Interview with Dmitry Kudinov

Dmitry Kudinov ("DK") interviewed on Tuesday, 5 May.

Could you please tell us about your experience as a designer, artist, architect or creator?

DK : I started feeling myself as a designer in 2008. Then I worked at the factory as control and measuring systems specialist. I moved to Kazan immediately after my army service. I got a job at Kazan Orgsintez chemical factory. That was a year of economic uncertainty in the country. These were hard times in terms of finding a job. My friend worked at that factory. That was not his free will also, it was a necessity. So, I got a job there, but I realized that it is temporary. At nights I started to study graphic software. I started working on my first customer orders, I usually got them from the people I knew. The number of orders grew incrementally, I had less and less free time because my work schedule did not allow for that. Mostly I worked at nights and I learned things through practice. I did not get any formal education, but through trial and error I studied various cases, tried to figure out how it happens, what you must do to achieve certain results. After a year of working at the factory I realized that I wanted to work as a designer – that was my dream at that time. With a help of a girl I knew I got a job with my first design studio. That was not the best place to work. The company managed to stay in business for 8 months only. However, working in a team allows you to learn some other things. These guys had their own approach, kind of a dim vision and I did not like it much. However, I had succeeded in implementing my own ideas. The criteria of success and quality for me was when my ideas were implemented without any amendments. After these 8 months, having realized that I would not work there anymore, me and the guys from this company organized our own business. We rented an office and moved there. We were kind of a self-organized freelance group. But that was not enough for me. Through the social media I learned about an open position in Kazan with a design studio. It was a funny situation at the job interview when I was asked, who is an authority for me. Actually, I had not done any prep for that interview. I said that I try to stay away from authority and have my own opinion. Probably this played a certain role and I had been hired. It was difficult at the beginning because they had different rules of the game. Design level was more serious, and I had to adjust myself. Once I was even at the point of being fired but I managed to perform well and showed myself within one project. And I worked there for a long time. But I went on doing street art stuff part time. I believe that these two fields have something in common anyway. I started getting orders. So, I showed up in that company as a street artist, asked my friend to join it as an illustrator. The two of us started to offer not only graphic design ideas but also projects related to urban territory improvement. The first projects showed up, including larger ones but still on a local level. Later on, I resigned from that company and worked freelance for a long time studying totally different areas. I had functionality of both a designer and a manager, sometimes even a PR manager and art director. The clients represented diverse industries, and this allowed to work not only on a single project or several projects at the same time. This also brought a skill to adjust yourself to different tasks. Flexibility helped a lot in this respect – I worked with clothing design, clothing prints, the tasks were totally different. What I did not like about the graphic design at that time was the lack of a physical result. I just wanted to touch my work, hold it in my hands. I realized that the problem of the most of young designers is the inability of being responsible for the result. They produce some pictures, and a client must do something with them. I was not satisfied at all with this impracticability of graphic design. I was searching for similar areas where I could apply my skills. So, I worked in Flash programming and animation, performed the roles of an illustrator, graphic designer, web designer – I tried most of the key fields of design. I had this desire to produce something functional that you can hold in your hands, where you can work on your mistakes and show it to the people. So, I started visiting industrial facilities, asking questions about how it worked, why this was impossible to implement and how this problem could be solved. Creative thinking is linking an original idea to functionality. You cannot universally adapt any idea. You always need to realize how it will be used at the end. Therefore, there should be a specific technology related to certain tasks. There is a huge gap between designers and technologists, and I saw it myself when people having profoundly serious equipment at their disposal did not realize the whole range of its application in practice. Step by step I started to learn what was it and how it worked and what were the limits. Having learned that I realized the technological aspects, too. After a freelance period, I started developing artistic practices remotely. I painted something as a hobby or just for an extra money. At a certain point I started focusing on larger art objects and projects which I wanted to implement. I have realized then that the graphic design per se has become just a tool for me. Artistic practices are a transfer process and design is a visualization tool. Design itself is not a result. I got the first larger clients and then I was invited to become a Development Director in Moscow. That was the first graffiti agency with development plans in Moscow but there were difficulties. At that moment I felt the gap between creative and businesspeople. Creative people, being impulsive and emotional, hardly realize that business is built on some basic business processes. In this case I worked simultaneously as Business Development Manager as well being responsible for the approach to projects. I produced a lot of sketches made either by me or by some of the artists. That became a symbiosis, we found a certain niche where all these skills made sense. You do some hands-on job and you understand how it will be done. You must originally build your thinking about designs and visual range and other technical issues basing on these limits, i.e. how it will be made and produced, how it will relate to the whole architecture of the object and corporate style of a client. We started getting major brands as clients, e.g. Kidzania. That was a project in Mexico, a professions town for kids, we decorated one of the walls. Also, Adidas, Nike, Gett. Moscow gives more opportunities for working with multinational brands. Although you do a small part for them, but you understand how they work. But very soon I reached the upper limit because it is very difficult to work being a company employed designer. I left that company and me and my wife established our own company targeted at urban projects. Any other projects being more closed, were less interesting. I wanted to work with urban space and integrate my work in it. Currently I work as and Art Director or Creative Director, although it is difficult to name it since I do not want to use any clichés. Here the line between work and hobby has been totally washed out because originally you come up with an idea and share it. You formulate the task for yourself, you do not have an actual client. You define conditions where you will be willing to do it. And you put forward a full-scale elaborate project which can be implemented. That is how we worked at FIFA Confederations Cup in 2017, next year we worked for FIFA World Cup 2018. From smaller and interesting clients, we came to author projects. Currently we deal with festival programs related to street art and urban art, practices of people involvement in projects implementation. My interests have changed slightly because it became interesting to work not only with contexts but culture codes as well. People started to entrust extremely complicated historical objects to us because we managed to harmoniously integrate our works in them. Our work should not look as an alien element but be integrated harmoniously into architecture and context and be comprehensible by broader audience. Talking about the Tower project, this is exactly the project representing high degree of trust. We did not need any approvals. We worked with this client before at Artek kids camp. We had a joint project with Bosco. Director of Artek communicated with us, he has been watching the whole process. And Senezh Management Workshop is also his project. He started to integrate us street artists step by step. The trust level was remarkably high and the job itself was very interesting.

How did you become a designer?

DK : I partly responded to this question in my answers to the first one. I do not know, maybe some urge to reach the beauty. This beauty may not be perfect, but this beauty of imperfection was attractive. That is why I could not work as an employee because there is always somebody making decisions for you. I had my own vision, my own outlook which I wanted to implement on a broader basis. This transition from a hobby to professional experience is very difficult, I realize that. It was difficult for me, with failures and successes. These are the steps you have to take on a permanent basis. Every time you set an ultimate goal for yourself. If you reach it, you feel certain euphoria and satisfaction from both the process and the result. I know a lot of creative people who burn out fast. They do something and they like it but for a short while. I want to do something that, being looked at after several years after, will make you think yes, that’s a classic. That was a conscious action and design quality does not go away over time. The desire for minimalism and functionality drives me to do that.

What are your priorities, technique and style when designing?

DK : It is very difficult for me to point out something because I consider myself a multi-instrumentalist. I am interested in a lot of things, I don’t like when it all comes just to one certain style or technique. I want to try different things, I want to have diverse approach to each new project. And this interest is what stimulates me, there are no similar projects. Every one of them is different. You approach them in different moods with different messages. And the whole atmosphere of a projects is totally different every time. I think it is called polymath, a person who wants to develop in different directions. As far as priorities are concerned – everything is quite simple. First priority is a context: where the object is located, where the work will exist. Second criteria are codes, most commonly culture codes. Which triggers can give a hint for an idea? Context performs the same function. There are also human factors and things going on around it. Context is about landscape, environment, geography and infrastructure. Culture codes is about what is going on around it, how people interact with it. And the third priority is functionality. These are several dimensions of criticism or self-criticism which allow to filter out non-functional ideas. I have pointed out four dimensions: first one is aesthetics (first does not mean ‘most important’), you choose whether it is beautiful or not, working with lighting etc. The second is technical specification. This is about functionality and how can you implement this using certain tools, what are complications of an object itself, what you have to solve. You should assess your ideas on each and every step. If the technical implementation of your idea is impossible, then your idea becomes a phantasy. The third is functionality, how practical it will be in further use. The fourth is likeliness of task solution, i.e. how close I come to the desired result. Have I achieved it? Previous three provide me with a certain answer. It is clear that it might be the best solution for these weather conditions. Maybe, you may have done it better but taken the conditions that was an optimal solution. Here the proverb ‘the best is an enemy of the good’ works.

Which emotions do you feel when designing?

DK : Originally, when working on a project you try to detach yourself from it, to isolate from any emotions. For starters, you need to know what it is, you collect information. That is why your perception is quite neutral. Of course, there are objects which you are desperate to work with, you have certain inspiration. But this may create obstacles because you want to produce something really cool, you fail, and you are disappointed without looking too far ahead. And the key issue is to leave certain space for improvisation, make adjustments while doing the job. Because always there is this correction which is necessary. You may not take something into consideration, you may be unaware of something that comes on a surface later. There is also an element of occasion, something happens accidentally, your computer mouse moved, and you moved something, this impulsiveness moment makes it interesting, because you start to look at certain things from another angle. Both a process and a result bring excitement, but more excitement comes from a process, mental processes, creative processes. You create something and you realize that this is some kind of a neutral space, and you can fill it with ideas and transform it. Art changes the space. People’s behavior changes because of that. This is the power of influencing the society since we mostly work with public spaces, this is very important. You must carry your social responsibility and you need to realize that you cannot overdo here. If you do it for yourself, go ahead and do it in some secluded rooms, in your apartment. But in the case of public spaces you must carry this responsibility. When you consider all parameters, people perceive it differently, not as an alien invasion into their public space but something that completes this space. Here emotions work for a final result. You may never come back there, you can only have photos in digital form, just some aspects, but people will see it. If there is some fresh feedback, for instance, I have received a message today. The mapping has been made in my work. I had a brief look at that, but I have met a person participating in it and it was interesting to know how this work lives after me, what happens to it eventually.

What particular aspects of your background shaped you as a designer?

DK : I think the key issue is openness. You must be able to look from different points of view. This relates to being multidisciplinary. This is very frequent in my job. I cannot isolate myself in one style. Many do believe that style is the same plot repeating again and again. I don’t think so. I think there are totally different contexts and you cannot apply the same tool or the same solution to different contexts. Second aspect is critical attitude to yourself. You need to see your mistakes and work on them, both in the process and in the result. You are not able to do everything perfectly. It depends on a lot of factors like deadlines. You think: I wish I had one more day, then I would have done everything perfectly. It does not work that way. You set certain goal, approach it as close as possible. And then you must work on your mistakes. What would you change next time, this is your growth step. There are no people who influenced me. A creator does not create a new idea from nothing. He needs some initial data. There is a recipe: you must collect information, you must study contexts, infrastructure etc. You put it in your head, you have certain thinking pattern which allows you to filter out non-functional versions, sometimes you think that you have to do something crazy to make it work. You select certain formula for creation of something. And in your work in progress you have this improvisation which itself is a swagger. You cannot love your work if it is a hard labor for you. It is hard physically, it exhausts you morally. You must enjoy the process. As far as the path is concerned, I think design is just a tool. I do not consider myself as just some kind of a designer, but design allows to solve many tasks. Design itself is not a final product. There is no such thing as my designer’s path whereas I have other paths where I am not a designer. There was no point where I suddenly became a designer. It depends on the way you were brought up, whom you communicate with, your communication circle, many different parameters. How you view the world is your perception of the world. This is how you approach various tasks. You can call yourself a designer, an architect, an artist, a philosopher, it does not matter. There is a certain category of people who must have a wider vision of their tasks.

What is your growth path? What are your future plans? What is your dream design project?

DK : I have to deal more with administrative tasks, invent a project, curate it, manage it, promote it. These are issues that can hardly be called creative, although there is a creative element in them. As far as plans are concerned, the nearest project is painting of a military aircraft. It is very rarely that you have such chances and you want to make it as cool as possible. But here you fall into some kind of a stupor because it seems that don’t have any limitations and you want to do it for yourself in the first place, kind of an interesting case. I can say that I re-think things once in 6 months. There is a season, and you come to the start of it with one idea and one strategy. But during the season everything changes dramatically especially now during the worldwide isolation. The plans initially built need to be seriously adjusted in accordance with this force majeure situation happening irrespective of you. The projects I wish to realize if I have more time, are always present. There are projects in my desk and not everything works out, this is normal. Probably I want more overseas projects, working with new contexts because different countries have totally different mentalities, different people. It is interesting, just like when travelling – you see something, new culture, new places, you feel certain emotions and you want to translate them through artistic practices. Many of the world’s renowned artists do that. There is no specific desire for fame, but the idea of travelling and creating something itself is attractive. Talking about the project I want to implement that in a tour format which should solve several tasks, format of a kind of a festival tour. I have such projects but for years I have not been able to implement it in this format. There is certain progress in this direction. It is interesting to organize such kind of a road show in various cities with communication, changing locations, because I realize that it affects my development as a person a lot, including my openness. It is not enough to see something remotely, you need to go deeper in it.

What are your advices to designers who are at the beginning of their career?

DK : I think that the key advice would be that you will have mistakes, you have to work on them and accept them as something that should occur. This is a part of the process, part of growing up professionally, and it is necessary to go through it. You need to try, if you do not try you won’t make mistakes. Many people talk about that, you need to make mistakes because this is more lively experience you are gaining.

You are truly successful as a designer, what do you suggest to fellow designers, artists and architects?

DK : Sooner or later we all return to the meaning of the word ‘community’: a professional community, a community of people having common interests. It is necessary for growth. It can’t happen without communication. That is why you want to meet more people with the unique experience. They should not necessarily be super famous, each one of them has his own experience. If a person is a pro, he has his own point of view. And I want these opinions to be shared through communication. The more different they are, the more interesting is the interaction and collaboration. These are banal words, but really interaction is about people influencing each other. The joint product is born, joint creation is interesting. You frequently come across this in street cultures when you have a joint production united by one idea and each participant has his own vision of this idea, and something interesting comes up.

What is your day to day look like?

DK : You always have a lot of routines. Roughly, a year is divided into two seasons: summer season from April to September, the key concentration of production projects, self-realization. You move a lot from region to region, from city to city adapting to each new situation. In winters your mode is more settled, you start to work on new projects and ideas, deal with things you had no time for before. You cannot avoid routines, they are part of any process. You need to make it your habit. Working with documents distracts you a bit and it helps because before when you lacked experience you started your morning with surfing professional groups in social media, you follow other people’s work. It took a lot of time, you tried to get a note board either for your current tasks or just for inspiration. Now I do not need it. There are a lot of different tasks, you are deep into permanent thinking process. There is no point of loading yourself with some extra ideas. But there is another part – to watch and to monitor what is happening in the world in terms of trends, what solutions do other guys find, whether they are from your field or the fields close to yours. Information is a very strong tool for a designer. It comes up when you need it. Maybe the brain works like this: it activates when you realize, aha! This is the solution. I can compare myself with mathematicians when they have their insights. If you do not know a solution for something, this means that you lack information about the task, about the object, you have not analyzed the situation. If we talk about production, communication is what makes me excited and happy. Sometimes it is useful to switch to other tasks, to work with figures, do some analytics. It is important to see the results in figures. It can be profit margins for a certain project, how many projects you have completed, budgeting a project may also be rather interesting. You need to know how to develop tools which will eventually optimize your time and to have an ability for forecasting, to develop tools for your future projects in order to be less involved in routines

How do you keep up with latest design trends? To what extent do design trends matter?

DK : I have already said about that. There is no need for it now. It is clear that something is happening. If something sensational and known to everybody is happening, you try to find out more about this. But in general (I would not call it a style or my own approach), most frequently some idea comes up and you are too much impressed by works of others, this will affect your final result. Such inspiration will make you produce a replica of somebody else’s work, this will be some joint image. But if you have an idea independently from external factors (in most cases, if this project does not fit from the start and people do not understand it), there is certain excitement in that, because you think that you created something that did not exist before, something not in the mainstream. Maybe they will come to it, maybe not. Something unique? Yes. There is certain interest in working with kitsch, too. If there is something that is rejected by others, but you can work with that, that becomes your own style. I can’t figure out where does the inspiration come from. Before I had to stimulate it, be impressed, think for a long time. Eventually, you gain experience and you put some things aside if you cannot solve a task or you cannot comprehend the final result. Information loaded in your head is still processed and the solution comes up absolutely accidentally. I do not know whether this is inspiration or not. It reminds me of a cooking book. You take some ingredients and put them in a broth and you need certain conditions for this recipe to work. If you change some parameters and something new comes to life, this is also a set of tools that you can use. If you understand that you take the path already traveled, you can consciously change certain parameters and triggers, and this will lead to a new result.

How do you know if a product or project is well designed? How do you define good design?

DK : I already talked about this cube of dimensions for assessing any idea or a project. The same applies here. You evaluate aesthetics, technical parameters. There are technical aspects which you figure out immediately: working with colors, for instance. You can always see whether it was done on purpose or not, being it a lack of experience or a conscious choice. You can always see the author’s hand. And also, functionality, likeliness of solution. You can add other aspects to a project. When it starts to interact with space, numerous aspects are added extra, and you have to consider them. There is no such thing as an ideal recipe, you try to select priority directions. If you evaluate somebody else’s project, you can always say: from my standpoint I would do it differently. Or this is absolutely bad because you cannot implement these technical parameters. You can evaluate a project in many different ways. Your taste still plays a role because it is still a subjective judgement. To be objective, you have to collect a huge number of opinions, and your opinion cannot be maximally objective. It is still there, you have your own experience, another person has his own. You need to understand who did it and where. You can define types of designs, whether it was made by an Indian or German designer. American style is very different. When you try to produce something as an analogue with somebody else, it is very difficult. You have your own understanding whether it is good or bad, but other people have their own. It is actually a very complex question and the judges team is very diverse in each case. People should have a look from different points of view. However strange it may seem, the most constructive criticism may come from an absolutely unexpected source. It might be just a person passing by. Since he is not involved in this task, he has a clear and simple vision. His criticism can be much more practical and useful for you.

How do you decide if your design is ready?

DK : I have partly responded to this question. You have a certain time frame, you pick up style, techniques and tools taken the existing limitations. If the initial data would have changed, then you would make it differently. Or maybe, half a year later you would definitely make it differently. I do know, there is still no clear understanding whether it is ready or not. There are always some aspects that I want to amend. Even waking up the other morning you can think, yes, that was not bad, but now I would have done it differently. You should not be an idealist. You have to pick up some priority criteria and work with them. You have to set a short-term task: I want to do this in this project. You leave the rest out of your framework of your judgement. You can decide whether the project is ready or not in accordance with the goals set. If you have achieved them, then you can understand that it is ready. If something is biased, you can mark it as your work on mistakes and bear that in mind in your next projects.

What is your biggest design work?

DK : There were a lot of large projects, although it hard to say how large they were. If you look at it from a cosmopolitan point of view, they are quite small. All my practice may be considered as one big project implemented throughout your professional activity. For instance, when you get older, you will produce sculptures. And this will be a big project for you because you will learn to do something new, you will learn to work with new materials, more sophisticated which you lacked patience to work with when you were younger. That is why what is happening right now, at any given moment which you call present is the biggest project. Eventually you will understand that some minor project gave you more opportunities for self-realization and gave you more opportunities for other projects. This is the permanent chain of events which never breaks. You come to bigger projects through smaller ones, smaller tasks. They grow and something unexpected may happen during this process. But the global thinking is another thing. You need talent to come to global tasks through smaller ones.

Who is your favourite designer?

DK : I already said that there is no authority per se. There are no favorites. But I can talk about artists. There are certain artists I want to follow, and this relates to current moment. Those who seemed interesting, due to your personal growth or their developments (they can move to other niches) you stop following them. New names come up, you switch to them, it is a permanent process. Therefore, I do not have any icons at all. It all goes rather smoothly, and you cannot sometimes notice it, but taste changes overtime. Talking about design in general, minimalism and practicality is a sort of concentration. You can compare it with hokku poems that should reflect a very deep thought in three lines. Take a long poem and make it short. That is the thing about minimalism – it is like a needle sting which reaches the exact target. This is about the style. As some designers say, a good design should not be visible. This also relates to minimalism. If you use something that influences you, but you do not notice that, this is the good design.

Would you tell us a bit about your lifestyle and culture?

DK : I have a nomadic lifestyle, from project to project, from task to task. You have to always be on your toes. There are some failures in work, and you burn out morally and physically. You just need to have a rest and switch to something else. There are several aspects here: you travel, you learn something new. Then it affects you in a positive way. The city that inspires me (I haven’t seen it all) – in the meantime, it is Barcelona. Switzerland as a whole is very inspiring. But you can find inspiration in everything – my last trip to Cyprus inspired me by the winter sun which stayed very low and the shadows were very long. The same places change depending on a season. Music inspires too, but I came to calmer music with no lyrics, because it is the least distracting. Your brain does not switch to lyrics, so, in general, more quiet music. We currently work on a big project dedicated to the 75th anniversary of Victory in the World War II. This is a very serious project with serious cast of artists. It is like a Groundhog Day, day by day. I act as a curator, ideologist, and author of this project. The guys spend 10 hours daily at the object in a non-stop mode. Their schedule of work is from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. And I deal with other things necessary for smooth functioning of all participants. I deal with other things, and yes, it involves more routines, more administrative issues to resolve, logistics and other things, but it is necessary. Their result will be my work result. We will see what will be produced very soon.

Would you tell us more about your work culture and business philosophy?

DK : The ideas of teal organizations and holacracy are very attractive. Such horizontal hierarchy of teams doing their jobs. It goes like this in our work: each one of us does his job. We collaborate within one exact project. You always pick a tailored team because some people would perform this task better being more suitable for a job. You act as some kind of a mentor: you direct some people and you curate the others. This is the philosophy of more trust and less control. There are things that depend on you, as an ideologist and project author you are responsible for it, for achieving the final goal set by you originally. But you need to understand that every person’s contribution affects the result a lot. And you have to accept it more calmly, this metamorphosis, going back to improvisation being part of a process. It also inspires you. It looks like you know what is supposed to happen, but it happens slightly differently from your expectations, and that is what makes my work interesting. We work mostly with public spaces. It is interesting to see the philosophy changing, not only your own, but of the people as a whole. You see how their behavior changes, what is going on, which social processes occur when you are done with your work. Actually, the whole research must be done involving sociologists and psychologists. But in general, good design changes a lot. The good work stays in place. We see some classical works after centuries still influencing us, and this is the criteria of their quality. They survived a long period of time because originally, they were quality works. Something badly done does not reach us after centuries, something artisanal. It has been forgotten. Quality results do make their way through time.

What are your philanthropic contributions to society as a designer, artist and architect?

DK : We originally were targeted at creating conditions for self-realization of many people. This is what our curators’ practice and mentoring are all about. You create conditions for other people’s work. It is easy to notice now, that there is a great decline in interest for culture. And since you are doing this, you try to find some breakthrough points. We do have pro bono projects, too. But our first priority is to create workplaces. In this case this is more interesting. People lack opportunities. They do not realize how to achieve something. And when they are provided with such opportunities and these opportunities are the way to make money – this is probably our contribution. We are always open to involve people. Their involvement is an important factor of social protection within certain projects. They start treating their work as their own. They become co-authors. It does not always work for some reasons, sometimes it is due to safety requirements or impossibility of their involvement. We really want to provide work for disabled people, we need to move in this direction. It is very important that initiatives come from people themselves. A person with initiative is responsible for a result. There are normally two sides. If you put forward an initiative, you must complete it. It is very important. Before, I had more time to act as a speaker at various events. I tried to speak at different events and cheer people up. The topics were mostly related to social engineering, how to change the way of thinking. It was not an abstract speaking. It was based on exact cases which have already worked and showed prodigious results really quick. By establishing conditions for other people to work, you attract young people. By giving them certain share of autonomy and responsibility, you give them a chance. They either perform or don’t perform. This is and endless process you have to accept because in our specific business we staff the teams differently in accordance with different tasks. It does not always work. Errors occur, but next time you realize how you should do this time. Maybe somebody has showed skills in some other area. Initially you might have counted on certain strengths of this person and it turned out that he has different talents.

What positive experiences you had when you attend the A’ Design Award?

DK : This is literally the first competition we participated in, and it is an international one. We haven’t had such experience at all before. It is difficult to compare. It is nice to know that you become noticed within the professional community. This affects all further live contacts, communicating with experts from other countries. This will allow us to implement projects in other countries. These are the criteria described above – what do I need for personal growth? And here you can see this effect. As time passes, since I do not know what to expect, these are just my presumptions. This networking is achieved through competitions and festivals – two formats targeted at various social and professional contacts.

Dmitry Kudinov Profile