My regular question to start with is how do you identify yourself in the design universe?
I'm a graphic designer. I'm also busy with interactive graphics, generative design and creative coding.
How did your realisation of the desired direction develop?
I love exploring new tools and getting precise feedback from code and software. When I first started working with branding, I felt quite unstable in that humanities-oriented field because everything is subjective, you have to guess what others are thinking, how different audiences and meanings intersect. All of this, especially in the beginning, makes you feel helpless. But when you write a few lines of code and suddenly everything works, it really supports and reassures me. The success is unmatched, you get exactly what you wanted. It reminds me of solving math problems in school and then flipping the page to check the answers and seeing everything matches. You feel proud of yourself.
Do the vagueness and ambiguity of design work become problematic, throw you off or disorient you?
I think there just needs to be a balance. And I need to feel like I’m more or less managing it. I do like the flexibility of subjective human interaction. That’s an important part of the job for me. It’s also the reason I don’t go into UX design, where everything is clear and you can prove everything with tests.
What signals make you feel like this field is too uncertain or uncomfortable to navigate?
This is something I’ve only recently started noticing. I understand what is expected of me in a task, but I still feel like something is slipping away, something hasn’t been fully articulated or clarified.
How often do these situations occur?
It happens subtly and chips away at me. I’m prone to doubt, so maybe I add doubts where there shouldn’t be any — whether I’ve got things right, if communication was smooth. It doesn’t break me down in any major way, but there’s always this attempt to fully grasp the context and work iteratively — to listen, decide, act, and then get feedback. I’m constantly thinking about whether I’ve understood the other person.
What helps you achieve clarity in these situations? What tools do you use?
I calm myself with organising and making checklists of what to do, what not to do before I sit down to work. When anxiety creeps in, I write out these points or sort everything into clear pieces.
What other challenges do you face in your work, what frustrates you?
It relates to the previous topic. There’s a feeling that professionalism in design is often based on some kind of taste, some unspoken norms. It leads to these micro-shame moments where you didn’t notice a detail and immediately feel inadequate as a professional. Or, for example, in typography you don’t know the full history of typefaces and might use something inappropriately. And this problem isn’t something you can see and fix right away. It comes up when someone else looks at your work.
So this feeling of shame comes from interaction with someone who has more expertise. Do you ever feel it when working with clients?
Not really, because there’s no competitive expertise involved in client interactions. You feel like you’re helping them. It’s easier to understand that their requirements are more about personal preferences or the conditions they work in.
But with other designers it feels like the entire design community is looking at you with that person’s eyes. It can be hard to remember that this is just one person with a specific perspective on design.
How do you generally handle feedback from colleagues? If you had the option not to receive it, would you take it?
If there was a switch and I could just turn it off after waking up in a bad mood, that would be great! Or at least postpone it.
But there’s also a positive side to feedback from colleagues.You’re constantly trying to figure out what makes design good and looking for clues in other people. This can either cause a sense of shame or lead to an interesting discovery, depending on how it’s given. If feedback is well-framed, you end up explaining to yourself why certain things work and others don’t. You’re essentially being guided through your own perceptions.
What kind of feedback do you find truly valuable? Does it depend on the format, tone and the status of the person giving it?
I’ve thought a lot about this, especially since I’ve been mentoring in a private educational program for a year and a half, where I constantly provide feedback to students.
Initially, my goal was to do it as gently and freely as possible, to listen closely to the students’ ideas and preferences without asserting authority. Most people are actually inspired by such an approach, and many really enjoy it. But I’ve also been told that they want more direct instructions, what to do exactly.
I’ve developed a formula where it’s good to give advice but also support it with theory — reality may be different, but by referring to theory, you show the basis for your conclusion.
How do you feel about being the one giving feedback? Does it scare you? What emotions does it bring up?
In the beginning, I was definitely shy and didn’t quite understand where to find the confidence to tell someone else what to do. I think this reference to theoretical sources shifts the focus away from me and helps me question why I have a particular opinion and how I can rework my experience. And of course, it leads to formulating working principles — in moments of uncertainty, when you’re creating something new, you can refer back to the advice you gave students. It becomes sort of a design guidebook.
Have you ever given feedback that actually hurt someone?
I try to avoid that as much as possible. But recently I had a student with whom I felt like I could guide them toward something new. I saw that they weren’t really absorbing new knowledge from the course and kept doing what they were already good at. It was a dilemma for me, as I have a tendency to err on the side of not saying enough. I later found out that the person was struggling with self-doubt, and it took me a while to process that and not take it personally. But because I aim to give constructive and useful feedback, it helps me receive it better too.
I now see giving feedback as a skill in itself.
You mentioned not saying enough — how do you think about honesty in the context of design? Do you think about that?
It comes up from time to time, especially when I think about the larger role of design — for example, when branding or an interface with dark patterns reveals only a couple out of several things the business actually does.
It would weigh on me morally to be complicit in that kind of lack of transparency.
But I think you always exist in a grey zone of self-promotion, beautifying things, wrapping them in a more pleasant package to present a slightly more favourable concept.
How often does the moral-ethical component come up for you when making professional choices, what role does it play in how you structure your work?
It’s a big ever-present topic. I don’t have a clear moral code or guidelines because I either don’t think about it at all, or I think about it too much. So everything is based on gut feelings. When the logical chain of harm to humanity reaches more than three steps, I stop that exercise.
What are those three steps? Tell me about this concept.
If, for example, it’s a casino — that’s like a one-step harm. If it’s a meditation app that seems to do good but charges for subscriptions in a shady way — that’s two steps. If it’s branding for something that will, in a few decades, cause great harm to many people — then it becomes hard for me to calculate my share of responsibility. I think a lot of this is based on default social templates. I haven’t really given it deep thought.
Before starting a project, do you reevaluate the parameters of each step every time?
I probably just compare them with my capabilities and past experiences, asking myself whether this would be a moral downgrade or not.
What types of projects are absolutely unacceptable to you right now?
I want to phrase this vaguely — hatred, exploitation of people, nothing good. I suppose the latest thing is exploiting human weaknesses, uninformed consent. For example, any addictive services or products. At one point, when I was in a pretty tough financial situation, I was offered a project making vapes, but I refused, even though I was a heavy smoker at the time.
What responsibility do you think a designer has?
It’s about not bringing polished visual culture into spaces that don’t care about the human experience. The responsibility lies in not embedding cool, beautiful things that build trust and affect people into areas where everything is fundamentally wrong. It’s a mismatch of meanings. I feel like if you put a great design on something that used to look awful, even I would get intrigued and think they’ve done something good this time.
Have you ever created a misconception through design? Or, for example, had to follow a client’s request that led you down the path of creating one?
I’ve never engaged in outright lies or distortions like representing a red apple as green. If I don’t have a choice, I try to tone down the message. For example, I might make the message as faint, unclear, and small as possible so it becomes background noise.
So you’re making a move that the client shouldn’t notice, and it’s meant to have a positive impact on the person consuming the design… Powerful!
I’m probably not too shy about it because it really helps me cope with the everyday dishonesty in the messages I have to create with my own hands. I don’t always succeed, and it’s not always easy. But you can use communication challenges to your advantage, although I still try to avoid jobs where I have to be evasive.
What drains you the most at work, and how do you recharge?
Performing routine tasks which can be hard to sit down for. Lately, I’ve realised that in design there are a lot of no-brainers where you’re just laying things out. Of course, listening to something in the background or being in someone’s company helps, but it can still be tiring. Slowly, though, I think I’m learning to love such simple tasks.
I’ve been practicing more coding and building systems. It gives my brain enough of a workout so that afterward, I can enjoy sitting and drooling while moving pixels around.
*** * ***
This interview is part of the documentary project Insights about the people of the ESH design studio. The interview was conducted by Polina Drozhkova.
More information about the project can be found on the website insights.eshgruppa.com.
