I care about how things look. People say that about me as though it settles something.
Eight years of B2B website design and UX consulting, across three countries and mostly in medtech.
I judge everything by one thing: is it still alive two years later? Most products aren’t.
I grew up in Odesa, in a family where a creative path was an unlikely trajectory.
It was against the odds, but it felt inevitable – drawing was simply my way of paying attention. My mother is an English teacher, which explains both the language and the habit of noticing when something isn’t quite right with a sentence. I still think of it that way. The sketchbooks are full of things that will never be useful, and that’s entirely the point.
I studied graphic design and fine art, which meant spending a lot of time making things that were allowed to just be things – no brief, no user journey, no success metric. It was the most useful training I could have had for a career where everything has one.
I’ve spent the last few years establishing my base in Berlin. It’s a place that values precision and substance over noise, and I’ve adopted that as my default setting. Germany takes everything seriously, including fun. I find that oddly comforting.
The work and the life are not as separate as they probably should be. I notice composition everywhere – in rooms, in streets, in the way information is arranged on a screen. It makes me good at what I do and occasionally difficult to have dinner with.
The benchmark has not changed since art school: still being used, still making sense, still something people choose rather than tolerate. Most products aren’t. The ones I care most about usually are. I go back and check.
If you’re here because something isn’t working and you’re not sure what – that’s exactly the right reason to get in touch. Show me the product. Most of what needs saying is already visible in it.
A product that feels considered retains better and converts better.
It is also easier to trust – the part nobody can put a number against, and therefore the first thing cut.
Design is easy to do adequately. Nobody was ever fired for adequate. These went further anyway.
Questions I get asked before anyone’s decided anything. Answered the same way I’d answer them in person.
When it looks right and I can explain why. The first part arrives early and is instinct. The second takes longer, and is the part anyone is actually paying for.
More than it should. Art school is years of having your work taken apart in front of everyone in the room, which turns out to be ideal preparation for a stakeholder review.
Yes, and it will be a date rather than a range. Clients sometimes ask how long something will take; I give them a number, and it is usually accurate to within a day. That either impresses them or unsettles them slightly. Both reactions are fine.
It is the normal starting position, and a better one than arriving with a diagnosis. Show me the product – it tends to say more than a brief does.
Because the products are usually better than the websites selling them, and that gap is the most fixable thing in the business. Consumer work is easier to show people. B2B is more satisfying to fix.
