Nikita Iziev
A spotlight on Nikita with 8 questions and our favourite pieces.
Nikita Iziev is a London-based Graphic Designer and Art Director that focuses on the intersection between form, type and moving image. A love for emerging technologies and typography fuelled a daily uploading streak on Instagram of 600 days. This lead him to work with clients such as Nike, The New York Times, Ikea amongst many others. He was also awarded a Golden Pencil from D&AD for his project ‘Ban Drill, Ban Dreaming’ and was featured in publications such as Computer Arts Magazine and Fedrigoni 366.
Do you remember the moment you knew you wanted to become a designer?
Not really to be honest. I always was a little more inclined to craft to one extent or another. I used to role play as a kid with other kids from the neighbourhood. One of them involved Batman in one way or another (sorry I don’t remember much about it anymore haha). Anyways, it was something along the lines of cops are robbers, so I made everyone some sort of ID with either a Batman logo or spelled out ‘robbers’. I laminated them as well to make it fully official. This later turned into playing with software with the help of YouTube tutorials and sort of stuck until now, only that now it is very much self-directed research.
Did you go to design school? Do you think it was necessary to get to where you are today?
I actually only just about finished design school just now. I don’t think it is necessary to go to design school to be where you want to be in design, but it can definitely help. Design school can be very helpful in the sense that it works as an echo chamber of knowledge. You have people that worked in the industry (commercially or culturally) guiding your ideas and showing you really useful references. Although in my personal experience, I would’ve appreciated more academic and skill-oriented teaching at least throughout first year. Learning type/art/design history is essential and it unfortunately falls short here (UK).
Who is your favorite designer right now?
Right now its definitely Raf Rennie. I am more of a digitally-focused designer currently and seeing print work with such often high-tech content is quite a unique thing to find. The way content influences his graphic language, while still keeping that edge of his personal style is really lovely to see and definitely makes me want to aspire to reach a similar level of design knowledge.
What is your all time favorite font?
I don’t think I have an all time favourite font. I have a font that I used very frequently throughout me posting daily on Instagram, which is Favorit by Dinamo. Such a simple font but it has its lovely quirks. Other than that I am fairly young in my understanding and love for type so I might have to get back to you on that a couple years down the road haha.
What is your method of getting out of a designers block?
I think there is only really two ways of dealing with it really. You either keep on pushing through it and keep starting over. Or if that doesn’t work, fully occupy your body and mind by doing something else. Meet friends, work out, cook a nice meal. Anything you can think of.
Can you describe your ideal working environment?
An ideal work environment for me would be any space, other than my bedroom, where I can freely plan collaborations with other people, as well as have enough room to experiment with different media. I think thats all someone really needs.
Some of our Favorites
What advice would you have given yourself 3 years ago?
Build good habits and mind your business.
What is the greatest challenge you have faced in your career so far? How did you overcome it?
Possibly the only challenge I can think of is moving to London to study design with a little bit of cash saved up to last me a couple of months. I took up the goal of posting every day to Instagram for a year in order to build a source of income, while exploring my craft more. Luckily, after a year of being antisocial and saving every penny I earned, it paid off!
