“In the West, there are no art directors under the age of 40. With us it can be up to 30. " What is it like to be a designer in IT

All modern design - web, typographic, grocery, motion design -

interesting in that it combines the classic concepts of color and composition with concern for user convenience.



You need to be able to draw icons, think up how to show actions in visual images or explain functionality, and constantly think about users. If you draw a logo or create an identity, you must also convey the philosophy, the mood of the product, emotions, and at the same time count how consumers look at the product, think through how they will use it.



Therefore, the designers who appeared at the beginning of the two thousandth were completely different. Now the designer is a universal soldier. A person who can go both to digital and to typographic design. It can do web, and applications, and animation. Sergey Chirkov, a teacher of the web design department at GeekBrains and founder of CHYRKOV studio, told us more about the profession.

What are designers and what do they do

UI-designer draws interface elements and primarily cares about beauty. His task is to create projects that will be pleasant to use.



UX-designer makes sure that beauty is not at the expense of convenience and functionality. He thinks comfortably and directs the work of other designers in this direction, so he must understand how and why they make their decisions.



A product designer is a person who can not only draw and design, but also build all the logic of work. He understands and studies the metrics, looking at them, sees what can be improved. For example, that it is difficult for people to use the interface, they do not achieve business goals. By metrics, he understands what needs to be changed and where and how to redo it. That is, it has a more integrated approach to the product.

What should a designer be able to

I received an art education in New York, studied painting, drawing, sculpture. It was all analog, no digital. And now, when I am teaching a course in color, I say: “Just buy gouache and play with it, mix colors with your hands.” It seems to me that it’s not quite right when the designer works only with the mouse. I think he should be able to do something with his hands, create sketches with his hands and only then go into digital. This greatly develops the brain, fine motor skills, and it turns out to throw something faster and easier than with a mouse. You do not fixate on technology, do not think about where to click.



When I started doing web design, there was no Sketch and Figma yet. Everything was done in Photoshop, and it was hellish hell - on each page you had to draw a separate PSD, and if the site consisted of twenty pages, it turned out twenty psd-shnik who can weigh a gigabyte. And then the client says: “You know, I don’t like this color,” and you have to change the color in every psd. It took a ton of time, it takes a long time to load, a bunch of layers is a nightmare. Then a sketch appeared. It’s like walking all the time, and then buying a car. A sketch is already like a mobile phone; you cannot imagine life without it.







But I think you need to know the basics. Photoshop, Illustrator, After Effects are a must. The next step is Sketch and Figma - to know one thing is enough. XD is not required to be studied - it is an extremely unpopular program. She was released after Sketch, as her answer. At first they put artboards in Photoshop, but it only got worse, then they released a separate program, but it still doesn’t work fine, and few people use it.



I would recommend learning about programs like PowerPoint and Keynote. In the work you have to make a lot of presentations for clients, customers and the team. You need to know the basic skills of html, css, js to understand how the site will be created. If you make only a shell, not knowing how it is arranged inside, you can invent one that will never be created. Basic concepts of the frontend must be known. Often you need to quickly make up or fix something yourself - and this is one of the requirements of the market.



And in order to pump in terms of UI / UX you need maximum visibility. It is necessary to disassemble every application that you meet, study, record, pay attention to how it works, why it is done that way. Take into account all possible nuances - as the user will use, with his right hand or left. What kind of hand it will be - female or male. Under what conditions people will use the application more often. That is, to develop analytical thinking.

How to look for work

Portfolio is very important in this area. You can only work on freelance, just show a portfolio, for example, “Look, I made a website for Coca-Cola” - and immediately everything is clear, you can take it, a serious level. In the course, we make a landing, and students immediately put them on their Behance and show it when they are looking for work.



At the very beginning, when there are no projects, the coolest thing is to do website or application concepts. So it’s best to fill your hand and portfolio. You can do different little things on freelance. Various projects are constantly thrown on exchanges, you respond, negotiate with a client and execute.



In regular job interviews, it sometimes happens that a cool portfolio does not automatically give you a place in the team. There, a number of specific skills are already required of you. As elsewhere, they look at your software and hard skills. Often, the personal factor is important here, whether you and your team approach each other’s mood, characters, vision and tastes.



If a person chose this profession and he likes it, then he must understand that not everything works right away. It takes some time, you need to fill up the bumps, and then everything will be in order. Often people take criticism very close to their hearts - as something personal, and defend themselves with phrases like “I am an artist, I see it this way”, but perceiving criticism is a very important skill that, unfortunately, not everyone has. They always advise you in teamwork. Perhaps a colleague knows a little more and he had a similar experience. It is better to consult with him and take note.



Very often, designers make an illiterate resume. They want to go to a web designer, and send a portfolio with drawings and portraits. Make at least one site, draw, copy. They send us very painted resumes, and progress is shown there, for example, "I know Photoshop 95%." Please explain to me by what criteria? What is this 5% that you don’t know?



It seems to me that the main thing that I would look at is a portfolio and an ordinary conversation at an interview. I eliminated half of the juniors on the test task, because many are too lazy to do something and invest this time in their future. But test tasks are needed, even if the junior has a portfolio. The employer does not know how many people worked on the project. He could make one button there, and everything else was invented by other people in the team.





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What money to count on

In Moscow, trainee designers receive 20–40 thousand. Many internships are even free. Adequate salary for a novice designer in Moscow is from 60 to 80 thousand. The average level can count on 100 thousand, the signor and art director receive from 120 thousand.





_{According to the “My Circle” salary calculator, the average salary of a designer is just under 100,000 rubles .}



If we are talking about UI / UX, then the rates go up. The youngest starts from 60 thousand, the average - from 120, the signor - from 160 to 180. And the art director is 200 thousand rubles and more.



Graphic designers are considered the lowest paid. They get from 50 to 100 thousand.

How career will develop

When you are a junior, you are constantly under the control of superior designers. You are their assistant. As before, the assistants drew backgrounds and various details for the main artist, and here. At the first stage, they do not require super creative solutions. There is more manual labor. This requires basic knowledge of composition, photoshop, illustrator and Figme / Sketch, color, understanding the volume, trends, what is now in demand.



When you move to the next level, you will need more skills in thinking, designing, searching for ideas. Signors and juniors differ in independence. The first transition to a higher level may be during the year. To become a signor, I think it will take three years. You are unlikely to become an art director until you have worked for at least five years.



At my work (and I still work as creative director at Intourist Thomas Cook) I am very closely connected with the London office. They have no directors under the age of 40-50. In Russia, you can safely become an art director up to thirty. When I started my studio, I was not even thirty. In the West, this is generally unrealistic. There, a person must plow for ten years all over the career ladder to a signor and only fifteen years later go to the art director.



There the market is much older. The advertising market there already existed at the beginning of the 20th century, and only 90s appeared in our country. And now we have very young specialists.



And here it is not a matter of biological age, but of experience and experience. They firmly believe that a person cannot pass as many rakes in a year as in five. In this sense, we are more fortunate. In Russia, young children have more opportunities to climb the career ladder faster than abroad.

How to choose between beautiful and right

We had an interesting project to create an identity for the clinic, which deals with the reduction of tattoos. We imagined a biker style with skulls. They began to conduct a survey, showed options, color schemes and completely did not fall into the target audience. It turned out that people want something completely different. They don’t need dark scales and skulls; they want pure minimalism. Tattooists go towards the premium segment. Not just yard basement studios where they stuff in terrible conditions. They want to be like clinics so that they are perfectly clean, everything is white. It was unusual for us.



The concept of “beautiful” is extensible. For the first one is beautiful, for the second - another. If you go to a regular store, look at the packaging - almost all are lurid and bright. But if you take niche products, they will be more restrained, very neat. This problem often occurs with the customer. They want to see something of their own, we offer another solution, which from our professional point of view, we think is better. We have to have a dialogue. It is very important to measure many moments when it seems intuitively that it will work. We think so because of professional qualities, but for the user this seems unacceptable. Testing on a live audience is very important.



We make a product for people, and not for ourselves personally, so I think it’s right to take metrics as a basis. If the analysis showed the opposite conclusions to your ideas, then we must take them as a basis. We live in a world of very great competition, with a huge amount of products on the market. A risky decision may be a failure, and no one will need our ambitions. But, of course, I would definitely implement something personal, even focusing on metrics. So we have the opportunity to change the world for the better.