Gleb Kuznetsov refuses to settle for less. After spending years leading product design for startups and corporate clients, Gleb started a boutique branding agency, Milkinside, that helps clients translate new technologies into useful products.
Gleb and his team of experienced creators are committed to serving the end user, which is why they love taking products from zero to launch. Their services are expensive, partly due to their expertise in product development, motion graphic design and animation, but we spoke to Gleb about why Milkinside is more than just a branding agency and how they strive to be the best.
Why Gleb created Milkinside:
“I wanted to create a team that wasn’t just an agency that companies could contract, but a partner that would support the client’s product development from beginning to end. Everything from the product narrative, product branding, product design, UI user experience, motion design, design languages, motion design languages, etc. I looked around the industry and didn’t see what I was envisioning so I created my dream company, Milkinside, in 2018.”
“Gleb has one of those rare skills that can make ordinary, plain parts of a design come to life and doing so in a beautiful and useful way. Always pushing the boundaries.” Jacob Hvid, Stockholm, Sweden, CEO and Co-founder at Abundo
On common founder mistakes:
“There are a lot of founders who believe they created useful technology and are absolutely certain people will use it. But everything is moot if users aren’t able to understand your product narrative and how it fits into their lives. Establishing a product narrative at an early stage is essential. A lot of founders will try to create a minimum viable product as soon as possible, but they aren’t thinking about the narrative, branding, the product design, and how everything comes together.”
Below, you’ll find the rest of the founder reviews, the full interview, and more details like pricing and fee structures. This profile is part of our ongoing series covering startup brand designers and agencies with whom founders love to work, based on this survey and our own research. The survey is open indefinitely, so please fill it out if you haven’t already.
Interview with Milkinside Founder and Director of Product Design Gleb Kuznetsov
Yvonne Leow: Can you tell me a little bit about yourself and how you got into the world of branding and design?
Gleb Kuznetsov: I was 10 years old when I started programming and learning different coding languages. At the age of 15, I shifted to design and became pretty passionate about what could be possible in the digital world. I worked as a product designer for 15 years before I started Milkinside. I worked for big consumer product companies across various verticals and platforms. When I was a chief design officer at a startup, I was responsible for everything from the product design, UI design, branding, advertising to producing product explainer videos.
The latter gave me a lot of experience with motion design. Today, I see animation, motion design language, and motion as being instrumental to affecting how people perceive a product. It leaves people with a feeling that they’ll always remember, which translates into feeling passionate about a product.
After working with startups, I eventually moved to the agency world and started working with a famous San Francisco based agency. I was their Head of Visual Design and Product for two years. I led teams for clients like Mitsubishi Motors, Twitter, Huawei, LG, and other big consumer companies.
I learned a lot at the agency, but I also thought something was wrong with the big agency business model. They began to prioritize taking on more clients over producing high-quality projects or establishing creative capital. It didn’t fit my personal philosophy of producing great products. I started thinking about what would it mean to create a business that only focused on creating mind-blowing products rather than taking on more and more clients.
I wanted to create a team that wasn’t just an agency that companies could contract, but a partner that would support the client’s product development from concept to real-world product. Everything from the product narrative, product branding, product design, UI user experience, motion design, design languages, motion design languages, etc. I looked around the industry and didn’t see what I was envisioning so I created my dream company, Milkinside, in 2018.
It’s a pretty new agency, but everyone I work with our executives who have at least 20 years of experience working with big corporations. All of us were freelancers before and had our own clients on the side so we brought them with us when we started the agency. We don’t advertise. There isn’t a story about ourselves on the site. Our mission is to create things that have never existed before.
Yvonne Leow: Nice. What are you looking for now when you’re taking on a new client?
Gleb Kuznetsov: I’m looking for a challenge. I don’t want to build a product I’ve already built. I’m always trying to learn something new from a client so I’m vetting them for their ambitions and ideas. There isn’t such a thing as a perfect client, but what I love doing is creating new products. It’s less interesting when a client comes and says “Hey, I have this product, a business strategy, and all I need is the design.” For my team, we enjoy the product discovery process. How can we create a product from an interesting type of technology?
A good example was a product called Corti AI. It was AI software that was installed on 911 dispatchers’ computers. The software would analyze 911 calls and use artificial intelligence to guide dispatchers in making the right call. It would analyze people’s voices, ambient sound, a lot of data points that never could’ve been considered until we created this product. So that’s a type of product that would change people’s lives. Literally, it helped save them. Initially, the client didn’t have a clear product offering when they came to us. There are many companies that would develop new technology, but don’t know what the product solution is. So our focus is on defining the product value proposition and designing and developing the product, which in this case, was an AI solution for emergency 911 dispatchers.
Yvonne Leow: That’s awesome. What are some of the mistakes you see founders make when it comes to branding?
Gleb Kuznetsov: There are a lot of founders who believe they created useful technology and are absolutely certain people will use it. But everything is moot if users aren’t able to understand your product narrative and how it fits into their lives. Establishing a product narrative at an early stage is key. A lot of founders will try to create a minimum viable product as soon as possible, but they aren’t thinking about the narrative, branding, the product design, and how everything comes together.
Yvonne Leow: What’s the process like once you’ve decided to work with a client?
Gleb Kuznetsov: Our approach can be different, but usually our strategy is the same. We always start with ideation and discovery to understand our client’s market, their competitors, etc. We have an office in San Francisco, so during this process, we prefer to meet with our client. We can also do remote conference calls, but it’s better to define the best solution for our client in person. After the ideation stage, we have separate teams for developing the user experience and visual design. We usually start with defining the user experience and narrative. When it comes to branding, we start thinking about the narrative and messaging. As we understand the user experience or narrative for a product and brand, we start the visual design discovery process. We spend at least two to three weeks exploring all of the visual variations for their brand. Ten examples aren’t enough, we need a hundred so we can arrive at the best solution possible.
After visual design, we move to the motion design stage where we pay a lot of attention to users’ emotions and every single frame that transitions from one screen to another. This is the final stage before we start moving to the content development or actual product development. Simplicity is a big part of our philosophy, but it’s very important for digital products to be impressive, especially at launch. Our portfolio has a lot of animation, and we’ll go beyond designing them to having our in-house creative engineers implement them into our client’s site.
A lot of founders fear that when they hire an agency or a boutique agency they’re going to create beautiful, amazing design that don’t work in the real world. We have the resources to support our clients from ideation to the final product implementation. That’s why we’re just another agency. Everyone on my team came from the product design world. Our responsibility is to always ship a valuable product to people, not just the design.
Yvonne Leow: That’s awesome. Thank you so much for that rundown. What’s your pricing structure for startup clients?
Gleb Kuznetsov: It’s flexible, but quality takes time and costs a bit more than the run of the mill standardized experiences that seem to be very popular these days. We work with clients who really want to stand out. We’re not a team who can help an average startup because the amount of thinking, energy and effort may be beyond what they are prepared to pay for to really move the quality needle in a significant way, but we invest that money into establishing our own creative capital, and are in the process of building our own products that have come out of internal processes. In terms of philosophy, sometimes we take on projects almost that for a typical agency may be a loss leader. Just because we want to. We invest a lot of our resources in projects and startups that we truly believe can change the world. We also do work for equity, as long as it’s a product that we believe has tremendous potential and we want to partner with for the long run. Our goal is to produce the best products. So we stand on the quality of our work.
Specifically, we have two cost structures. A project rate is when we understand what the project is going to be, and we understand how much time, resources we need to invest to make the best of the best. Our minimum engagement starts at $200K. We also have a monthly retainer so sometimes we start with project rate and then move to a monthly set up to support our client. We want to make sure our client’s design is properly implemented. We don’t simply ship the design and disappear like some larger agencies.
Founder Recommendations
“The visual designs and the branding strategy Gleb developed for us led to success in a short time. We were able to sell our company to a NASDAQ traded corporation 4 years after inception. Basically all of Gleb’s prediction came true and tens of thousands of customers bought into the brand. More importantly – Gleb was very strict about being and remaining diligent in our execution at all times – which helped our visual design language to make its way in to every single detail.” – Raphael Oberholzer, Cupertino, CA, Founder, NEEO
“Gleb brings in a new level of visual imagination and creativity that can help founders massively in creating an amazing user experience for their products and solutions and differentiating against their larger competitors. We have won several design awards for our products because of his designs.” – Himanshu Kaul, SF, CA, Chief Strategy and Innovation Officer, SmartBeings Inc
“Gleb designs for the future, today. He takes visual design to the next level using motion. The interfaces that he creates feel alive and dynamic, and they immediately create a connection between a user and a machine. This connection is vital in human-computer interaction because it makes the user trust the system. And when it comes to HMI in automobiles, trust is critical — without trust, we can not create a good user experience.” – Nick Babich, Russia, Editor-in-chief, UX Planet
“Gleb has a futuristic approach to design that is not inspired by what exists, but rather what could exist. I think it takes a special type of thinking to be able to unlearn what you know and rethink the impossible, while maintaining an ease of usability with your users. Gleb’s designs are on par with the future of technology and science and he flawlessly translates these innovations with his brilliant mind for marketing and brand.” – Michelle Dong, San Mateo, CA, VP of Communications, Brain Technologies, Inc.
Gleb is a technical genius and masterful storyteller. His vision is beyond and his instincts are solid.” – Hunter Lee Soik, NYC, Head of Innovations and Future Unit, Dubai Airport Freezone Authority
“Milkinside provided to Airbus mobile apps UX & Design: iflyA380.com, we currently working on a new version with a deep dive on Passengers experience.” – Jeremiah Bousquet, Toulouse, France, Digital Transformation Leader, Airbus
“They created our brand video and revamped our brand.” – Strategic Insights Manager in UAE
“Incredibly professional and impressive promo video.” – Peter Mercurio, Toronto, Canada, Senior Director, TradeX Global
“He made the most amazing video.” – Ricardo Ampudia, TradeX Global
“They catered for every individual need and nothing was too much trouble.” – Aviation Specialist in UK
“Gleb has one of those rare skills that can make ordinary, plain parts of a design come to life and doing so in a beautiful and useful way. Always pushing the boundaries.” – Jacob Hvid, Stockholm, Sweden, CEO and Co-founder at Abundo