Let’s dive right in — what is a torture for a designer?
Recently, in a stream, I actually asked designers to share the toughest aspects of their work. I could put their worst experiences into several groups: bullshit jobs, poor communication, outside world problems with everything terrible going on right now, and hitting roadblocks in their work. For instance, I dislike coming up with brand identities since I don't like guessing people's thoughts and I'm not sure what's expected of me. That's why I build websites — it's easy to break down tasks into stages, organize them, and then work with a clear conscience.
When working on branding, my biggest challenge is communicating with the client — I struggle to handle it on my own. Maybe it’s because I’m a team player and need input from others. It’s only when we come together and brainstorm responses as a team that I gain clarity.
Have you ever had professional experiences where you found yourself one-on-one with a client?
Yes, I have, and it continues to this day in my freelance work. Most of these are non-commercial projects related to politics or social causes that resonate with me. These are people with whom I share mutual trust, so we skip the whole “breaking in” phase.
Do you generally see clients and customers as a hostile force?
Not anymore — though I used to feel that way a lot. It was like I had this mental block, and I felt I had to create groundbreaking cultural precedents. I was a difficult designer and I would push my clients to accept work that was completely inappropriate for their needs. For instance, posters for companies selling scientific equipment would end up looking more like party flyers.
One of the funnier situations I had was when I made a newspaper for a foundation that helped people struggling with drug addiction. They handed it out near pharmacies along with syringes to people in difficult situations. At the time, I knew nothing about drug users — my knowledge was limited to things like William Burroughs, the 60s revolution, and free love. I was studying at VASHGD (Higher Academic School of Graphic Design) then, where we had a very free approach to graphic design, so I created the newspaper in that same experimental spirit. Later, the people at the foundation were like, “Yeah, maybe let’s not work together anymore. No one could read a single thing.” It was a great lesson in learning who your audience is and what they actually need. When it comes to hostility, I have this tendency to fiercely defend my point of view. Though I haven’t been like that much lately — I’ve come to believe that you can always find common ground. But that doesn’t always work out. The times when communication completely breaks down are the hardest to deal with.
Back in 2009, 2010, and 2011, the person you were, all that confidence and boldness, what do you think fueled it? Was it a lack of experience, overconfidence, or even a fear that if you didn't strike first, you would be the one to suffer?
I think I behaved like a zealot, because I believed in certain design principles. First of all, as a creator, you have expertise in the visual space. Your mission as a specialist is to enlighten all these poor, aesthetically blind souls about what’s beautiful and what’s not. I was doing this with such intensity, but, honestly, I wasn’t exactly brimming with self-confidence at that time.
I was really struggling back then because I couldn’t handle the fact that, for some reason, not everyone agreed with me. I constantly faced resistance. Eventually, this led me into a very niche environment, where I was doing graphic design only for a handful of cultural institutions, not even all of them. When I realized it was a dead end, a closed world, I started trying to find myself in other ways.
It was a phase for me as a beginner designer — convincing people that they needed things that I thought were beautiful and sensitive. Realistically, they may have needed other stuff, but I just didn’t get it. I rarely see young designers who are like this now. I meet a lot of students, but I rarely come across this reckless approach anymore.
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And why do you think that is? What do you think it’s related to?
Personally, I graduated from an experimental school where we primarily strived for creative and sophisticated solutions in graphic design. Nowadays, design education tends to focus on a different, more pragmatic approach.
For example, at HSE (Higher School of Economics), where I worked until recently, the workload requirements are very high, and the assignments are very specific, aimed at developing particular skills. You’re not just someone searching in the dark — you’re a problem solver, a "serious" person from the get go. Nowadays, students have fewer opportunities to sit down, explore, and experiment. I’m not sure if that’s good or bad, it’s really a question of two very different approaches and finding the right balance between them.
Let’s talk about bullshit jobs and the feeling of emptiness from the work you do. Do you ever feel like your values and beliefs are completely at odds with what you’re doing?
I go through these crises all the time, it’s a normal part of life. These complex existential questions constantly come up in my relationship with myself and my profession. There’s no point in putting them off, they’ll always catch up with you and haunt you.
But I don’t find them as burdensome because I have the support of my community, and I know who I can talk to about these things. Plus, I haven’t been dealing with pixels for a long time — I’m managing projects now with my voice and spreadsheets.
Do you remember a time when you went through a crisis, telling yourself you would leave design and never go back to it again?"
I had moments like that from time to time, but there was one point when I seriously decided it was the end. I had been working for several years with a dream team at Nikola-Lenivets, creating amazing projects with a lot of enthusiasm — and then suddenly, it all came to a halt. The entire team was questioning the point of it all. I went on freelancing on a really interesting project: we were supposed to create a browser-based computer game with a large team of developers. However, due to management mistakes the project never came to fruition, which completely crushed and demoralized me. I made a decision: no more design, ever.
I had a skill I’d never monetized before: I knew a bit about circuit design. A friend helped me get a job as an electrician in a workshop at Elektrozavod. The job involved designing lamps for city lighting — basically coming up with the whole circuit and soldering a bunch of those lamps.
The first month was fantastic! The client’s feedback was limited to whether the light was on or off. There was no need to think about design at all. But after a while, I started getting tired of the monotony. The job wasn’t really about making any meaningful impact. I started remembering that all this time I had been studying and working not just to end up soldering wires. Even while working on electrical assembly, I found myself in the midst of an existential crisis.
What helped you rediscover a sense of purpose in your work as a designer?
At some point, I started reflecting on the journey that led me to design. I was amazed by its complexity and the miracles that brought me to my teachers and colleagues. I felt its value and uniqueness: no one else had experienced anything quite like it, which is truly amazing.
I was born and raised in Novosibirsk, in Akademgorodok, where no one around me was involved in design. I taught myself typography and software skills from books. One day, I traveled to Moscow and met a friend of my father’s who offered me a job as an assistant typesetter on a project with her colleagues. That’s how I met my first real book artist, Natalia Bisti, who suggested that I could study with Elena Trofimova. I applied to VASHGD, and since then, I’ve been extremely fortunate with my teachers. I studied in the workshop of Boris Trofimov, where I met an incredible number of talented experts that our mentor introduced us to, along with my gifted classmates.
During that crisis, I realized clearly that every event on my professional path was my responsibility.
I had witnessed too many special and valuable things to not continue developing them within myself and sharing them with others.
Did the next step in this responsibility mean that you, in turn, need to become a great teacher for someone else?
Yes, that’s actually one of the reasons I decided to start teaching myself. From the beginning, I found it interesting as a unique form of collaboration. So, I’ve been teaching since 2017. And right now, I’m actually facing a bit of a teaching crisis, because I feel like I need to update my knowledge. I don’t want to keep telling people how to work according to a certain structure anymore. Currenly, my idea of what a great teacher should be doesn’t quite match who I am as a teacher.
Does the challenge of becoming a great teacher frustrate you?
No, not at all — I’ve always been an average student, and I’ve long accepted that I’m not going to be a perfect person. I just know that to be a great teacher, you first need to become a great person. That means developing more diverse human qualities and knowledge, and I still have a long way to go in this regard.
So you're saying your misanthropic traits are winning these days?
At this moment, I don’t have enough love in me to handle something like teaching. I believe that a good teacher should have more love for humanity than I currently do. My wonderful teachers are incomparable in this sense. Far above the level I could give right now.
I’m not sure if I’ll ever reach their level — or even if that’s my goal. Could I become the kind of person who inspires others so deeply, and makes them fall in love with the craft? Right now, I myself am lacking that sense of fulfillment and conviction in my work. That’s actually what my crisis is about — I feel like I’m no longer excited about teaching people how to do adaptive web design. I want to work with different values.
What kind of, say, abstract topic would you be interested in teaching?
I envision my future teaching practice as experimental work that combines different mediums: text, web design, and possibly video. I’m particularly interested in working with narrative and exploring how it can exist on the web. I’m drawn to simple digital technologies, an early HTML enthusiasm kind of thing, the clarity and purity of it. I’d like to delve deeper into this topic, whether as a student or a teacher, collaborating with a group of students on this theme.
I’m also currently running an experimental group for designers focused on exploring themselves as authors. It’s a small chat where we regularly set assignments that help us answer important questions through design practice.
Have you ever experienced work conflicts that led to a friendship or sentimental kind of breakup?
I have no boundaries between work and friendship — all of my work is with friends. While I haven’t had any breakups, there have been some conflicts, like when I was starting another studio. Things didn’t go well with my partner due to our lack of experience, and I was frustrated, thinking it was a failure. But we managed to keep our friendship intact and worked through our mutual mistakes. We chose to view our setbacks as the result of inexperience rather than blaming each other.
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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.
