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Poppy Thaxter“I just love this endless exploration!” Tatiana Egoshina on why she thrives in the design world
Creative careers can be unpredictable in all the best ways, leading to jobs or fields that not only take us by surprise, but also showcase our hidden strengths. For designer Tatiana Egoshina, nobody could have foreseen a steady evolution from fine art to web design. But retrospectively, it all makes sense! In our chat, the Turkey-based designer tells us more about this shift, alongside her current practice as a multimedia designer and the projects she has on the go.
PT Hi Tatiana! How are you?
TE Doing great, thanks! May is a very renaissance-type of month and I can feel it in all spheres of my life. A lot of inspiring colourful moments ahead!
PT Exciting! How would you describe the type of work you do on a daily basis?
TE In short, I move pixels around on the screen... I work with web formats: landing pages, editorials, company websites, portfolios, etc. In fact, I can work with any format, not just web, it doesn’t really matter. For these projects, I create the most suitable graphic language, identity, and the main idea that visually assembles the project into a single whole entity – and that’s what really matters.
PT What would you say is the best thing about your job?
TE Oh I love being a designer! Designers come into contact with a huge number of random areas while working on projects. I once worked on an identity for a museum dedicated to the mining of magnesite – a rock used to create refractory materials. In the process, I learned about the existence of nearly a million types of kilns for all kinds of needs (for example, a rotary kiln, who knew?).
So designers dive deep down to the seabed in a glass cube and look out on all these new worlds of corals, algae, jellyfish and seahorses, sometimes sharks. Simply exploring but from a safe distance.
I have an all-consuming desire to make everything perfect.
PT Why do you think design as a career suits you?
TE It just really suits my psyche with all of its ups and down! For example, I have an all-consuming desire to make everything perfect which really makes life difficult! But it helps a lot not to leave the project unfinished and align all the pixels just perfectly. I think all our choices are connected with our internal psychological settings, not only professional ones. Maybe one day I’ll get to know the pleasure of sculpting imperfect ceramic cups, but for now, I’m stuck with the pixels.
PT Outside of work at Readymag, can you tell us a bit about your projects?
TE Definitely! As I said, a designer comes into contact with many worlds and I just love this endless exploration – that’s why I like to participate in different projects. Mostly it’s web, like this one for Kultrab, Black Sea Coast Mutation. This project is about the brand’s new collection, the photos for which were shot on the Black Sea coast. The campaign is accompanied by interviews and along the way draws attention to the growing hole in the ecology of this region.
I also design a lot of branding projects. Here was an identity for the IndieLisboa Film Festival. The crow is the main symbol of the festival and I needed to create graphics somehow connected with it. After several attempts at drawing a bird, I settled on crow footprints – they are super graphic and work great at different scales! And I love such simple tricks in graphics.
Sometimes I work on posters. This one was created in 2022 for an exhibition dedicated to space. I took this opportunity to remind everyone that rockets have a great peaceful use – to explore the unknown (rather than destroy).
But I also have a long artistic past (I attended art classes for almost ten years) so sometimes there are self-initiated projects with hand drawing on paper (when I need to take a breather from pixels!). My favourite project actually – an exhibition with portraits of all the boys I have ever kissed – had a lot of heart put into it. The exhibition was held in the hotel room that I was living in those few days, and to everyone who came to visit, I told the story of each kiss. The unexpected result of this sincerity was that visitors began to tell me their love stories in return! The hotel room turned into an extraordinary space of trust and openness. And I would like to create more designs of experiences, not only graphic ones.
PT In a recent talk at INTL, you mentioned that ‘process is the best teacher.’ Do you prefer to learn from play and experimenting, or working on live projects?
TE I am always looking for a place to play and experiment in real-life projects, this is the only way to invent something really worthwhile and interesting. The process itself should be captivating, like a game in childhood, when you forget about food and sleep and the whole world around you (but food and sleep are still important – never skip your meals). I’m sure everyone knows this feeling from childhood. Do you remember what plots and incredible things you invented in the process? Exactly. So I’m just turning the Figma workspace into a playground.
PT Out of everybody you’ve worked with, who has inspired you the most?
TE My university mentor who I had a crush on so I soaked up his every word like a sponge.
It’s always exciting to work on projects where the names of your design heroes are mentioned!
PT I love your honesty ;) Out of all the projects you’ve worked on at Readymag, which did you find the most challenging? Or the most rewarding?
TE We did a great job with The Faces Behind Typefaces. For this project, we partnered with the Type Directors Club to celebrate their 75th anniversary and this year’s TDC Medalist Akira Kobayashi. It contains seven interviews with modern-day type designers about typography pioneers: Paul Rand, Emigre, Paula Scher, Ruben Fontana and others. It’s always exciting to work on projects where the names of your design heroes are mentioned! I chose the graphic solutions very carefully. Would Paula Cher like her design to be described in this typeface? How would Emigre react to such a layout? Well, something like this. I'm kidding. Kind of.
The project turned out great! We got as many media mentions in a month as we’d normally get in a year. And it was even nominated for a Webby!
PT Do you have a preferred typeface or colour palette you always go to?
TE I love the typeface we use for graphic and web design in Readymag – Px Grotesk by Nicolas Eigenheer. It is my favourite right now. It has a perceptible, but not very bold character. It immediately adds a special touch to any text. And, of course, I often use the classic set of fonts that have been proven over the years: Helvetica, Neue Haas, Akzidenz Grotesk, Times, Inter. But I’m always eager to try new trendy fonts, explore their plasticity, find combinations, perfect sizing and best use. And there’s always a special place in my heart for something like Sauber Script by type.today.
PT Who would be your dream client or collaborator?
TE ABC Dinamo. My dream is to get hold of their luxurious font library and work with each and every letter! I have an impermanent Instagram post section dedicated to experimenting with fonts. Maybe one day I’ll feature the ABC Maxi Round or ABC Favorit typeface there (fingers crossed)!
PT What trend or innovation are you most excited about?
TE My very predictable answer is AI. I’m still under the impression that even the worst picture can be brought to great printing quality! And this is not even the most grandiose feature of AI. What’s next?
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