Interview With Magomed Dovjenko
Magomed Dovjenko is a fresh breed of designer, his core beliefs propel him to become imaginative and unique. Magomed strives to experiment with his art and bring something completely new to the table each time he makes an illustration. In our interview Magomed discusses his future plans as well as some of his current artwork. So lets get into another great interview with a fresh and talented artist.
QWelcome to Psdtuts+, please introduce yourself. Could you tell us where you’re from and how you got started in the field?
Hi! My name is Magomed Dovjenko. I’m originally from Chechnya, now living and working in Cologne as a freelance Illustrator and Graphic designer. I started out drawing and doodling, it was just a hobby and I did it out of boredom. One day I discovered Photoshop and fell in love with it, I practiced for hours and hours. After a lot of practice, I started to freelance and it went well.
QAre your illustrations created strictly in Photoshop or are they first drawn out by hand and then brought into PS? Give us some examples of your normal design process.
My Illustrations are mainly Illustrator, mixed with Photoshop. I start out in Illustrator, Illustrating the idea I have in mind. When I’m cool with what I got and am ready to move on, I bring the illustration into Photoshop to add some more details that are impossible to do with Illustrator only, like mixing it with photo textures and everything.
QFrom looking at your work we see you have landed a couple of big jobs designing ads for companies. In your opinion what is the proper way for designers to market themselves in order to attract clients?
I think that the proper way to market yourself is to get your work everywhere, make sure you get featured and posted on blogs, it’s important to have as much public exposure as possible. The most important thing though, is to network. Networking plays a huge role in landing design jobs.
QIn your opinion what are the pros and cons to being a freelance designer? And would you recommend this path to other designers? Or should they take a more stable route?
I would say the pros are definitely that you can choose when and for how long you work every day, as well as the cool projects. There are many cooler projects you get being a freelancer than working in an agency. In my opinion, the cons are that there’s no team around you that can help you solve problems if needed, but it’s not like you’re always struggling because you don’t have a team around you, it’s all good most of the time
QYou put an incredible amount of detail into illustrations like “Michel Bastos” so please walk us through the creation of this unique illustration.
Ha, on the Bastos piece I began by sketching in Illustrator. After a while it began to look kind of cool so I started to put in a lot of details, spending hours and hours on it. After a while, when I was satisfied with how it looked, I began moving it into Photoshop to continue there. I spent some hours doing the Coloring, then I started to add the whole shading, little details on his jersey and everything, it took like 15 hours I think. It was supposed to be black/white, I’m glad I changed my mind!
QWhat do you plan to be doing with your design career in the next few years? Do you have any upcoming projects that you would like to share with us?
I plan to go to New York as soon as I’m 18. I feel like it’s a great place for me and the vibe is just… awesome. Can’t imagine how much creativity is floating in the air! I hope to continue to work there as a freelancer, but who knows, maybe I’ll join a Studio or something. We’ll see. I’m currently working on some cool projects for Monta (Edgar David’s Brand) and some other stuff that I can’t talk about yet, but I am going to update my site soon so you’ll see a lot of the new stuff.
QThroughout your experiences in graphic design, and other studies, what is the most important lesson you have learned? Why do you find it so important? And how do you apply it now to your art?
The most important lesson I learned is that you have to be UNIQUE, don’t go with the masses and become mainstream, be experimental, show things people haven’t seen before, that’s what counts in my opinion. I’m also trying out some new experiments, watch out for them.
QThanks again for providing Psdtuts+ with this opportunity to interview you. Any final thoughts for our readers?
Don’t follow people, let people follow you, try to stand out and don’t go mainstream. Thank you!