"Graphit" is a Nizhny Novgorod web studio that has been operating since 1998: OOO "Informatsionno-reklamnoye agentstvo 'Graphit'" (Information and Advertising Agency "Graphit" LLC), INN 5260078777, OGRN 1025203052269 [1]. Its website graphit.ru was registered on May 14, 1999, and is still online. The studio built the websites of Nizhny Novgorod's authorities — City Duma, the Regional Government, the Legislative Assembly, and the Presidential Plenipotentiary Representative in the Volga Federal District — and collects all of its work on its own website management system, TreeGraph [2]. By 2026, the homepage carries a counter: "we have created more than 300 projects" [3].

Who they are

The studio described itself briefly: "Founded in Nizhny Novgorod in 1998 by a group of highly qualified specialists in computer design and programming, today the Graphit company is one of the leaders of the Russian web technology market" [4]. In 2001 it called itself something different — "Graphit ::: advertising and information agency" [5], and that name has remained in its full legal name to this day [1].

The earliest works in its portfolio are dated before the founding: Redline — December 25, 1997, the Nizhny Novgorod University Internet Center — January 30, 1998, 2D-Studio — November 29, 1998 [2]. That is, the studio's people were working online even before it existed as a company; the legal entity was registered on December 31, 2002 [1].

The studio's office was located at 14 Gagarin Avenue, and later moved to 5 Studenaya Street [4][3].

Websites of Nizhny Novgorod's authorities

The main thing for which Grafit entered the history of the Nizhny Novgorod internet was government contracts. Its portfolio gives exact dates for them: the Nizhny Novgorod City Duma — November 28, 2001; the Government of Nizhny Novgorod Region — September 20, 2002; the Union of Right Forces faction in the State Duma — September 1, 2003; the Regional Legislative Assembly — April 1, 2004; the State Archival Service of Nizhny Novgorod Region — November 21, 2006 [2].

The same list includes the Federal Tax Ministry (MNS) office for Nizhny Novgorod Region (February 14, 2001), the interregional territorial office of the Ministry of Property Relations for the Volga Federal District (January 27, 2002), "Economic Development and Investment of the Volga Federal District" (January 20, 2002), the administration of Balakhninsky District (July 1, 2005), and the internet conference of mayors (May 28, 2001) [2].

Its most prominent work was the website of the Presidential Plenipotentiary Envoy in the Volga Federal District. The second version of the site was presented on November 13, 2006, at the "Volga Region PR Summit" at the Nizhny Novgorod Yarmarka by the envoy himself, Alexander Konovalov. As the studio's news item reported, he noted that the site had previously been "drier and purely informational in character," while now the sections had become more varied, an "Exclusive Commentary" had appeared in the form of a regular column, and through the posted photographs visitors "will be able to see for themselves how beautiful our district is" [6].

Press, telecommunications, and banks

The second big cluster of orders was media. In 1999 the studio built "Infonet. All the News from Nizhny!" (July 19), "Nizhegorodskiye NOVOSTI" (July 20), Nizhny Novgorod Yellow Pages" (November 20), the Nizhny Novgorod news service (November 21), and "Moskovsky Komsomolets in Nizhny" (September 10) [2]. Then came the publishing house Ekstra N and its electronic newspaper (2000), Radio Prestige (November 3, 2000), NTA-Privolzhye (June 21, 2002), the Nizhny Novgorod Telegraph Agency (October 6, 2003), NIA "Nizhny Novgorod" and "AiF Nizhny Novgorod" (2006), as well as five Moscow magazines of the Image-Media publishing house [2].

In telecommunications and information technology, the studio's clients included VolgaTelecom (August 20, 2003) and its high-speed access brand "J" (May 18, 2006), Ecophone (September 20, 2002), the paging company "Raduga-Poisk" (December 28, 1999), the Volga Telecommunications Association, the Orbita IT park (April 18, 2006), as well as CJSC Start Telecom and its Volga branch (October 2006) [2].

Banks and finance: Yarmarochny Bank (April 24, 2000), Avtogazbank, ROSBANKVOLGA, Borsky Commercial Bank, and the city's first credit bureau, "Povolzhye" (May 23, 2006) [2].

Connection with the provider NIS and the nino.ru domain

Nizhny Novgorod Information Networks" has been listed in the studio's portfolio as a client since July 5, 1999, and the provider's own project "NIS-REVUE" since April 13, 2001 [2]. The studio did not belong to the provider: they were partners, and the partnership is visible in where the sites it built were hosted.

The provider hosted most of its early work on its own domain, nino.ru: "Terra Incognita" (April 1, 1999), Nina Pributkovskaya's page (September 2, 1999), the site about the photographer Karelin (April 2, 1999), Partnership Council" (March 20, 2000), Vadim Rybakov's page (September 13, 2000), Student Campus" (July 7, 2000), Chudilnik" (February 25, 2001), and the TreeGraph demonstration (November 26, 2001) [2]. This explains the "Graphit studio" credit in the service field of these pages' markup, and the "Graphit Server" heading on the school project.

The portfolio also includes other names familiar from that domain: the trading house "76oil-NN" (December 1, 1999), whose pages were kept in the provider's client directory; the Velocity shop-salon (March 18, 2004) from the list of the city's bicycle shops; and the companies "MyasnovY" and "Otdokhni" (December 8, 2004), in whose chain's store the video rental on Marshala Voronova Street operated [2].

Author Sites and TreeGraph

A separate section of the portfolio was devoted to "author projects" — personal sites the studio made for individuals: the photographer Karelin, the Christian Kaufman photo agency, Nina Pributkovskaya, Vadim Rybakov, "Chudilnik," Viktor Ratnikov, "Dom i Korabl" ("House and Ship"), Bike-n-Roll, the Nizhny Novgorod Linux enthusiasts' server (May 17, 1999), and the site of Boris Nemtsov (January 22, 2004) [2].

The technological basis of all this was TreeGraph, the studio's own development. Its "Technologies" section described the system as a "universal system for creating, managing, and developing any internet resources, from small corporate web presences to trading platforms and corporate portals," adding that by 2005 it had "more than 5 years of development experience" behind it, and that client sites had been running on it "since the end of 1999" [7]. Its tool appears in the service notes of the pages: "TreeGraph Converter, Graphit ©1999-2005" [7].

Today the studio says the same thing: "All the sites we create are built on our own development, the TreeGraph CMS management system," and a link to the system's demonstration is placed on the main page [3].

Today

The studio's website is still up in 2026, with the copyright notice "© 1999–2026 OOO Grafit" and sections titled "About Us," "Company News," "Awards," "Clients," "IT Activities," "Portfolio," "Services," and "TreeGraph" [3]. The sample works on the home page include the Nizhny Novgorod People's Book of Memory "Kurgan," the Nizhny Novgorod Wedding Palace, the Ariel Christmas ornament factory, the Zhar-Ptitsa shopping center, and the Shik-NN salons [3].

Twenty-seven years of operation for a single web studio in a single city is an exceptional case for the Nizhny Novgorod internet: almost everyone who started alongside it in the late 1990s has closed down or changed occupations, and their websites survive only as archived copies.

The home page through the years

Sources

  1. egrul.nalog.ru — Extract from the Unified State Register of Legal Entities: LLC "Information and Advertising Agency 'Grafit'" (INN 5260078777) (archive)
  2. web.archive.org — Portfolio of the Grafit studio, snapshot of January 3, 2007 (archive)
  3. graphit.ru — Home page of the Grafit studio
  4. web.archive.org — "About the Company" section, snapshot of January 3, 2007 (archive)
  5. web.archive.org — Home page, snapshot of February 3, 2001 (archive)
  6. web.archive.org — Home page with news from 2006, snapshot of January 3, 2007 (archive)
  7. web.archive.org — "Technologies" section on the TreeGraph system, snapshot of January 3, 2007 (archive)