Hi. We are and we work BY INTENTION

You don’t want to propagate an aloof mission here. But do you have a personal professional mission?

Sergei
In principle, this is already in our agency name. We want to create something that has an intention. We don’t like pointless redesigns that are not intentional.

Paul
Correct. We do redesigns, for example to improve certain KPIs. This might not be a particularly sexy mission. For our customers, however, this is very sexy.

What are you particularly good at?

Paul
We are generalists in our respective fields. You in the development area, me in the design, brand, and strategy area. Personally, I like observing people. This is probably why I chose to study business and social communication at the UdK Berlin.

Sergei
I am very good at solving problems. There hasn’t been anything that we haven’t solved yet. If something doesn’t work in a certain way, we manage to build new constructs that lead to the goal.

How does your collaboration work?

Sergei
We have known each other for so long and so well that we no longer need briefings from each other, for example. There are also no specially scheduled meetings. We’ve been doing this for almost 10 years now and we’re really well-coordinated.

Paul
I really appreciate that too. I throw something at him and it works. I can’t do that with others. Nevertheless, there will always be a certain tension between developers and designers. Because something may not be implemented exactly as the designer imagined. And at some point the developer no longer sees the need for it. I’m a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to completing work. So it’s good when Sergei says: That’s definitely enough now.

What’s annoying you?

Sergei
Paul is unpunctual – he always arrives two minutes late. I don’t know how many times I sat on the ICE train and thought: Okay, I’m going alone today. And then, at the last second before the train leaves, Paul arrives, completely relaxed, with a coffee in his hand. Luckily this doesn’t affect our client relationships, but unfortunately it often affects me.

Paul
Sorry, but I hate waiting. That’s a very arrogant character trait, but there’s really no bad intention. I just try to fill every minute I work efficiently – especially since we both have children: I have one, Sergei has two. What sometimes annoys me about him is this typical developer thing of not explaining something in such a basic way that even people with less technical affinity can understand it.

What’s it like for other people to work with you?

Paul
Our team has a lot of scope for development. We set few limits for our employees – both in what they build and create and in the way they work. We are actually an anti-startup. Or to put it positively: In startups you often commit your entire life to work, with us no one ever had to work overtime.

Sergei
I’m not interested in an 8-hour day either. I set goals and I want them to be achieved. And if my employees achieve their goals faster, then I have no problem with them closing their laptops after six hours. And I don’t think we set unrealistic targets.

Do you have a special work purpose?

Paul
I used to often ask myself the question of meaning. You have friends who are doctors or something similar, and I “only” build digital products. But at some point I made peace with it because I said to myself: I generate taxes, I give people jobs, that’s pretty good as a purpose. And when we work for customers like polisphere or CORRECTIV, even better.

Sergei
Yes, and working in a pleasant team – that can also be a purpose. We want to continually increase our number of employees over the next few years and one goal is to definitely hire senior people with a wealth of experience that can benefit the entire team.

What do you think about digitalization, transformation and AI?

Paul
Just five years ago I would have said: At some point the job of a web designer will no longer exist. Because there were a lot of tools that people could use to glue their own pages together. But clients like ours would never build their own products. Although I do believe that a lot can be automated through AI and it will then also be cheaper. I also know a few people who code with AI.

Sergei
Yes, I think AI will become more and more of a programming companion. As far as the digital transformation is concerned: at a higher level, for example in German corporations, it will take years before they are digitized. When you see how processes work there, it’s often medieval.

Paul
That’s why digital transformation will continue to function as a buzzword for a long time. In recent years, corporations have tended to repair rather than transform. In order to participate in the transformation, some digital project was running on the side. And that often failed because there was internal headwind. It often takes ages before anything really happens.

How do you explain what you do to your families?

Sergei
I tried to explain it to my grandpa as advertising, that we were basically advertising for other people. Then the question came: On TV? No, Grandpa, on the internet. Mmmh, what is the internet? So I showed him something in the browser and said: This is what we’re building. And I explained the function of the website to him. My grandfather was surprised and said: What is there to do? A few photos, a few texts, a few buttons. When I said to him: Well, there are almost 40 people working on it right now, his reaction was: Oh, is something always broken?

Paul
My father had an automation company, he is more technically experienced than me, I don’t need to explain anything to him. My mother even uses digital products that we work on for her own work. When I saw this the other day, I tried to explain to her how it came from us.

Sergei
When the family talks to others about me, they usually say: He’s doing something on the computer.

What is an important insight you have gained over the years?

Paul
I would say – and this sounds arrogant – that we do the things we do well. Especially when you take on projects from other agencies, I often think: We are really good! You get a lot of self-esteem from the job.

Sergei
Communication is important, much more important than you think. And: Everything can be solved – there is no unsolvable problem.

Would you like to add something private?

Paul
Neither of us likes to be in the spotlight, but I can reveal two or three things: In 2015 I became Fixie world champion in Berlin. And I am a passionate wine drinker. Both – cycling and then drinking wine – go wonderfully in Mallorca, where I have lived with my family for three years.

Sergei
Okay, then here are three fun facts about me: When I find the time, I work on my old motorcycle in my garage. And I love growing chard in our large garden. Oh, and since my son has become enthusiastic about Lego Technics, we are both always extremely excited for the catalog to come out for the new half of the year.