Case "Turbomilk": How Denis Kortunov went from a provincial designer to the main interface in Acronis

Denis kortunov Kortunov, most likely, does not need to be presented to the audience of “Megamind” (and therefore “Habrahabra” together with Geektimes). After all, he and his colleagues are, among other things, the author of many memorable images and icons, including for TM projects.



Initially, we wanted Denis to share the Founder Boards with us, but received much more - Denis described his path from freelance designer to founder and director of Turbomilk studio , which he consciously turned off for the sake of continuing high-quality self-development and self-improvement.



The result was a description of the life path of not only Denis, but his friends and colleagues, several years long.

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We are happy to share this interesting story with the readers of Megamind.

The most interesting thing in my story is that I, in fact, became an entrepreneur much earlier than I realized it. About 4-5 years I worked in my own company, but did not understand that I was a businessman or an entrepreneur.



It happened in the city of Samara, where about the design, in general, not really heard for the time being, and even more so about the design of interfaces. I, like everyone else, studied at the institute and once stopped working in a Norwegian company, where I was engaged in e-commerce, in design, I said such words as “usability”, “services” and so on. Literally the beginning of the 2000s.



At some point, being a freelancer, I realized that I needed to change something (there was no concept of co-working at the time) - we (myself and a few friends) chose office and gradually began to do something. First, as freelancers, after - already passed tasks to each other. All this has slowly, but surely, become a company.

The turning point came when we began to cooperate with the company Softidentity , which at the time did the graphics for the so-called. shareware programs and the industry in general. Just in those years, an understanding began to appear that ui-design is a kind of competitive advantage. Before that, everyone was “not up to it.”



The first more or less significant money appeared - what happened then in the world of shareware projects, by current standards, could well be called a “start-up industry”. And suddenly, we suddenly came in handy - our skills in graphics and design came to the place. We quickly realized that it was much better to do something interesting for people developing software than to walk around the city of Samara and offer logos for $ 50.



In 2002, the second year we began to offer services already as Turbomilk.

Understanding that I am an entrepreneur, and everything that we do is business, came when we registered our “LLC” and began to accept non-cash money. Up to this point, everything was like some kind of “group freelancing”, and here we realized that the same money, cash and non-cash, are two completely different types of money, with which you can work differently, otherwise leave and do many more things.



In 2006-2007, Russia needed a design, and up to this point we calmly painted for the whole world, and then all of a sudden - we started to do it for domestic products: 1C and other large vendors.



Everything happened for a year or two, but according to the sensations, our growth was much faster — a real explosion, and everything was real. It was very interesting.

At this point, I began to treat everything a little differently.

Regarding our mistakes and negative experience, we know for sure what mistakes we made at what point in time in Turbomilka, and what, on the contrary, helped us.



A website in the form of a blog (or vice versa) is one of the important moments of our formation, since we were one of the first in our market to understand the importance and value of “stories” and their narration.



In 2004, Egor Gilyov, one of the partners of Turbomilk, won Pixelpalooza, which automatically made him one of the most famous icon designers in the world. By the way - this was the last Pixelpaluza, which was held by the very respected Icon Factory studio.

Around 2008, we did something not typical for a design studio - we fixed and published our own price list.

Unusually, this is because, as a rule, doing something "entirely", the performers begin to roll their eyes and say: "We count," "We don't know yet," and so on. It is clear that our prices have always been part of a certain project (in which we did a certain share of the total work), but by taking this step, we became “more transparent” for ourselves and for customers.



We also kept long-term statistics on how much time we spend on a particular project - sometimes we won in money, sometimes we lost.

A little later, while continuing to do the same, we finally found out who our customers are and what they do. As it turned out, the second largest group of our clients is other designers to whom we sold our own design - you must admit, this is unusual.



At some point, we were captured by a stupid paradigm in which we believed that everyone should be designers and there should be no managers - even the founders drew. With experience, we realized that this approach is wrong.

Due to the fact that all our projects were short, 100 projects per year is very close to the truth, since we could simultaneously deal with up to 20 projects. When your profit reaches a million rubles a month, of course, you begin to feel a little different.

All of our mistakes and problems are painted, you can walk through each of them again.

• In Samara, it is good and wonderful, but you need to catch fish where it is, and sell the design where products are made. It was necessary to open an office minimally in Moscow, and as much as possible - in San Francisco.
• “We are designers!” - this thought forced us to do a lot of promotional projects, sometimes too much. Sochi, the design of drainage hatches in Samara and so on. Certainly, sometimes you need to do such things without thinking that you are losing money on them, but a measure of knowledge is definitely necessary.
• We managed to create a company in which it is very pleasant to work - we have created conditions close to ideal. This led to the fact that people tend to relax almost immediately began to do it - you could do nothing and have a great time in the company of tough guys.
• In the crisis of 2008, not having felt anything at all, we began to hire people. On January 10, 2009, we went to work and we didn’t have a single Russian client. But since the other half was still solvent and paid in foreign currency, by and large, our business went the same way, and we could even improve our own financial indicators in rubles. Actually, now we are seeing the same thing - in Russian design rubles has dropped in price by at least half, but the design on the market is still worth all the same money in foreign currency.
• Peter's principle (“In a hierarchical system, any worker rises to the level of his incompetence”) worked well in our company: good people came and then left (people left us at 3M, the design office of Pininfarina in Milan), hipsters went to Yandex ", And those who remained ... can not be said that we quickly understood the fact that the lack of growth among our employees is the lack of growth of the entire company, and it was necessary to dismiss people much more actively than we did.
• Naturally, none of us had a business education, and it was difficult for us to “break through” the market, being the first, and all those who follow you are easier by default.
• We did not think where and for what we spent money.
• There are many partners, some of whom did not understand where they are and for what purpose.
• What we offered was not completely honest - we were almost always lucky with good teams and good managers. Now we understand that design is not a one-time product, it needs to be done / viewed and redone, and we gave pictures, got money and forgot about the results of our work.
• We took little risk - this is the main point that I now regret. Often we were worried and afraid at the moment when it was necessary to act faster and “stronger”.

For several years now I have been ripening in order to tell from a design point of view what the difference is and how the worlds of client design and product design look in detail. What I do now (Denis is the main in UI and UX in Acronis) is radically different from all that I did before.



It seems that there are no customers, although this is also not completely true. Turbomilk slowly fell apart after joining the Parcsis team. We realized that the story of product development - the only possible self-respecting designer.



100 projects per year is a thousand projects in 10 years. Polished pictures, schemes of work with clients like “Fucking creative boutique”, “The client must be tired”, “Naval and leave” and many, many others. You didn’t have to think too much, because the stories were repeated from time to time: you knew what the client would say and knew what to say. Conveyor, to think on which you need a minimum and, rather, the spinal cord. Experience is, of course, the son of difficult mistakes.

Nevertheless , experience with Parcsis taught me a lot as a designer - however, this experience needs to be described separately and in detail.

After that, we restarted Turbomilk as an agency - it turned out to be much more profitable and boring at the same time. When you do not have designers on staff, and you, as an art director, send letters to and fro, I don’t know who will be able to do this kind of activity for a long time. Mortal longing. Therefore, we began to work with Runa Capital as UX-consultants, and with the transition of Sergey Belousov to Acronis, I was offered a job there as well, which I did not fail to take advantage of, since this (product design) is still my goal.



Web studio or custom development is a good experience, but you need to understand that, logically, this is not the “end”, but rather the opposite - a good start to a long and long history. Now, in charge of the design of the entire Acronis product line, I don’t feel at the end of the road - by any means.