a bomb shelter should never have been in any agency’s office plans, but the daily truth in Ukraine makes that a necessity. And for Polina Blyzniuk, catching up on work in a shelter has become a comfortable alternative to refreshing her phone for bad news. 

“Even when there’s an air alert, it’s easier to pass that time when you have your laptop with you,” said the art director at Ukrainian agency Bickerstaff.734. When asked how she maintains motivation during wartime, she stressed that the work distraction is a consistent source of solace.

With the war in Ukraine dragging through its second year after the Feb. 24, 2022 invasion by Russia, agencies like Bickerstaff.734 are still making tough choices on how to deal with the ongoing conflict while settling into what daily life is like in Kyiv and beyond. As of June, The Kyiv Post reported that Ukraine’s capital has had some 380 alerts, or an average of two per day, in 2023.

Independent creative agency Bickerstaff.734, which now has a presence in both Portugal and Ukraine, has lived through a lot in its short existence. It was founded in 2020 by Ilia Anufrienko, 32, as the pandemic was sweeping the globe, and it created award-winning work in the window before the war began. Many of the agency’s projects are now in direct opposition to Russia, and when asked if that defiant rhetoric makes him fearful, Anufrienko assured that “everything that we feared has already happened.” 

The 22 employees at Bickerstaff, with an average age of only 25 years old, spoke with Adweek about their ongoing struggles during the war, but also their successes and their unyielding optimism for the future.

Getting on the map before the war 

While half its professional lifespan has been marked by unprovoked conflict, Bickerstaff has earned its share of recent awards, thanks to its smart campaigns that combine “Ukrainian creativity” with efforts to improve the morale of the country during wartime.

One of Bickerstaff.734’s first pre-war projects was branding for Khortytsia, a historic island in the middle of the Dnipro River in the embattled city of Zaporizhzhia. The agency wanted to highlight all of the reasons to visit Khortytsia, but decided to make it a mystery. It utilized an “X” sign to symbolize that mystery while encouraging visitors to find their own stories about the island. The entire agency headed to Zaporizhzhia and “explored every corner” to create over 200 creative directions, according to Anufrienko. The project went on to win multiple awards, including one from Cannes Lions, D&AD, Epica Awards and other international creativity festivals, along with numerous mentions in local and foreign media. 

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