Remote work
When I was working at Shop&Go I started to prepare my smooth transition from print to digital by self-learning and helping our small local web studio with small tasks like forms, notifications, banners, simple landing pages, and so on. When I was ready to start as a junior web designer I found a young web studio in Tyumen. If I tell you it is far, it will be true. It is far even by Russian standards - 1869 km between Yaroslavl and Tyumen. But it was totally fine and I started to work remotely when it was not the mainstream. We were all starters in this industry because all founders moved into this business from completely different fields with one goal - educate people how a good website should look and work for your business.
The atmosphere there was great! This signature startup vibe when people work a lot, always learn from each other, and discuss things. I barely can remember anything except work and I am not sure that anything except work was interesting for me. We all were slightly obsessed with soaking knowledge from all sources as a sponge. I was always online, chatting with my art-director or project developer, or sales. Or I was finding myself drawing a tattoo for CEO or scrolling premium web agencies to understand and analyze how they do so good job and what is the recipe of success.
Stopkilo
E-commerce became our main specialization and as I see it is still the case for the studio. Online grocery stores, wooden toys, bedclothes, hardware store, all for tourism, souvenirs were among projects I was working on. Besides UI, I was responsible for UX as well (fully or partly) - research, project structure, and interactive prototypes for different devices.
For some projects I was developing a new brand identity as well - it was the best scenario because fresh branding gave a right start for all projects and I had a chance to explore new fonts, some colour matches I wanted to try and specific image filters.
Before it started in 2016 the client had only the name StopKilo for the website - a new woman's portal about healthy recipes, advice on losing weight, beauty products, and trends. I led the case from the developing brand strategy and identity to the whole process for web design layouts including writing mind maps, developing structure and creating prototypes.
Kipchakskie
Another special and enjoyable project for me was a promo website for the new Bashkir brand Kipchakskie with an iconic traditional sweet known as chak-chak. For launching this brand on the Russian market I created the landing page which was included in the final list of the Bitrix DESIGNCUP 2016 among other top 14 promotional websites created by Russian web studios.
The main purpose was to express the centuries-old essence and traditions of the Kipchak nomads. I’ve done the research about their habits, lifestyle, clothes and local unique patterns - all that later I used for the reconstruction of this amazing atmosphere in digital space.
My growth
At the end of this career journey, I was a leading visual designer in the Legacy mentoring a junior designer. After my art-director moved to another company I got an offer to replace him with only one condition - to relocate to Tyumen because the presence of an art-director is necessary on client's meetings, I was flattered and honored but my life turned left to the West instead right to the East.
My girlfriend and I moved to the Netherlands in August 2016. If you are curious why don't hesitate to ask me on interview.