Kirill appears on video call with a professional recording microphone.
Oh, that’s serious!
I had a microphone left lying around since I used to record a podcast. It scares everyone.
What kind of podcast was it?
Just a podcast about life. I used to share the apartment with an art director and we had a room where we worked and recorded the podcast so we could learn to formulate our thoughts better.
Seems like you are well prepared for this conversation, especially after filling the questionnaire for the ESH website.
I remember that I answered about half of the questions. I think they got me too introspective.
Do you recall specific things that weighed on you at that moment?
Not specific ones, though I remember the feeling like I was delving into some fundamental values and reassessing them. Like ‘who am I? why do I like this or that? why am I doing this?’ I just got lost in endless self-reflection.
Is that characteristic of you, or was this an insightful moment?
It’s typical for me. I tend to experience everything in life through living it internally. More through a dialogue with myself rather than with someone else. I can just stare at the wall and think infinitely, and no one will understand what’s happening.
Kirill's Favourite Music Albums
Is this a personal thing that you don’t normally share with your colleagues or friends?
When I feel like it’s something that resonates with someone else, I’m glad to share. Yet, there doesn’t seem to be much of a demand for such things among colleagues — mostly, people discuss their work and clients. Personal feelings about those are the last thing being discussed, if ever, so I just tactfully keep my stuff to myself.
What would you be interested in discussing with your colleagues?
Why is everyone still doing design. It seems like people have an explanation for why they are able to do it for so long. I’d be curious to hear what their motivations are. Why are they so foundational that they don’t change over five to ten years, and everyone keeps working without problems.
Do you feel like every year you embark on a quest for new arguments?
Well, yeah, overall — and with technology and the world changing rapidly—the profession itself is also transforming. Some of the meanings and concepts that were relevant five years ago are no longer reflected upon.
I don’t understand — does everyone simply leave everything as is? Or do they explain it to themselves, keep it close, and everything’s fine for them? Or is it just my projection? Such a reevaluation of meanings for myself would be interesting.
What’s the motivation to keep doing this, aside from the financial needs?
So how would you answer currently, why you do this?
Partly out of inertia, I guess. Partly because it’s my only predictable source of income. It’s all I know how to do for now. Another aspect is at least a minimal influence on the visual environment, the ability to change something in reality through images. And the rest is probably constantly being reassembled.
Besides, I’m keen on the idea of helping people — that we can be useful to each other. I used to enjoy working for free more; money didn’t drive me as much as simply the feeling that I could be helpful to someone.
How often do you tell yourself that you’ll never do design again?
Less often lately. I think I’ve passed stages when I really tried to quit design. I deliberately went into some radical detours, like construction, or leaving for a month to the countryside to do things completely unrelated to computers or design.
But over time, I realised it was still catching up with me — people needed me, and I kept thinking about it. Thus I couldn’t completely stop doing it, even if I wanted to.
Would you say these were circumstances that dragged you back into design, and not you finding the solution yourself?
I think it’s a sum of circumstances and the realisation that design is probably the closest to me. Or, perhaps, I just haven’t tried other things enough. Now I don’t consider cutting everything off and ignoring it. I guess it should be transformed into something related — and I’ve done that better than just quitting slamming the door.
Do you ever feel that design obstructs trying other things out or imagining another vocation for you?
At least, I’ve never had that thought. For me, it works the other way around: through design, I learn what’s out there in the world and what people do. What their businesses are, what their hobbies are. How different people can be, even in the same industry, and how that industry can reveal itself differently in people.
What does teamwork give you? Do you prefer this format or you being in recluse — when you get bread, water, a brief, and comments once a day?
I think I manage to combine these modes. I’m either somewhere in the middle, or this slider constantly shifts — from the cave to society. There’s no concrete scenario. It’s important for me to be on projects where I can be useful. If I’m constantly attached to a team, I’ll get tired quickly.
You talk about a sense of usefulness — is that a concept that has always been part of your value system?
I think it has formed on its own over time. Probably, I went through a bunch of work after which I felt like I had done that for nothing.
It’s important that there is some common goal — not just my personal goal and a separate one for the client, but when we could find something in common and be useful to each other.
Just doing designs for the sake of doing them doesn’t move me at all. I’m interested in influencing what’s important to the commissioning person.
It always happens differently, and everyone has their own understanding of usefulness — some have an image-related one, some have one expressed in numbers.
How would you characterise usefulness according to your worldview?
It’s kind of close to the meaning of life. What you see, eat — it all takes on meaning in your perception of the world. For me, usefulness is close to the fundamental meaning of everything that happens to people.
If you apply it to the job of a janitor, usefulness is in having the floor cleaned. They performed an action, noticed it themselves, and so did the person who walked on the clean floor. Maybe the latter didn’t even notice, but felt that the floor wasn’t dirty.
Do you have an hierarchy of what kind of usefulness can be ethically acceptable?
Obviously, I don’t work with everyone — especially, when I don’t feel useful. Like with some casino or lottery where only one side benefits it. If I don’t see it for myself as well, then I won’t get involved. So I’m more about mutual usefulness rather than one-sided, abstract.
You mentioned the feeling of futility in what you do — have you encountered that often in your professional life? How do you feel about it?
Quite often, and honestly, it’s not easy for me. When I was just starting, I had to do some imaginary projects. At first, even if you feel like you’re doing something useless, you’re learning at the same time, compensating with new skills. But when you already know something and work on a project for a long time, and then it collapses in one week — that’s when I felt bad too.
It was shut down not because of me, but due to abstract circumstances.
It was still hard to accept because, after a year, I got used to that person and the project and was already thinking about how it would manifest and be used in reality.
I deeply internalise projects. I can’t do them impersonally. I always try to immerse myself in some field, to imagine myself as the user and as the person. There is no way around it that I know of.
What builds up your professional self-esteem? What’s a priority for you?
Contributing to the project, being able to interact, influence it not solely as a user, but as someone who can express themselves in its creation. Even if it’s just about the color of a button.
Do you consider yourself an arrogant person or not arrogant?
Probably not. But someone could definitely consider me arrogant.
For some reason, many people think designers are arrogant. It’s some kind of cliche. Like they know everything and they’re cool, they’ve figured everything out for everyone, but it’s not true at all.
Do you have any personal or professional qualities that hinder your work?
Yes, verbal communication is the most difficult for me, which is ironic because design is essentially communication. It was very easy to start working alone in a room with my computer. Only later did I realised I needed to talk to clients, colleagues. That’s when I was like, ‘oh man, I have to communicate somehow,’ even though I’m generally very reserved and not a chatty person.
I don’t see any contradiction in the fact that verbal communication isn’t your favourite channel. Just to clarify — do you dislike verbal communication, or are you simply not interested in it?
It’s complicated. To put it briefly, it’s like I have never synchronised my thoughts with how I express them verbally. I always had the feeling that one thing was happening in my head, but it was someone else who was speaking with my mouth. It was very difficult for me. Gradually, I’m learning to articulate my thoughts well, what’s really going on in my head.
What are some things you know about yourself that instill professional pride? A skill that only you possess, perhaps?
I can’t know for sure. I enjoy being able to delve into topics deeply, even when it’s not necessary, focusing on something and researching everything about it. Hyper-analysis and deep immersion into something — that’s probably what I can be proud of.
And how does that process happen?
I can completely ignore everything — hunger, sleep — which, in its turn, might become a hindrance. I don’t know how to stop and take a break on time because sometimes I get so invested, like I’m in the zone and I don’t need anything at that moment.
How do you handle criticism?
When it’s aimed at improvement, I’m all for it. When it’s criticism for the sake of criticism, I try not to take it personally. In such moments, I understand that the other isn’t criticising me, rather something they didn’t like.
What has more impact, criticism from a client or from colleagues?
They affect me equally, I can’t stress one over the other.
I often encounter the opinion that criticism from colleagues is more important due to their expertise.
This could be a false belief because designers can impose their taste. The client may know nothing about design, but their business sensibilities tell them that a solution doesn’t fit at all — they just might not be able to communicate it in design terms, their words might sound harsh and blunt. Designers don’t always provide useful criticism either. If there’s a seed of doubt, it should be resolved collectively — it doesn’t matter who understands design better. Because design doesn’t need to be understood specially, we can all relate to it as humans.
Have you ever faced criticism while you genuinely felt ashamed of what you had done?
I guess so. Some kind of banal oversight, shortcoming, that’s normal. But dwelling in that shame is not always productive, no matter how much you want to do that. I try not to feel overly ashamed, even when a major mistake happens.
What is a major mistake for you?
Something related to significant damage to reputation, money-wise, other serious consequences. Though, nothing like that has happened yet. Any mistake is a shared responsibility between the designer and the client. Design is always a two-way communication, and it’s wrong to place the blame on just one person.
Have you encountered situations where this mutual responsibility between the client and the designer was violated? Why do you think that happens?
I believe the idea of design as a service and as two-way communication is still shaping up. There are designers who work strictly as task performers, and that creates the impression that ‘you must do as we say.’ The work ethics in a field like design haven’t fully formed yet — they are still immature, at least in Russia. So, everyone is trying to play the branding game in different ways, as best they can.
It seems to me that in Europe and the U.S., the system is much more established — the culture of communication between client and designer is better developed there. In Russia, it seems to be missing so far.
And how long would it take to appear – fifty, hundred?
Well, I think we'll need at least fifty years for that.
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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.
