What is it like working in a narrow niche? Egor Gilev reveals all the secrets of Turbomilk

Who are Turbomilk customers? How does Turbomilk work “from the inside”? How is Turbomilk different from web studios? These and many other questions were answered by the head of the company Yegor Gilev ( yegorg ) during the online conference of the festival of web developers "404" . Questions were asked by conference site visitors. I am sure that this collective interview will be interesting to owners and managers of web and design studios or to those who just want to open their own studio.

Andrei Lisitsyn: Tell us how you started, how did TurboMilk appear? What difficulties were at the beginning of the studio, how did you overcome them? Where did you study and how did you come to design?

Egor Gilyov:Turbomilk emerged from coworking. True, then there was no such word. In any case, we did not know him. We just got together and started freelancing, not sitting at home, but in a common office. You know, with design studios as often happens. First, the founder comes up with a name. Then he makes a website business card studio. Sometimes with a fake portfolio. Finds customers. Attracts assistants. And finally, after some time (sometimes after a few years) he rents a real office. Because mom swears when customers call home (or, God forbid, come). So, with us everything was the other way around: first the office, then the customers, the first big joint projects, and only after that the name, website, and all things. I myself studied, undergraduate at the cybernetic faculty of a technical university. As for design, I can only boast of a children's art school.


Dmitry Fitiskin: Egor, how are your roles distributed? Who is responsible for what?

Egor Gilyov: Jason from 37signals once wrote: “Product development, marketing, PR, support, design, programming, etc - it's all the same thing.” In the sense that they do not separate one from the other, just doing their favorite thing. This, of course, is an extreme case, and we do not go that far. Our experience has shown that special people must be responsible for some key things. If we use foreign two-letter abbreviations, we can briefly formulate as follows: PR and HR - Denis , QA - Dima . Our sales manager Natasha is engaged in potential clients., and the distribution of work and coordination of efforts is your humble servant. But, of course, not all of our activity is reduced to the fulfillment of the assigned roles, so that in Jason's words there is a rational kernel, and considerable.

Nikolay Nuyakshin: How do you demonstrate the first design sketches to foreign customers that are difficult to meet? It is not unimportant to see the first reaction to design, as they say, “live”.

Egor Gilyov:Frankly, I never thought about this "problem". I will not say that all our clients are iron people without a heart in their chests, but they most often make decisions rationally. We do not need to peer intently into the face of the customer who first saw our sketches, because we all (and the customer himself, first and foremost) understand that the end consumer is not him. Our task is to draw an interface that users like. So the conversation is not at the level of “oh, I don’t like something,” but in a completely different way: “You know, I'm afraid this will seem too fun / boring for our users.” Agree, in such a situation it is not so important, we communicate with the customer face-to-face or correspond by e-mail.

Ekaterina Azarova:How do your customers (Russian and especially foreign) most often find out about you? Do you collect such information?

Egor Gilyov: Of course, we made attempts to understand this issue, but I won’t say that we were particularly successful. By word of mouth, basically. And I mean not only direct recommendations from old customers, but also links to articles, for example. Alone Digg-effect of the article about Dennis' 10 errorsWhat is worth. Unfortunately, there is no magical worldwide catalog of icon designers in which we once housed, and slap-slap-slap-threw customers. Gaining popularity on the net is like making a snow woman, only slower. You roll-roll the ball in the snow, and it slowly increases in size. And if you are lazy - gradually parted.

Tatyana Simdyanova: Egor, how did you come up with the idea of ​​creating precisely pictograms? Was it your idea or collaborative with someone?

Egor Gilyov:Probably almost every web designer at least once tried to draw pictograms. But it’s one thing - just from time to time to draw beautiful little creatures, and quite another thing - to make it the main specialization and build a business around it. I admit, an example that such a business is possible was shown by my old friend Misha Granin a long time ago. Thank you, Misha!

Alexander Fitiskin: Egor, where did you start? Tell us about your first works, first clients. Did you start right away with the visual design of your interests, or did the origins still have something else?

Egor Gilyov:In the beginning, there was nothing! Once we even almost started to draw an advertising comic for a Samara bank. In general, all the founders of Turbomilk studio came to the profession through web design. Some even still remember a little HTML and can make up something simple. Of course, tables, as was customary at the end of the last century.

Andrei Saturday: The traditional question: Why Turbomilk, and not, for example, Forsazhprostokvasha or Bystrosmetana?

Yegor Gilyov: The traditional answer: this is a long story, and, I'm afraid, its details are already hidden by the fog of the past years. But perhaps someday we will still write about it in our blog. Stay with us.

Maxim Rossomakhin:Question in the context of June 22: what is the number of mechanized units in Turbomilk? Do you use horse traction?

Yegor Gilyov: The mechanized part is, unfortunately, only one: a combat droid from the Lego MindStorm constructor. He still has little to do, but we are working on it.

Mikhail Vorotnikov: Why do you use Mac? Is there any special photoshop on it?

Egor Gilyov:Thanks for the question, Michael! Discussing the mutual advantages and disadvantages of the Mac and PC platforms is one of my favorite forms of leisure. But, since I cannot answer the question “why do I use a Mac” (because I do not use it), I will have to reformulate it a little. Why does an interface designer choose a particular platform? What really is the difference, because Photoshop is the same everywhere? The answer is: the devil is in the details. Working on a Mac differs from working on a PC in fine details, but working with details is the essence of the profession of a visual interface designer. An interface designer can work on a Mac or PC, but he will never say, “I don’t care, it doesn’t matter.” I don’t want to say anything bad about people who sincerely believe, but it’s just obvious

Alexander Murrrr :-): Egor, 1) How meticulous are foreign customers and how demanding are they? 2) How popular is the English version of the site? 3) Is Samara better than Moscow? 4) Do you often walk along the promenade? 5) If you now had the opportunity to move the office, for example, to Vertical, would you move?

Egor Gilyov:1) If we mean by exactingness “the height of the bar”, then we try to keep it at the proper level within the company, regardless of who the customer is. If we are talking about cases “go down there, I don’t know where, bring that, I don’t know what”, then this is an international phenomenon (fortunately, not very common among our customers). 2) I think it’s in great demand, given that most of our customers do not speak Russian. 3) There is only one politically correct answer to this question for any Russian provincial city: “of course, better!”. In response to the following question, “which is better?” usually, as far as I know, they talk about the beauty of nature or (if there are problems with nature) about the soulfulness of the local population (no one likes Muscovites, yes). Dismiss I live in Samara, I love Samara, and I see no reason to compare and analyze something. 4) Sometimes I make a detour along the way from the car to the office. On a summer morning it’s nice to walk. 5) What happened to the Vertical? Is all the space already occupied there? Why "if"? Let's just say: if suddenly we are forced to leave our current magnificent office, we will probably consider Vertical as one of the options. But obviously not in the first place - it really hurts there a place uncomfortable.

Anton Google ( tonguglya.livejournal.com ): Hello, Yegor. What percentage of the work does not fall into your online portfolio due to a signed NDA?

Egor Gilyov: Hello, Anton. Quite a large percentage. But more often than not, these restrictions are not eternal. We can’t talk about the project only until the release of the product, for obvious reasons, but this is not a quick matter. So follow us carefully - from time to time, works that we completed a year, two, and even three years ago will appear in our portfolio.

Konstantin Dranch: Which social network do you prefer?

Egor Gilyov: Thanks for the question, Konstantin! All social networks now I prefer FriendFeed . So far I'm interested in it.

sigizmund (sigizmund.livejournal.com ): Egor, we are very interested in the question of cowards - not only the color, model, and where you can buy them, but also underpants in general - what do you think about this?

Egor Gilyov:Sigismund! People who know me well will not let me lie. I have two fetishes: thick notebooks and comfortable bags. I can talk about these things for hours. About cowards, I'm sorry, I will not dare to reason. Not my profile.

Artyom Reznikov: How is Iconza doing? Is it popular?

Yegor Gilev:Icon-carrot asked to say hello. Things are going well with her and even wonderful. Tens of thousands of icons have already been repainted, and we are not going to stop there: soon the set of icons available for repainting will be expanded.

Alexander Pavlov: Are any training workshops on visual design conducted or planned?

Yegor Gilyov: We have been planning such seminars for so long that we involuntarily suspect that these ideas will remain at the level of uncertain plans. But thanks for the interest. The more such questions there are, the greater the likelihood that sooner or later such seminars will nevertheless take place. Write to us in what form it would be interesting to you, please do not hesitate.

Evgeni Kalmykov: Egor, do the founding fathers continue to draw, or now do you have to deal with administrative issues more? Is the professional growth of employees - is it their personal business or is their management “unobtrusively” pushing them to this?

Egor Gilyov: Of course, we have not covered our illustrators and Photoshop for good. It is also true that carefree days, when you used to come to work, you draw, you draw, you draw, you draw, you draw, you draw, bang - it’s time to go home now, it's long gone. However, what can be called administrative issues? The language will not rise to call it, for example, an art guide, or an analysis of the tasks of the next customer, or conversations with job seekers. Answering a question by Dmitry Fitiskin, I have already quoted Jason from 37signals, and I can quote again: "it's all the same thing." As for the professional growth of employees, I’m even afraid to assume what you mean by “unobtrusive” pushing! Judging by the quotation marks, there is clearly something bad. We are not like that. No violence! Our employees are adults. We try to regularly hold master classes, or watch interesting lectures or presentations together on the big screen. But participation in these events is completely voluntary.

Evgeni Kalmykov: Does a rich portfolio help communicate with new customers or do you have to “sell” yourself anew each time? What do you do when your vision of the product (website, set of icons, logo) differs from the vision of the customer?

Egor Gilyov:Naturally, a portfolio helps customers understand what to expect from us. As a rule, people come to us who already know who we are. It remains to agree on the details, and work on the project begins. Of course, there are other cases. For example, a person comes for the design of the site of a fan factory. We honestly admit that our profile is not a bit, but if you want to order from us, why not? We agree on a price for a long time. And after all this, the customer asks: "Please send links to the sites of other fan plants that you drew." Here, of course, it’s immediately clear - not our client, we won’t get mutual understanding. As for "our vision", then everything is simple. We are a service company. Our job is to solve the problem posed by the customer. You must probably have a very big conceit, to think that you know better how to develop a product than its creator and owner. We are not particularly modest at all, but we still don’t go that far. We can try to help, offer some ideas, but in the end, the customer knows better.

Evgeni Kalmykov: Egor, are the studios already in a narrow niche? And if so, how do you understand this?

Egor Gilyov: I believe that success even in one single small area is impossible without constantly looking around and trying something new. We never tried to specifically keep ourselves in some rigid framework, and therefore, of course, we were never "crowded". Our narrow niche is a kind of core on which everything rests, and not boundaries that we do not allow ourselves to go beyond.

Denis Nuzhdin: Egor, what approaches do you use when designing user interfaces? It would be interesting to hear about innovations in usability of windows applications (if any).

Egor Gilyov:I'm close to Goal-Directed Design, or Alan Cooper's Goal-Oriented Method. Taking this opportunity, I cannot help but advertise the recently published translation of his book “On the Interface” . Our partners from the UIDesign Group had a hand in this publication, so that for once we can be sure not only of valuable content, but also of an adequate translation. Everything read - this is the main book on the design of user interfaces. What about innovations in Windows application interfaces? In my opinion, in recent years nothing has happened as significant as the appearance of Ribbon in Office 2007. It was a very bold and very smart decision. If we talk about the near future, I think we will find a lot of interesting things in connection with the Multi-touch technology.

Alexey Bulgakov:How much do you pay for PR 404fest.ru ?

Egor Gilyov: Your assumption about the presence of some kind of financial flow between the festival and our company would honor your insight if you had not been mistaken in the direction of this flow.

Alexander Kushpel: Not tired of drawing icons?

Egor Gilyov: So I almost never draw them, and for a long time already! Our turbo designers do it better. So I really didn’t have time to really get tired of drawing icons. And by the way, I never understood those icon-painters who are aching: they reached the ceiling, de work is monotonous, there is nowhere to develop. I am sure that it is possible to improve in this matter to gray hair.

Alexander Fitiskin: Egor, how do you relax from work? How often do you meet a working team in a non-working environment?

Egor Gilyov: We do not yet have a tradition of meeting a working team on non-working days. Perhaps someday we will conduct such an experiment. But on the other hand, we are able to create a non-working environment without moving far from the workplace. To do this, we have an X-Box and Wii in the office and a fragrant barbecue right under the windows.

Alexander Fitiskin: Tell us about the Pixelpalooza contest and about your participation in it. Do you and your employees participate in other contests? What are the successes?

Egor Gilyov:Unfortunately, the Pixelpalooza contest has been discontinued since then. This is doubly annoying for me: according to the rules, I would take part in the jury of the competition in 2005. I don’t know about other contests of a similar scale. We thought about organizing such a competition ourselves, but this would be an event only for the Russian-speaking community. On a global scale, you see, much more interesting. So it remains to hope that Iconfactory will come to its senses and resume the tradition.

Denis Korablev: Yegor, what would you recommend to a beginning icon designer how to improve your drawing technique exactly?

Egor Gilyov:Denis! I would recommend to improve my drawing technique by copying other people's samples. Yes Yes. “Try to copy as accurately as possible. You still will not be able to achieve complete similarities, and the difference can be very noticeable. " This is not what I came up with, this is Bruce Mau.

Pavel Pavel: What is the monthly turnover at Turbomilk?

Egor Gilyov: Eh, Pavel-Pavel. You even hide your last name, but you expect such frankness from me.

Stas Skrebkov: Egor, at the last fest you talked about the possibility of conducting courses for those who would like to work in your area. What happened? Will there be a new announcement at the fest?

Egor Gilyov:Alas, no, nothing happened. I probably at the last fest somehow did not quite clearly express myself. We announced the possibility of conducting courses in order to get some kind of response. To send us applications. For example: "I, so-and-so, would like to take such courses, I agree to spend my time and even money on it." But, unfortunately, we did not receive any distinct response from the audience. This, of course, is not to say that the audience is bad. From now on, science is to outline our plans more clearly.

Original page of the online conference.
Max Rossomakhin from Thematic Media will answer the questions next . Tomorrow you can ask him questions here .