I'm Ilia Werner.
I've been a designer for over 20 years. My main project is Design Lovers, a YouTube channel about design. Very much a family guy. I love my wife, son, and dog.
Where I'm from.
A computer, paid for in cattle.
My maternal grandparents sold a cow in the mid-90s to help my father, then a young scientist, buy a computer. He taught me the basics of object-oriented programming. Hardly anyone was online back then.
CSS, HTML, Photoshop, Dreamweaver.
I taught myself the tools — one tag, one layer, one slice at a time — and went freelance. My first paid work came around 2005. Designing websites still felt like a strange niche.
Fourteen years freelance.
I started small, working with local clients in my home town. Over time the work grew — first regional, then national.
By the end of that stretch I was embedded with leaders in fintech, running projects for major Russian companies, and consulting design teams at places like Yandex and Avito. Fourteen years of learning the trade without anyone above me — and slowly, learning how to lead.
What got me here.
Founding DELO.
In 2019 I founded my design studio, DELO. DELO is short for DEsign LOvers. I poured years into building it.
Two friends to a team of eight.
In three years we grew from two friends with laptops into a professional team of eight. We started working with international clients. We even managed to set a couple of trends in the field along the way.
It worked.
I went on podcasts as a guest. I ran special projects as a guest lecturer at universities and design colleges. After our work for Alpha Bank, every major Russian bank launched its own digest. Our identity for ZenClass set the template for EdTech across the region.
KSSDA in Kyrgyzstan named us the best design studio. We made the AIDA shortlist, and were featured multiple times in 'Made on Tilda'. The studio had a voice.
I fired an employee. She wouldn't go.
Instead, she fired me — having hired lawyers who specialize in hostile corporate takeovers.
How is this possible? Easily, when you're sloppy with paperwork and bureaucracy and rely on verbal agreements instead of protecting yourself.
By the end of 2025, I had no business, no money, and personal debts — taken in my own name to fund the studio's cashflow.
The studio still runs.
It still runs under the name I invented and the brand I built. But of the team that made it, only the junior specialists remain. None of the founders, none of the authors of the names and concepts — for the studio or for any client work — are still there.
Where I am now.
The side project became the work.
When the studio was taken from me, the YouTube channel existed only as a side project. In the year since, it has grown by 51,000 subscribers, and total views climbed from 10,000 to 3,000,000. I focused on it. I was awarded Tech Nation Exceptional Talent in the UK. Design Lovers is now a channel about design as part of our shared human history.
A channel, a media.
In less than a year the channel turned into a small media. Publications cite it. Big companies — Meta, Ugreen, Ecovacs — reach out about sponsorships, and small startups ask for consulting.
In the comments: senior designers from Apple and Mini, and authors of books that matter to designers — Harry Brignull, Brad Frost. Each of them, in the comments.