Baking soda by Bashkir Soda Company
This pack of baking soda as sold in Russia and previously in the USSR has a recognizable design and is considered just as iconic as the packaging designs for salt, sugar and Indian tea. The manufacturer is the Bashkir Soda Company, located in the city of Sterlitamak in the Republic of Bashkortostan, Russian Federation. Today T-shirts and various other items not related to the food industry are being produced with a similar design. The product is still being sold with minor changes to the packaging design.
There are three main types of design: the one used during Soviet times, a Russian one, and a more recent redesign. In the USSR design, the product name “СОДА” is in a Cyrillic version of a French Clarendon. Italiennes Étroites comes close in terms of proportions and the low bar in A. It’s unclear if this is lettering or a typeface. The text “натрий двууглекислый” (“sodium bicarbonate”) is written in the typeface Zhurnalnaya Roublennaya, which is a Cyrillic extension of Erbar-Grotesk.
Already in the 1990s – after the collapse of the USSR – the package was redesigned. The product name “Сода Пищевая” (“baking soda”) now is shown in Erika, a Cyrillic version of Eras. Secondary text is in Arial and sometimes in Akzidenz-Grotesk Condensed Bold.
The USSR package from 1980 (left) compared to the redesigned one from 2018 (right)
