Adelina Shaidullina: How did the Design School in Yerevan come about?
Igor Gurovich: The previous rector of the university approached me with an idea to set up a school. Since I know how design works, but don’t really know how education works, I immediately called my friend Arseniy Meshcheryakov and said, “Let’s create a school”. The next day, he flew to Yerevan, and now we have a school.
Disciplines-wise, it’s a Russian design school curriculum, yet students study according to the protocol of the Republic of Armenia and obtain two diplomas. They also learn the Armenian language and history, and eat in the Armenian canteen.
Regarding ethnic makeup, we have a third of Yerevan residents, a third of Russian-Armenian kids, and a third of Russian kids.
AS: Do students address the Armenian script?
IG: Those who want, do. Moreover, one of the second-year students designed an Armenian body text typeface, and half of their classmates now use it. However, this goes against the curriculum, as the students are not supposed to study type until their third year. They can now design some kind of display typeface to use in their particular project, though.
Identity for the Association of Literary Museums of Armenia. Student project by Isu Akopyan
AS: Why not until the third year?
IG: Well, the HSE (Higher School of Economics) regulations are built around the idea that some basic things are impossible to live without, and those need to be learned gradually. As for the rest, you can choose based on your understanding of what you want to do, and this understanding usually comes by the third year of studies.
Designing type is a very specific thing, barely tapped in Russia and untapped at all in Armenia, and we want our students to be more mature when they start studying it. We also want our students to consider the skill of creating fonts not as a mechanical skill but rather as a way to achieve some goals. But goals are something that needs to arrive; they don’t appear right away. This takes time.
AS: You once mentioned that there are no books on communication design. But isn’t it true that one needs to read a number of books on, let’s say, typography to produce good-quality design?
IG: There are many strategies. However, our curriculum assumes that the students first need to learn how to work with rhythm, with atmosphere — certain things that have to do with the feeling rather than science. And once they realise what they gravitate towards, they may start picking tools which are right for them, and learn how to work with those tools. Then they will have to read some books, clearly. But they need to read books that do help them, not just read books and then say, “Mom, I read a lot.”
Identity for the clothing brand Cover. Student project by Anastasia Chernikova
Identity for the perfume brand ACHQ. Student project by Lianna Gevorkyan
AS: Do you introduce your students to any directions they might potentially gravitate towards in the future?
IG: I show them what I like. After all, it’s not that designers solve some kind of unique problems. People have been solving these problems for the last 2,000 years. Some solutions were successful, others were unfortunate. So, I show those whose solutions I like.
Clearly, in this sense, having a curator is not an accurate tool, as curators show what they love themselves. That is why different students go to different curators.
We have only two batches of students, with one group in each. I teach in the second one, and Garegin Martirosyan, a great Armenian designer, very good, kind, smart, and extremely empathetic, teaches in the first one.
Coasters by Garegin Martirosyan
AS: What do your students come up with as references in class? Whom do they look up to?
IG: Everybody is different, so they bring different things and are exposed to different things. If they all were to show me the same thing, it would scare me rather than make me happy. There is a number of gods here in Yerevan. There is a wonderful calligrapher, Ruben Malayan, whom everyone worships. Then there are several nice Armenian design agencies — for instance, Backbone or Triada Studio. Of course, the students take pride in them, look up to them.
Calligraphy by Ruben Malayan
Identity for the store 4U.am. Design: Backbone
Clearly, the students still look up to David Carson, and I believe they will continue to do so for the next 700 years. At the same time, they get obsessed with some young Japanese designers that I don’t know. They have this idea that they slowly start to articulate, the idea that Armenia, typography-wise, is some kind of young Japan, and that, basically, Armenian letters can well be dealt with in the same way Japanese treat their kanji characters.
100 Shapes by Rivers Yang, a designer popular among the students of Igor Gurovich
AS: What do you tell your students when they ask you about where and how to look for a job?
IG: The way I see it, you need to try a lot of things. That is why we try to make sure that our students work somewhere from their second year so that they get experience of communicating with a customer, with a boss, so that after their graduation, when they find a job for a salary, this won’t feel like a catastrophe to them.
It’s important to gain experience, and my role here is to help reflect on this experience. When we came up with the idea of setting up HSE, we stated that a designer is many things. They can manage the design process, be an interpreter between the state and a creative team, take on any role within this creative team, and be effective in that role. But to choose this role, you need to have experience. A personal experience is something that can hardly be replaced with anything.
AS: Isn’t it hard for a designer to work and study at the same time?
IG: It’s difficult. Many get overwhelmed and suffer. But if you have made up your mind that you want to become a designer, it would be helpful to know that it is hard — and that this is how it will be in the next 50 years or so.
That is exactly why it is important not to prepare yourself to practice some abstract, made-up profession, but to find a niche within that profession, one that you won’t hate and one that won’t feel wrong.
Tapestries from a joint project by Igor Gurovich and Concept Carpet Lab
AS: And for that, you need to try out different niches within this profession?
IG: Yes. And when you’re better than anyone else in something very specific, your value increases.
AS: Do you talk with your students about any particular niches?
IG: When we had our first group of students at HSE 14 years ago, we said to them, “Kids, there’s this biggest prize: television.” Because big agencies charge $1,500 for a second and do a bad job, whereas you can charge $500 and do a faster and better job.
AS: And what is this most sought-after prize now?
IG: There are many of them. I somehow lost my touch because I am now in Armenia. My understanding is that here, it’s a certain thing between architecture and design. An architect builds a house, and anything smaller in scale can be done by a designer: designing finishing materials, hardscape elements, introducing the brand elements into architecture, navigation…
Since Armenia’s IT market is rapidly growing, our colleagues who know how to code and design and understand how marketing works must be in huge demand right now.
There are lots of things here that would be nice to address.
Collages by Igor Gurovich with Armenian crosswords, 2025
AS: You once said that it’s wrong to deliberately produce crappy design just for money. But what do I do if I’ve just graduated and I really need the money?
IG: First, there are ways to love this crappy stuff. Then it stops being crap and becomes a life experience. Set yourself a local task and solve it. Or, figure out the potential of your mental stability: ‘I work at a company that I don’t like and try to see how much more I can take’.
But really, of course, this is bad for your karma.
AS: My institute professor Dima Gusev used to say that with each crappy project a designer goes backwards in their development.
IG: Well, you know, I do not agree with this, as I believe that a failure is this kind of really powerful thing that can move you both forward and backward. If you understand how and why you failed, you can make sure it won’t happen again.
AS: We are all saying that those times when you could plan something are gone now. Do you discuss this with your students?
IG: Well, that’s something obvious. The planning horizon has been reduced. Yet you still can make some plans — for example, a plan not to become a piece of shit. You can still implement a plan like that, even now.
Posters by Igor Gurovich for Noor Bar, 2025
AS: We live in a very confusing time right now — not only because of what’s happening in the world, but also because we see lots of AI tools arriving that could potentially replace designers. Aren’t the students somehow worried about it?
IG: That is something we discussed many times. It seemed that mobile photography would kill regular photography, e-books would kill normal books, and cinema would kill the theatre. But technical revolutions and innovations knock out insecure mediocre people. They pose no threat to confident mediocre people and all those above.
Besides, our school came about when AI already existed. That is why we simply turned it into our ally, not our enemy.
AS: Do the students use AI a lot?
IG: According to our school curriculum, they are supposed to complete several tasks involving the use of AI. Some perform them more successfully, others less. Then everybody decides for themselves whether they need such a set of tools and to what extent. Some use AI a lot, others resort to it less often.
AS: What is the most common mistake students make when dealing with AI?
IG: When a person tries to deploy it as a certain creative assistant, as a creator, — but AI is not good at it yet.
But we need AI to produce numerous options and then choose a strategy. Instead of being stuck for four days designing 25 options, you can make 150 options within half an hour and then make a choice. Within the chosen strategy, a human being still does a much better job for now. With students’ work, I care about the person’s decisions rather than the image quality.
AS: Do you talk about copyright in the context of AI with your students?
IG: When the world is going through things it is going through now, that business with copyright feels like a relic from the past, from the world that is long gone now. But, of course, we will need to talk about it.
AS: Let’s get this conversation started right now.
IG: There is such a thing as criminal law of the country of residence. It should not be violated — anything else you can do. Anything else is fine.
AS: But your son AI-artist and animator Misha Gurovich says that it’s not OK to upload someone else’s images to Midjourney!
IG: He lives in the Netherlands and has rigid Dutch morals. While I have loose Armenian morals. But this, of course, may also depend on the customer. I personally have great affection for quotes. After all, AI is some kind of melting pot where quotes and someone else’s images get a new life. And that is extremely exciting.
AI art by Misha Gurovich
AS: That is, if I train an AI model using your posters, you wouldn’t mind, right?
IG: I wouldn’t, because I am changing, and I really like it. If an AI model repeats what I did ten years ago, let it do it. To me, on the one hand, it will be no longer relevant, while on the other, I will be even kind of curious.
Images generated by a model trained on the posters designed by Igor Gurovich in 2014–2015
AS: You said that now is the happiest time for the profession, as design is being introduced into all areas. Don’t you feel that, with the help of the very same AI we just talked about, people from other fields are becoming part of the design world, and this affects the quality of design?
IG: When computers arrived, many non-professionals joined the design industry. But it somehow absorbed it. There are many professions within design where AI models are not competitors. For example, you can manage designers. You can write books about design — over the past ten years, those have become really distinctive, author-driven.
AS: But what if I just graduated? I can’t go and write a book about design right away.
IG: The chance that you will write a good book about design is way higher than the chance that AI will write one. It doesn’t choose what to read and has no personal qualities.
AS: And to manage designers, you first need to work as a designer for many years…
IG: That is some kind of Russian self-deprecation. If I am good at managing people, why not manage people?
AS: How do I, as an employer, make sure that you understand the field? Am I supposed to just take your word for it?
IG: Yes, or not. You can also give me a test assignment.
Poster for the presentation of the HSE SOUND LAB audio installation at the Dom Cultural Center. Design: Igor Gurovich
AS: Do you address this topic with your students? Should one agree to perform test tasks or not, charge for them or not?
IG: There are no rules here. If you are offered to complete a test assignment for your dream job, it would be most foolish to say ‘no, I won’t do it’.
We always say that the profession lives by the laws of the profession. Yet this is not true. Everything lives by the human law. People can be good, bad, smart, empathetic, kind, mean. And they behave in the profession the same way they would behave in the playground.
Poster for the Metakansk festival, 2025. Design: Igor Gurovich
AS: Does it mean that you cannot separate an artist from their artwork?
IG: It doesn’t mean anything at all. However, if I know a person, I normally see their personality and their idea of what is right and wrong, their idea of good and evil in their work.
AS: Eric Gill was a very bad man. Can we tell it by his work?
IG: Well, I didn’t know Eric Gill, but, for instance, I do know all the participants of the Grapus collective. Those are people with a really clear position, pretty consistent. And when they parted ways, Pierre Bernard said: “I want to teach the government to understand what good design is”. He went to work at the École des Arts décoratifs (ENSAD, Art and Design School) and took on some big projects. They were worse than what Grapus did, but it was important to him to be involved in teaching French cultural institutions to commission good design.
Alex Jordan said, “I’m a communist, so I will do even more leftist and weirder stuff, and I am going to work for the Party.” Gérard Paris-Clavel said that he did not want to work in a world where a designer makes a poster in a day and then spends two weeks arranging logos, and he became an artist.
I mean, they all had their ideas about this life, and it was reflected in what they were doing.
Poster for the Grapus retrospective, 1982. Design: Grapus
Poster for the anniversary of the newspaper L’Avant-Garde, 1976. Design: Grapus
Poster for the play The Taming of the Shrew, 1979. Design: Grapus
AS: You once mentioned that you have many questions for yourself, for the industry, for the tasks you have to solve. Could you elaborate on what these questions actually are?
IG: It is hard for me to talk about myself. But my older friend and teacher, Alain le Guernec, back when I was 30, said to me that changing once in five years is the right thing to do. And the worst thing that could happen is that you will like or even love yourself in a certain physical and creative state. And that’s the beginning of the end. And, sadly, many good, talented people went through this, having fallen in love with themselves, and began endlessly replicating their success. That is why I am always trying to transform myself.
I really like it when in each new project you’re excited and anxious like a child: ‘I don’t know whether I am able to do that or not, whether it will work out or not’. I like this feeling that everything may go wrong, that you’ve entered someone else’s territory and do not really know how it all works here.
I’m terrified of the thought that at some point I’ll stop changing, because it’s emotionally difficult.
AS: Does design education also need to change every five years?
IG: It needs to change more often as it’s a living thing. It designs the future. If a person doesn’t have a living sense of tomorrow, they won’t be able to make good design. After all, we cannot say that the design of the 1950s somehow describes the realities of 2025, although it hasn’t gotten worse in 75 years, it’s just that it doesn’t describe what is happening to us now.
The school’s goal is to teach kids to feel the world of tomorrow and the day after tomorrow. But this is essentially also the goal of design.