Can you tell us about your journey in design?
I’m just twenty years old now, and I started working at thirteen. I got an internship at Artemy Lebedev studio. After that, I freelanced here and there, worked at the Beat Film Festival for a few years. Last summer I reached out to all the studios I genuinely admired, and I unexpectedly got hired at ESH. So I’ve always been involved in graphic design, and then I enrolled at the Higher School of Economics for ‘Design and Development’ where I added web design work alongside branding.
It’s impressive that you got into Lebedev studio at thirteen. What skills did you have at that point?
Not much, really. I now look at that occasion with skepticism, but I think they took me because I really wanted to learn something. I was just attending a design club at school. Before the internship started, I told them I could work with Adobe’s suite, though, of course, I didn’t actually know how to use it. That was on a Friday, and by Monday, I was expected at work. Over the weekend I watched an insane amount of YouTube tutorials on how to use Illustrator and Photoshop. Just so I could come in and at least do something. Those two days gave me a foundational base which has been enough for me up to now. Later, I got into kinetic typography, some 3D and motion graphics. I figured those out on my own.
What were your emotions and feelings when you first started your internship?
I was terribly scared and felt out of place. I was afraid to ask questions and would google stuff that now seems funny to me. Like, ‘What is a layout?’ Learning through trial and error is much more effective. When you’re faced with a task at work, you start thinking more deeply about it.
Does the fear you had at the beginning still come back?
Always when I’m starting at a new place. I feel anxious about building relationships with new people. I wasn’t sure whether it was normal to not know everything. As I got older, I decided to ask whatever I needed, and that fear of ‘stupid questions’ went away. Now, though, the fear has shifted to the work itself. ‘Am I entitled to take a break right now? Is it fine to say I can’t do something right now?’ In that sense, ESH is very kind and understanding, maybe even too gentle an introduction to the work environment. I feel like after this experience I’ll be much more firm about setting boundaries, and I definitely won’t survive in a huge corporation.
You describe your experience with ESH as exceptional. Did you have any unpleasant experiences with other companies where there wasn’t such care for the employees?
Yes, especially in freelance. The role of a project manager is crucial, and most freelancers don’t have one. On freelance projects, the word ‘complaint' often comes to mind when you don’t understand exactly what the client didn’t like. When there’s no middle person between the designer and the one giving feedback, it prevents constructive dialogue. There are a lot of emotions, you take things very personally. Plus urgency like making edits on a Sunday evening. For a long time this felt absolutely normal to me. I couldn’t imagine leaving the house on the weekend or traveling without my computer.
Now, I’m really happy that I can separate work time from personal time. Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about how, in most professions—except for doctors, firefighters, and others dealing with life-and-death matters—the world won’t fall apart if you don’t reply within an hour or if you do something a bit later. It’s very stressful when you don’t control your time. I’m so glad that now I can occasionally disconnect.
How did you make the transition to a more balanced and self-compassionate attitude?
I’ve been thinking about this a lot in recent months because I don’t remember exactly when I started feeling comfortable at work without associating it with constant stress. I think I made a conscious effort to relax and stop thinking about my job. When you’re twenty, many people get a rush from work because it’s like learning new rules of the game. I’ve been in this space for quite some time now (I’m not sure if that’s good or bad), so it’s familiar to me. It doesn’t cause the same stress from novelty.
Have you had any work situations when you felt you were at a breaking point about to snap or felt very unstable?
Sure. I was always studying while working, and that’s very draining. When your to-do list never ends but only refreshes, and when something small doesn’t go as planned, it can be hard to control your emotions and not cry out of exhaustion. But if I enjoy what I’m doing, I handle those low moments pretty well. I give myself time to feel sad, vent, and say that I’m fed up with it.
Have you ever told yourself you’d never do design again?
Of course. It happened more often during my studies. You don’t understand the criteria you’re being judged by and try to reconcile those standards with yourself. You don’t know if what you’re doing is good enough or if it’s something you can be proud of. I almost always dislike what I produce. I like it in the moment, but when I compare it to other works, I feel like mine is worse. Lately, I’ve been comparing less. You don’t notice the things in other people’s work that you see in yours because you’ve gone over your own stuff ten times, shuffled everything and lost the freshness of perspective.
In those moments, who do you imagine yourself if not a designer?
I’ve always pictured myself as an artist. After two years at the Higher School of Economics I realised that design isn’t just about advertising, brand and its positioning. A more artistic and free approach is closer to me now than the one I was taught, which was focused on sales and self-representation. I think it’s a characteristic of how design is perceived in Russia. It feels like the creative aspect has been stripped away. If you look at Instagram reels about design, they’re mostly about how to create a landing page in 5 minutes using AI and make three hundred thousand a month.
You mentioned that such a trend frustrates you, but isn’t this commercially aggressive design strategy relevant outside of Russia too?
I’m speaking based on my general impression of the design discourse and my academic experience. I felt a lack of personal approach, conversations, and lectures. It’s great that the idea and concept are always a priority, those are indispensable. But at some point I stopped feeling sincerity there. It wasn’t about genuinely wanting to create something cool, rather about how to make more money with minimal effort.
The overall rhetoric about design being necessary everywhere contributes to this. That’s great, but because of it, design starts to feel very utilitarian and technical, more about winning representation and less about people and their thoughts. It’s probably very maximalist and youthful, but it’s clear that it all boils down to how to sell your product. Yet I still want there to be some element of humanity and honesty.
Most of the products and services we use don’t always feel like they involve real people. And that’s completely normal, but I don’t want to work in that kind of space. Who knows though, maybe in five years I’ll be working at Google making presentation templates. But for now I hope that doesn’t happen.
Can you describe what gives you a sense of sincerity in the process or product?
It’s a complementary emotion that comes from genuine effort.
But this is a speculative point. People who want to make money can be very sincere in what they do.
I actually don’t like the word ‘sincerity.’ It’s more about honesty, when you’re not trying to mislead or pretend. I think that always comes through in design and in any text when something is overly masked or someone is pretending to be someone they’re not. When I force myself to come up with something, I can feel it, and it never works.
Have there been times when you consciously compromised, when you knew you were being dishonest but went for it anyway?
I think yes. It’s completely normal in the early stages because it’s scary to be principled on your first gig. You fear losing the first client, then the second, you feel like no one will ever hire you again (at least that’s how it seems at the moment). When you’re just starting out, the boundaries of what you can say or not are very narrow. You just want to build a portfolio and get paid.
That’s why I think it’s great to get into a studio at a young age. There the authority isn’t the client but the art director. You begin to understand whose opinions you’re aligning with in your creative thinking.
How do you handle criticism from people you respect and professionally admire?
I think criticism can come in many shapes. It depends on the manager and it’s important to learn to criticise gently. I usually take criticism well, but there have been a few times recently when I was upset that I didn’t perform as well as I could have. I was really tired or just wasn’t in the right mindset. I know I could have sat with it longer and done better, that’s why it upset me. When criticism comes from an art director or someone else on the team, it doesn’t feel like, ‘You did a bad job’. It feels more like a conversation or discussion and it doesn’t make me sad. I’m more interested in understanding how to improve and why things went the way they did. It’s great when people share their experience through revisions.
Are there things in the work process that really upset you?
I guess I struggle with lowering my expectations in life overall. The most frustrating thing for me is when what I’ve envisioned in my head doesn’t match reality. At work, this shows up in funny ways. Like, we scheduled a call, I wake up in the morning thinking the call is going to happen, and then and then it gets rescheduled.
I also get upset when things don’t turn out the way I want them to. I always feel like I haven’t given my best, which is why I almost always go for two rounds. After the first attempt, I step away from the computer feeling like it’s totally not what I wanted to show. I return once that feeling has subsided, finish it up or redo it, and that gives me a sense that I’ve tried as hard as I could.
It’s probably strange that with such a mindset I chose a profession where you’re using a computer to create what’s in your head. When that match doesn’t happen, it’s always disappointing.
And the worst is when you can’t come up with anything at all. Even a metaphor or hypothesis during the concept phase. That’s even sadder than when things don’t turn out as planned because that’s more about your mind, not your skills. You get the feeling like there’s something wrong with you, as if everyone else is always able to come up with ideas, but you’re not.
How do you deal with such disappointment and how do you help yourself?
There’s no project where you can just say, ‘I’m not going to come up with anything here’ (or maybe there is, but I’ve never done that). You just sleep on it, wake up, think some more, and something eventually comes together. Even if your idea is not getting into the final version, it was still a small part of it.
But it still doesn’t bring satisfaction because you want to contribute as much as possible to the project. And when you can’t achieve that, there’s nothing you can do about it. You just live your life and do regular things without getting stuck on a failure. Sometimes, it’s nice to watch a documentary which is a great source of inspiration, I suppose.
How exactly do documentaries help you?
They emphasise noticing something in the world. You watch how a director or cinematographer observes seemingly insignificant things and you start to look around yourself. This attentiveness is conveyed through the screen, it requires you to disengage from everything else. For example, there’s an amazing series called How to with John Wilson. It’s about all sorts of stuff, but the stories always begin with small objects or phenomena and then develop into broader questions. When generating ideas it’s great to start with something small and trace it back to a larger concept.
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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.
