- November 2, 2020
Tetiana Donska: “With WordPress, you can scale your website and add more new features without any difficulties”
Reading Time: 4 minutesTetiana Donska is Design Partner and Art Director at Ester Digital. She told us about her steps in the design world, how to get a customized website and how WordPress is a tool that everybody can use.
What do you do for a living nowadays?
I am a Design Partner and Creative Art Director at Ester Digital. We are a web design and development agency with such famous brands as Asos, T-Mobile, McDonald’s among our clients. I have been working with Ester Digital since the beginning of its history in 2015. As an Art Director, I am involved in brand strategy and creation of visual identity for our clients. I am also an experienced UI/UX designer and I implement my skills to help start-ups, finance, healthcare, e-learning businesses, and non-profit organizations to improve their digital appearance.
I am proud to be a member of the international AWWWARDS jury. It is an honor for me to work with design experts from all over the world and being a part of this creative community.
What inspired you to be a designer?
For as long as I can remember, I was always passionate about art. Then it transformed into an interest in typography, portraits, murals, and graphic design. All my notebooks were full of drawings and sketches, not words. When I was doing my degree in mechanical engineering, it became clear to me that web design is what I need to pursue as it allows me to combine art and engineering. That’s how I started my career in web design. And I still believe that I made the right decision.
I can’t imagine any other sphere that would be more interesting, fast-changing, challenging, and go-the-extra mile than web design. The speed and creativity is what I like most about my job and I can’t imagine myself doing something else.
What’s your experience in website design? What specifically appeals to you about web design?
When I just came into the world of web design, I started with the game industry and 2D art. That was how I got my first projects, portfolio, and reviews. I’m not sure why I decided to start with the game design. It all felt very natural: an opportunity popped up right in front of me and I just had no right to miss this chance. After completing a number of successful game design projects, I decided that it is time to grow up and face some more serious challenges. It became the beginning of my career as a UI/UX designer. I was (and still am) passionate, curious, aiming to create interfaces with that wow-effect, and web projects that users could navigate with their eyes closed. Such an approach allowed me to become an independent art director and design partner at Ester in 2015.
During these five years, we’ve grown from a small start-up created by four friends into an international company with clients from all over the world. I am so very proud to be a part of the Ester Digital family, and I am sure we have lots of interesting projects to create and dozens of milestones to reach.
How do you work with your clients? What steps do you take during your design process?
With every project we work on, we start with a comprehensive client interview. To create a design that works means to dive into a client’s business and learn it in tiny details. Our main goal is clear: we always work to create the best solution for our clients, not to showcase our talent or creativity. Being an art director, I build relationships with clients, and then guide our design team to achieve the best possible results.
Our clients are different and their businesses vary. We work with companies and nonprofits from all over the world. We put clients and their requirements and goals into the heart of every project, so design and development steps may differ but some of them remain the same. We start with an interview, then explore the industry and competitors, provide clients with various design options so they can choose one that fits best for them. As for web development, we never deliver solutions that are not fully optimized and tested. We are always online for our clients. So we are not just clients and executors – we are partners. And we treat our clients’ business as our own. This is how we work.
Do you recommend WordPress?
We follow a customer-centric approach, and we believe that there is no one-size-fits-all solution. We use technologies that are suitable for each specific project: sometimes it is WordPress, sometimes it is React.js, sometimes it is something else. But no matter what technology we work with, I could guarantee that our developers are experts in what they do. I am extremely proud to work with them.
Based on everything I said above, it is clear that we don’t recommend WordPress for every client we work with. But more than half of all our projects are based on WordPress as it was the perfect CMS for those cases.
What would you say are the advantages of using it?
Its admin panel is clear and simple. You don’t have to be a developer or have a degree in engineering to manage your WordPress-based website. For clients, it is easier to work with WordPress because there are plenty of how-to instructions and tutorials available online.
With WordPress, you can scale your website and add more and more new features without any difficulties.
What tools would you recommend to a client to improve their website?
Can eyes and sense of style be regarded as tools? Just joking. I would recommend every website owner manage UX and web design, as well as technical and SEO audits from time to time. It allows you to implement big-picture thinking, look at your website with a fresh pair of eyes, and, of course, stay aware of your website’s health.
Nowadays competition is so high that you have no right to create your website once and think that you can sit back and sip your latte.
If you have to give one tip for a client, what would it be?
Learn your target audience, explore your customers in tiny details as you work for them. Your customers will give you answers to all your questions – you should just ask and listen. And be brave.
Extraordinary and catchy web design is not for the faint-hearted.
Try out how easy is to use WordPress!
