Sergei Zheglo, Marina Tupikova

The OstenGruppe Graphic Design Studio opened quite recently. However, in a short period of time, the studio has designed furniture for the Chapurincasa project together with Igor Chapurin, designed the Rambler-Teleset television channel, created an image-building film for NIKoil, developed a concept for Good Look Optical stores, come up with the design for a chain of Toyota dealerships, and developed a concept for the magazine Popular Finance. Its founders (Igor Gurovich, Anna Naumova, and Erik Belousov) have been named some of Moscow’s best designers. Igor Gurovich spoke with us about what designers do, trends in design, and how approaches to design differ in Russia and the West.

- Why did you leave the ad agency and set up your own business (IMA-Press)?
- I just wanted to do something different. It wasn’t as much a money issue as one of personal development. Here you make the decisions yourself that fit your moral and ethical principles. You work with people you like. That isn’t possible in a large company. A large company means first and foremost specialization. The peculiar thing about specialization is that it assumes an assembly line set up. Each task is clearly assigned and documented. People do the same thing year after year. They don’t even need to make any effort or think anymore. They have built up a set of standard solutions that they can manipulate mechanically. The people who do Coca-Cola will do everything else the same way. The ones who do Samsung are not going to wrack their brains about something else. Samsung is their general client and they are completely focused on solving its concrete problems which are always the same. That’s good for Samsung but not for all the other projects because the market already demands an individualized approach. We don’t have an assembly line and that allows us to sit down and think up new ideas for each concrete client. We simply don’t know how to do anything. We don’t have any standard ways of thinking. We reinvent the wheel each time, and each time it turns out differently. That is something very valuable. When we get a banner, it will have our slogan on it: “Bold Dilettantism.”
- What criteria do you use to select a client?
- Most of our time working on a project is spent brain storming. We simply toss ideas out there. In the beginning the most important thing is not to criticize any idea. Because in the beginning, when people haven’t gotten used to the subject and take an easygoing approach, they are inclined to say the most amazing and wonderful things. Both the stupidest and the smartest things. Strangely enough, the design process does not mean sitting at a computer. You can learn how to create a nice, clear image at art school. But it’s much more interesting to come up with a precise story, an idea.
- And people pay money for these ideas?
- We make our living off of messing with our brains. In design, the most important thing is to force yourself not to use stereotypes. Design means solving a problem using an unusual image.
- Is there such a thing as design fashion?
- In graphic design up to a certain point there were fashionable directions, but now there aren’t. Now there is one, single fashion for all designers, distinctness. The advertising campaigns we see today on the streets of Moscow are far from distinct and exact. Russians, as always, prefer quantity to quality.
Distinctness expresses itself in how well form corresponds to content and goal. For us, distinctness is first and foremost hitting the target exactly. With the condition that we are not allowed to use standard approaches, forms, and solutions. It is always clear what style fits what project and how others have done it. We are interested in unexpected solutions that would surprise even us. This process is predominantly an intuitive one. We concentrate on a task, and at some point its solution appears on the monitor, regardless of which one of us did it. It is just as convincing to all of us. Good design is when you get something absolute, from which nothing can be taken and nothing added, including another possible solution. Designers with world reputations in the West, as a rule, only offer clients one option.
- How do designers’ approaches differ in Russia versus the West?
- About five years ago, I met an interesting designer from London. She was asked to redesign a London neighborhood, to repaint facades, put out garbage cans, and hang some thingamajigs. She conducted her design research, meaning that she went, talked to people, and found out that nothing needed to be done to the neighborhood except make the sidewalks flat. That is already another level of design, a partnership between the client and the designer. In Russia, we still don’t have many studios working with clients as a partner and not a service supplier. The product can only benefit from partnership, and that is the most important thing. However, I think that this will eventually evolve. We, at least, are trying to do something to make the situation on the market more civilized.

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