How would you describe your place in the design world?
I’m a designer at heart, but if we’re talking about my current role, I’m an art director. I’m constantly thinking about an art director’s responsibilities. The most important thing is to guide. That’s my key task — to set direction for other designers, not only to achieve results but also to ensure that everyone on the team enjoys the process.
What separates me from being an artist is the incoming request — it comes from outside. I’m someone who can’t create something on my own without such a request. Perhaps, in the future I’d like to come up with something entirely by and for myself. But for now, whether it’s due to my nature or other traits, I need an outside person to come to me, like a doctor. That’s when the ideas start flowing, about how I can help. Lately, I’ve really come to like the word ‘help.’ It’s nice that I’m not just drawing pictures, but actually helping businesses and people.
When did you realise you could transition from creating things with your own hands to leading others?
While I was still studying it became clear that we were being trained to eventually become art directors. One of our professors, Erken Kagarov, directly said so. And we thought about it ourselves as well, it’s a clear track. For me personally, this progression was pretty smooth, with no sudden transition. It wasn’t like I started at some studio and they said, ‘Okay, now you’re an art director, figure it out.’ Even now, the transition hasn’t fully happened, I still partly do things myself while also guiding others.
At a certain point, as the studio grew, it became clear that this shift was necessary. It was even painful at first because it was so unusual and unclear how to direct others rather than doing things myself.
Was it difficult to delegate tasks to others instead of handling them yourself? Is that a question of trust or patience?
Trust is key. If you, as an art director, don’t have full trust in your team, the collaboration is likely to be painful. You’ll end up intervening, and that will create additional problems. You always need to keep your influence, approach and the teamwork dynamic in check. I try to be flexible with it. I think one of my strengths is that I can listen and sense who exactly I’m working with. Judging by the feedback from the team, this works pretty well. Overall comfort is a very important part of the whole process.
What personal qualities complicate your work in the studio? What challenges do you face?
I’d say I sometimes lack decisiveness and confidence in making choices. Especially when it comes to clearly defining, from the very beginning, the direction to take and which paths not to explore.
Within the studio, Philipp and I often compare ourselves to each other. We have the same roles but different projects and approaches. We constantly make decisions of any scale. I feel Philipp has more confidence, maybe because of his personality. I tend to expand the range of possible solutions, suggesting different options and trying various approaches. Perhaps it would be better to focus myself and the team on just one thing.
I have this trait, whether it’s a flaw or a feature is up for debate, where I try to structure the dialogue with the client in a way that I don’t make all the decisions myself. I offer the client a choice. Maybe there’s no need to present so many options or to provide such a wide range of choices.
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Is that because you don’t fully trust yourself and want to hedge your bets by offering more options, or do you genuinely believe that uncertainty can hide some unexplored beauty that might reveal itself in the future?
I definitely like the second option more, it sounds a bit more poetic. Maybe that’s part of it. I think it comes down to two factors.
First is my personality. How we behave in our profession is closely tied to our personal traits. I’m probably not the most decisive person, I know people who are more organised and clear-cut than I am.
The second reason is that I firmly believe the client should be deeply involved in the process to achieve something truly great. Looking back at past projects, the best ones were the result of close collaboration with the client. I like the exchange of opinions, where part of the decision-making is delegated to the client. Their contribution becomes significant and powerful. Our designs tend to have longevity by evolving and resisting time because we didn’t just draw a picture, choose it ourselves, and push it through as the final result. We were very much in dialogue with the client.
Maybe in this way I’m also delegating some responsibility, and from a business or professional standpoint that might not always be the best approach. But that’s just how I am.
What negative aspects of this strategy would you highlight?
It complicates the process and increases development costs. Although there have been projects where I presented ten different options, and at the time, it felt totally fine. From a studio or business perspective this approach isn’t always the best. However, from a creative perspective working in partnership with the client and maintaining communication is absolutely the right approach. It turns the process into a kind of design research institute.
How do you personally manage the balance in resolving this dilemma?
Now I’ve learned how to handle it better and I understand the need to keep track of time and the number of options. It’s a conscious effort to manage myself. It was much more difficult earlier. When I worked alone or was still studying, the process was often more important to me than the result. During my studies. experimenting and making a ton of different options mattered a lot to me.
I just remembered something, I had an interesting quirk. Back when we were creating posters, logos, and graphics, I would take screenshots of literally everything during the process. I could have a hundred screenshots of sketches for a single poster. I’d save every change, creating these ‘checkpoints,’ so that later I could open the folder and admire the thirty-sixth screenshot, where there was an interesting solution that might have gotten lost in the final design. Often, I wouldn’t even return to those screenshots.
Over time, working in a studio with other people adjusted this approach. Partly, I’ve grown tired of it myself because this method is relentless — you completely lose yourself in the process, endlessly creating variations. If it weren’t for external constraints, I could go on forever. Why settle on just one version when you can make an infinite number? I get much more pleasure from the process than from making the final choice.
Do you know any designers who just create one design right away and do it well?
Probably, yes, but I assume everyone experiments to some extent. It’s impossible to get at it in one take for every project throughout your career. Generating different variations is much more interesting and complex than making a final choice.
What aspects of your work do you strongly dislike?
The first thing that comes to mind is when my team and I don’t understand what we’re supposed to do. A complicated brief, weird feedback or a complex subject we’re not familiar with.
The most important thing is not to continue working without clarity, but to stop and talk things through. As designer Sasha Vasin said, 70% of our work is communication with the client, and only 30% is actual design.
What things would make your professional life better if they didn’t exist?
I’m bothered by the overall trend toward constant acceleration. Technology is advancing, life in general is speeding up, and as a result, design work needs to be done faster too. When we first started working as designers, the pace was much slower. Now you can get more done, but it’s a bit discouraging and stressful. I’d like to spend more time drawing, working through ideas, but with shorter deadlines, much of what you initially envisioned doesn’t come to fruition.
The need to keep up with these increasing speeds is stressful for me, as it is for many in our profession.
Over the years. and now I’m going to sound like an old-timer, I’ve become more at peace with it. If we have a week to do a design, we’ll get it done in a week. If it’s one day or three months, we’ll still get it done. But subconsciously, it still affects me. I keep comparing the current state of things with how it was when I first started in design.
Do you think it’s possible to slow down time artificially within a studio?
At our studio there are always long-term projects which are often not beneficial for business but certainly very impressive, high-quality, and complex. One of these was the branding for the ‘Richter’ hotel. The money we earned didn’t match the amount of effort we put into it. I have to admit, I love such projects and hate them at the same time.
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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.
