What is it like to work in a narrow niche? Yegor Gilev reveals all the secrets of the company Turbomilk

Who are the customers of Turbomilk? How does Turbomilk work from the inside? What makes 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 visitors to the conference site. I am sure that this collective interview will be interesting for owners and managers of web and design studios or for those who just want to open their own studio.

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

Yegor 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 the general 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 in a few years) it takes a real office. Because mom swears when customers call home (or, God forbid, they come). So, we had everything on the contrary: first the office, then the clients, the first big joint projects, and after that the name, the site, and everything. I myself studied and did not study at the cybernetic faculty of a technical university. As for the design, I can only boast a children's art school. For Turbomilka, this is a pretty typical case.

')
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 another, 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 should be responsible for some key things. If you use foreign two-letter abbreviations, in short, you can formulate as follows: PR and HR - Denis , QA - Dima . Potential customers are our sales manager Natasha , and the distribution of work and coordination of efforts is yours truly. But, of course, not all of our activity comes down to fulfilling the assigned roles, so there is a rational grain in Jason's words, and a good deal.

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

Yegor Gilyov: Frankly, I never thought about this "problem". I will not say that all our customers are iron people without hearts in their chests, but they make decisions most often rationally. We do not need to look hard at the customer who saw our sketches for the first time, because we all (and the customer himself, first of all) understand that the final consumer is not him. Our task is to draw such an interface that users will like. So the conversation is not at the level of “oh, I don’t like something,” but quite differently: “You know, I'm afraid our users will find this too merry / boring.” You must admit that 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?

Yegor Gilyov: Of course, we attempted to sort out this issue, but I will not say that it was particularly successful. By word of mouth, mostly. And I mean not only direct recommendations from old clients, but also links to articles, for example. Only one Digg-effect from Denis's article about “ 10 mistakes ” is worth something. Unfortunately, there is no some sort of a magical worldwide catalog of icon designers in which we once housed, and a slap-slap-slap — customers threw down. Gaining popularity online is like making a snow woman, only slower. Catch-roll the ball over the snow, and it slowly grows in size. And if you are lazy - gradually breaks up.

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

Egor Gilyov: Probably, almost every web designer has tried to draw icons at least once. But one thing is just to draw beautiful crumblies from time to time, and quite another is to make it the main specialization and build a business around it. I admit, an example of the fact that such a business is possible has long been shown by my old friend Misha Granin. Thank you, Misha!

Alexander Fitiskin: Egor, where did you start? Tell us about your first jobs, first clients. Did you immediately begin with the visual design of interest-faces or did the sources have something else?

Egor Gilyov: At the beginning, there wasn’t anything! Once we almost started drawing advertising comics for one Samara bank. In general, all the founders of the studio Turbomilk came to the profession through web design. Some even remember a little bit of HTML so far and can impose something simple. Of course, tables, as was the case at the end of the last century.

Andrew Saturday: The traditional question: Why "Turbomilk", and not, for example, "Fast and Furious" or "Fast Metro"?

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

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

Egor Gilyov: Unfortunately, there is only one mechanized unit: the combat droid from the Lego MindStorm designer. He still has little ability for us, but we are working on it.

Mikhail Vorotnikov: Why do you use Mac? Is there some kind of 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 I use a Mac” (because I do not use it), I will have to reformulate it a bit. Why does the interface designer choose this or that platform at all? 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 small details, but it’s exactly the work on details that constitutes the essence of the profession of a visual interface designer. The 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 so sincerely believe, but it’s just obvious that their area of ​​interest lies somewhere away from the design of user interfaces.

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) Samara is better than Moscow? 4) Often walk on the quay? 5) If you now had the opportunity to move the office, for example, to the Vertical, would you move?

Yegor Gilyov: 1) If we understand the “height of the bar” by demanding, 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 there, I don’t know where, bring it, I don’t know what,” then this is an international phenomenon (fortunately, not very often among our customers). 2) I suppose it is highly demanded, considering that most of our clients do not speak Russian. 3) There is one politically correct answer to this question for any Russian provincial city: “of course, it’s better!”. In response to the next question, “the better?” Usually, as far as I know, people talk about the beauty of nature or (if there is a problem with nature) about the sincerity 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 on the way from the car to the office. Summer morning is nice to walk. 5) And what happened to the "Vertical"? Are all the areas already occupied there? Why "if"? Let's say this: if we suddenly have to leave our current magnificent office, we will probably consider Vertical as one of the options. But obviously not in the first place - it hurts too much an uncomfortable place.

Anton Guglya ( tonguglya.livejournal.com ): Hi Egor. What percentage of the work does not fit into your online portfolio due to a signed NDA?

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

Konstantin Dranch: What social network do you prefer?

Yegor 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, the model, and where you can buy them, but also cowards in general - what do you think about this?

Yegor Gilyov: Sigismund! People who know me well won't let me lie. I have two fetishes: thick notebooks and comfortable bags. About these things I can talk for hours. About cowards, forgive, I will not undertake to argue. Not my profile.

Artyom Reznikov: How is Iconza ? Is popular?

Yegor Gilyov: Carrots-ikonza asked to say hello. She is doing well 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 seminars on visual design being held or planned?

Yegor Gilyov: We are planning such seminars for so long that involuntarily there is a suspicion that these ideas will remain at the level of uncertain plans. But thanks for the interest. The more such questions there are, the more likely it is that sooner or later such seminars will take place. Write to us in what form it would be interesting for you, feel free to please.

Yevgeny Kalmykov: Egor, do the founding fathers continue to draw or now you have to deal with administrative issues more? The professional growth of employees is their personal business or is their leadership “unobtrusively” pushing them?

Yegor Gilyov: Of course, we have not yet covered our illustrators and photoshop for good. It is also true that carefree days, when you come to work, draw, draw, draw, draw, draw, draw, bang - it's time to go home, it's a long time ago. However, what can be called administrative issues? Language will not rise to call it this way, for example, artistic leadership, or analysis of the tasks of the next customer, or conversations with job seekers. Answering Dmitry Fitiskin's question, 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 am even afraid to assume that you mean “unobtrusive” nudging! Judging by the quotes, obviously something bad. We are not like that. No violence! Our employees are adults. We try to hold regular workshops, or jointly watch interesting lectures or presentations on the big screen. But participation in these events is completely voluntary.

Yevgeny Kalmykov: Does a rich portfolio help in dealing with new customers, or do you have to “sell” yourself again each time? What do you do when your vision of the product (website, icon set, logo) is different from the customer's vision?

Egor Gilyov: Naturally, the 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. There are of course other cases. Comes, for example, the person behind the design of the site of the fan factory. We honestly admit that a little is not our profile, but since you want to order from us - why not? For a long time we agree on a price, a date. And after all this, the customer asks: "please send links to the sites of other fan plants that you painted." Here, of course, it is immediately clear - not our client, we will not succeed in 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 probably need a very big conceit to have in order to think that you know better how to develop a product than its creator and owner. We do not differ by special modesty at all, but we don’t go that far. We can try to help, offer some ideas, but ultimately the customer knows better.

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

Yegor Gilyov: I believe that success even in one single small area is impossible without all the time looking around and trying something new. We have never tried to specifically keep ourselves in some rigid framework, and therefore, of course, we have never been "closely". Our narrow niche is something like a rod, on which everything rests, and not borders, beyond which we do not allow ourselves to get out.

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

Yegor Gilyov: Goal-Directed Design, or Alan Cooper's Goal-Oriented Method, is close to me. I take this opportunity to advertise the recent translation of his book , On the Interface . Our partners from the UIDesign Group have had a hand in this edition, so that once and for all we can be sure not only of the valuable content, but also of an adequate translation. All read - this is the main book about designing user interfaces. What can you say about innovations in the interfaces of Windows-based applications? In my opinion, in recent years nothing as significant as the appearance of Ribbon in Office 2007 has happened. It was a very bold and very clever decision. If we talk about the near future, I think we are waiting for a lot of interesting things in connection with the Multi-touch technology.

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

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

Alexander Kushpel: Not bothered to draw icons?

Yegor 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 icon makers who whine: they reached de ceiling, work de monotonous, there is no place to develop. I am sure that it is possible to cultivate this business to gray hair.

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

Yegor Gilyov: We do not yet have a tradition to meet a working team on non-working days. Perhaps someday we will conduct such an experiment. But then we are able to create a non-working environment, without departing far from the workplace. To do this, we have an X-Box and Wii in the office and a fragrant kebab house right under the windows.

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

Egor Gilyov: Unfortunately, since then the competition Pixelpalooza is no longer held. This is doubly annoying for me: according to the rules, I would take part in the jury of the competition in 2005. About other contests of a similar scale is unknown to me. We thought about holding 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 renew the tradition.

Denis Korablev: Egor, what would you recommend to a beginner icon developer how to improve his own drawing technique?

Yegor Gilyov: Denis! It is my drawing technique that I would recommend to improve by copying other people's samples. Yes Yes. “Try to copy as accurately as possible. You still will not be able to achieve complete similarity, and the difference may be very remarkable. " This is not my idea, this is Bruce Mau.

Pavel Pavel: What is the monthly turnover in Turbomilk company?

Yegor 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 holding courses for those who would like to work in your area. What is it? Will there be a new announcement at the fest?

Yegor Gilyov: Alas, no, nothing happened. I probably at the last fest somehow did not quite clearly put it. We announced the possibility of conducting courses to get some kind of response. To send us applications. For example: "I, such and such, would like to work out on such courses, I agree to spend my time and even money on this." But, unfortunately, we did not receive any clear response from the audience. This is certainly not to the fact that the audience is bad. — .

online-
. .