Dima Shiryaev's varied portfolio shows the benefits of having a client who trusts the designer

Based all the way over in St Petersburg, the work of graphic designer Dima Shiryaev manages to regularly catch our eye, even if the parties he’s promoting take place nearly 2,000 miles away from our studio.

Having perused his Tumblr of poster work a few years back,, we decided to catch up with the super-busy designer to discover a bit more about the context of his new, and equally brilliant, works.
Currently working on a series of posters for Kunznya House, a nightclub in his home of St Petersburg, Dima’s practice remains stylistically diverse, largely because, as he tells us, the venue allows him to be “free to express myself and I can do various stuff, from mixing replicas of contemporary art and paintings, to a new piece of typography.”

That level of trust bestowed upon him means he’s allowed to work experimentally “without being afraid to come up with a total mess, because sometimes the messier it gets, the better it is.”

This freedom has also encouraged the designer to implement his own constraints, simplifying his design aesthetic: “I’m looking for new ways of visual expressiveness and reduction of unnecessary details and visual noise, while preserving the eye-catchiness of the final design,” he points out of this new method to designing. Room to play has additionally encouraged him to learn new disciplines, looking to soon “get more experience with animation and video, it’s an interesting direction with a lot of opportunities.”

The approach has begun to filter into Dima’s client practice too, particularly in his consistent work “with my pals from Roots United formation (OFF, Present Perfect Festival,” he tells us. Utilising a “more formal and clear style for them” the designer notes how for events such as the one’s Roots United look after there are several collateral pieces that need to be considered, “and I try to make it more flexible and adaptive for different media and formats.”

While operating two different approaches to designing in this pair of project examples, Dima’s attention to detail and what the client needs creates cohesive projects either way.