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Ekaterina Lopushenko

Graphic designer. Fourteen years of identity, print and wayfinding — most of it for people who had to hand the result to a printer on Friday.

Download the one-page CV (PDF)

Based in
Lisbon, Portugal
Languages
Russian (native), working English
Open to
In-house, studio, freelance

What I do

Systems that other people have to run without me

Most of my work is brand identity and print for cultural institutions, festivals and small businesses: the mark, the system around it, and every carrier it has to survive — posters, programmes, tickets, packaging, signage, screens.

The part I care about is what happens after handover. A festival team rebuilds the poster three weeks before opening with a line-up that changed twice; a shopping centre orders sixty-nine different sign types from a contractor who will never speak to me. So the system has to be specified well enough to be used by someone who wasn't in the room — and loose enough that it doesn't break when they improvise.

That is also why I like production. I know what a printer will do to a fold, what a plotter does to a hairline, and what happens to a colour when it is applied to anodised aluminium instead of coated paper.

Where a project needs a hand that is not mine, I commission and direct it. Three illustrators across five festival editions — Bella Leyn, Lyuba Berezina, Evgenia Strakhova — each briefed to a constraint rather than a subject, so the drawings stayed usable on every carrier long after the season they were made for.

How I work

One idea, carried all the way down

I start from the constraint that is actually binding — a line-up confirmed late, an audience that ignores anything made for them by adults, a 40 mm wristband — and build the idea so that constraint becomes the reason the design looks the way it does.

Then I take it to the smallest carrier in the system and check that it still holds. If it survives the button label and the wristband, it will survive the six-metre banner.

Experience

2024 — now

Career break — parental leave

Relocated to Lisbon. Available now, full-time or freelance.

2012 — now

Volunteer designer — Foundation for Contemplative Research

Moscow. Identity, a pocket card series, event posters and three books — fourteen years, unpaid, still running.

2021 — 2024

Graphic designer — documentary film festivals

Shape of Life, Perm (Gorky Film Studio) and World of Wonders, Kaliningrad region. Identity, art direction, all print, web and screens.

2018 — 2022

Graphic designer — Rutsog Inv.

Moscow. Property group; owner of Nikolskaya Plaza and the St. Regis Moscow Nikolskaya. Brand support and print for both properties; for Nikolskaya Plaza, the complete wayfinding system and its fabrication specification.

2015 — 2018

Graphic designer — Globus Gourmet

Moscow. Grocery retail chain. Everything from posters to multi-page publications, plus web, outdoor, signage and window display.

2012 — 2015

Independent practice

Moscow. Restaurants, clinics, foundations and agencies. Identity, logotypes, menus, catalogues, packaging and campaign print.

2011 — 2012

Graphic designer — EMCG

Moscow. Design and communications agency. Restaurant menus, posters, playbills, small-format print.

2011

Design assistant — Afisha-Eda magazine

Moscow. Editorial layout and colour proofing.

2008 — 2009

Designer — Zebra advertising group

Khabarovsk. First job: identity, campaign print and outdoor.

Selected clients

Education

2009 — 2011

British Higher School of Art and Design, Moscow

BA, Graphic Design and Illustration

2021, 2022

Bang Bang Education, Moscow

Brand identity (2021) · Motion design, After Effects (2022)

2001 — 2006

Sakhalin State University

BA, Management

Work