1658 – The Power of Design: Transforming Brands and Websites with Qream Design Agency’s Bohdan Paladiichuk

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0:58with us right now bodan paluduchuk i may have mispronounced your last name forgive me but you are the ceo and creative director of cream design agency your website is the cream.com And that's spelled T-H-E-Q-R-E-A-M.com. All right. So if you want to see amazing design, the kind of design that wins Webby Awards, that's exactly what you're going to see at The Cream. So, Bodine, it's great to have you. Thank you so much for the intro. I'm excited to be here and, you know, share the thoughts for the entrepreneurs trying to grow, trying to make the best out of their business. and share my advices about how my path was going and everything else.

1:46Super, super excited. I also want to honor you because you are in the country, you are in Ukraine and you have a lot of Ukrainian talent. So just know that our hearts and prayers are with you as always, we're rooting for you, we're supporting you and can't wait for war to end. So just want to throw that in there, Bodan. Thank you so much for that. Yeah, you bet. So tell me about your agency, how you work and who you work with? Okay, so actually we are currently 25 people and I would say that we were always positioning ourselves as a boutique. I always wanted to keep the number of the people kind of like small to keep a tight-knit team.

2:25So we're actually gonna scale up to 50. That's just the possible outcome. That's it, we're not gonna go anymore. Why? Because I think what we're doing is basically designing creativity primarily. We do the websites, brandings, and products for tech businesses primarily. uh so basically i want to keep the team really small because this is the best way to achieve the creativity when you have this very um precise process when you have people just moving bricks one person to person i think that's just not doing the thing it's not doing the award-winning design it's not doing like the breakthrough but when you have these people like you know in a startup mode in a garage when they're exchanging ideas lively when they're looking at each other's computers, you know, I don't know, creating this idea sort of visualizations, drafting them just like that.

3:11I think that's the best way to get the result and to get the most dramatic performance out of the team and the best creativity out there. To our friend that's listening, here's what I want you to do. I want you to go to thecream.com. And again, T-H-E-Q-R-E-A-M. So you need to see what we're talking about. Because again, this is the kind of stuff that's like, like, for example, when I pull up your website, the first thing I want to do is I want to, I want to rotate and move this little guy around. And what are you able to do? So it's, it's immediately engaging. Like I'm, I'm having fun on your website and, and I, I suspect that that's, can you, can you talk about the role of like UX and, and why, you know, these interactive elements are, are so important and how that can be really, really good ultimately for engagement in business.

4:07Yeah. So I think that has to do a lot with the psychology of the user themselves and the way like the users or just the regular people buy. The more you're closer to touching things, to experiencing the product, the more you're likely to purchase it. I think this is neuroscience kind of finding and everything. So basically when you get people to play around with something on your website get them to touch get them to be the hero of the story that you have created not just the you know observer from the behind it gets them way more engaged into the the life of the product the story of the product and it gets them to explore more so i would say really like as for me personally i love netflix movies and i like black mirror for example like the series but the most exciting episode is the one that i could control like the interactive one where you could i don't know if you saw it or not but i'm pretty sure a lot of subscribers actually did is the episode where you can choose what the person is going to do in the movie.

4:58And this way you get more involved when it feels like you're part of the story. And this way, again, you feel you're much more part of the brand than by just looking at something being shown to you. So I believe that having this mechanics of the UX where the person can influence what's happening on the website, they can play around with it, touch around, or see the immediate results of it. I think that gets the connection a bit warmer with the potential user because again, it feels like you're kind of having fun together, which I think is what you're trying to also achieve with the business as well.

5:30If you want two great minds, you know, co-creating some project, at least that's the way I envision the best work to happen. Yeah. And someone might be looking at the work that you do and they say, how do you come up with all of these ideas? I mean, this is just quite, you know, this is the use of a lot of imagination and like as a business owner, I wouldn't, I don't know that I could come up with the kind of stuff that you come up with, but how do you do it? Okay. So I would say this is actually not a, it's a skill that can be practiced. So I actually grabbed a lot of my creative idea generating skills from the times when I was doing comedy.

6:10The first couple of years, I couldn't write a single joke. I was just, you know, super into it, but I couldn't do anything about it. So then I started writing and writing and writing and practicing and this is the way you kind of start to feel the framework you start to understand how these things are done and i would say honestly i'm not going to take all the credit just for myself i have amazing people on board uh for example my creative strategist that is also coming from the same comedy background actually as myself so we were generating ideas back in high school and then we brought it to the to the business world, I would say.

6:43And yeah, I would say, again, this is a skill. And this is actually a framework that you, there are different frameworks that you can use for idea generation and everything. But the best is to get passionate people doing something that they love. I think that's the best recipe of getting maximum with the creative ideas. And again, just using the skill sets that you have. And if you're really passionate about something, you're going to work on that a hell of a lot till the result is extremely, I would say, outstanding. and that's definitely the way that we are kind of working and striving for. Yeah.

7:14And so what types of companies are you typically working with? Yeah, we're primarily working with tech companies and I have a big special reason for that, I would say. I really think that what is happening currently in tech is the innovation that is kind of frontier. So at the times where, you know, there was Thomas Edison and all these people coming up with the physical appliances that make the world a better place, I think the biggest progress to humanity that is currently happening is happening within the tech sphere. So basically all these tools that are being provided for us, AI as itself, right, is a huge advancement for the humanity, I believe.

7:50And I personally love my work to be meaningful. And I am not extremely in love with helping one guy just make more money. I'm way more interested in advocating for the good ideas that push the humanity forward. forward so i actually see a lot of progress in making people's lives healthier happier faster more efficient through technology lately and i think that's the the biggest part that drives again the humanity progress for ourselves and upcoming generations currently as the biggest like locomotive of it all so i definitely love being the part of it and that's why helping tech company is something that we focus on or basically come and step back we don't only work with tech companies, but this is our biggest focus.

8:35But generally, I love working with people who are creating the healthy progress. So I would say, so helping you eat better, have the earth more sustainable place to be helping people become happier. So even if it's not tech, but this is something that the company is helping with, I'm extremely excited to pair up with the entrepreneurs and get the best ideas to amplify the ideas that you know, are making the world a better place, I guess. Yeah. So, so more than just websites, can you kind of talk about all of the different uses that Cream is doing design work? Yeah, absolutely. So we actually focus on branding side of things, I would say primarily, well, actually the branding and the tech product, as we say it like that.

9:16So the website is the, I would say the major part of any brand. This is the website. This is the place where all the people come and kind of check you out, see your story, look at you at the storefront basically but this again comes from a deeper root like who you are as a brand and this is actually something that we're also working on so we're usually starting with the brand strategy like who you are what's your vision vision what's your mission what is your unique value proposition how do you highlight that and make it kind of in a catchy language nice language that people are going to perceive and then you create communication based on that which is the website the visuals that you post in social media this is everything that even the product itself, I think should be shaped by brands' core, which is the identity itself.

10:01So I would say we're focusing on helping brands getting the more clear identity about who they are and how they stand in the market instead of being just super generic, saying like we are for everybody, doing just the innovation and you don't understand what's the right fit for you. So acknowledging your own core on an identity level, I see it being underlooked in many beginning companies, at least like, or the companies that were, you know, kind of product-led growth, it's only okay to be like product-led. And I think it's the product always should be flawless, but the brand around it, why you exist, why the customers should relate about you.

10:37I think this is a very fundamental thing to all the marketing and sales that are happening then and then the adoption of the product. And again, it also influences, I believe, the creation of the product itself. You can know Steve Jobs is saying like, we want to build the best possible like mobile experiences, for example, right? So when they're building a product, the product team is working on it, they can question themselves. Is this the best possible experience? Is this kind of correlating to what we are promising on the brand level? So I believe having a firm identity, which is more in the strategy level, it's not even just the logo, the colors or everything, because people usually treat brands as, okay, I need rebranding.

11:14Can you help me revamp the colors? It's not about the colors. It's about the overall promise that you're giving. and then you're basically picking the right colors, logos, tone of voice and wordings to kind of communicate that essence to the people. So I think that these are the things that we are helping companies with. And again, it's about different channels. I would say like our design definitely encompasses a couple of channels. We're helping brands with the websites because it's primary communication. But again, when we see that the product is complex, for example, and maybe the website is just not fully enough where are the people coming to the website from they're coming from some communications that you've been showing them are these communications good are they explaining the real value of why they should go with you so we actually we also focus a lot of times by helping companies on this kind of pre-website stage which can be again brand communication brand identity and the promo videos which are actually i think the best way to communicate value of every product because one image is worth a thousand words and when this image is moving and the wow effect and is actually triggered to convey the meaning.

12:23I think that's the best way you can explain anything. So this is what we focus on. But I primarily also come from the UX background. So as we're working with the tech companies, I also oftentimes see the places where the product can be improved. And this is also actually very much similar processes about what are you showing to which people and what do you expect out of them? What do you expect them to do? And I see this also being kind of a bit wrong in many, many products. it's sometimes about the founder's vision like i want the product to have this feature rather than it should be solving this pain for the customer so this is the cycle that we basically cover i would say we're like full cycle but we're definitely like at cream we're primarily focusing on this pre-product part and for the product part we're actually preparing this brand new awesome offering uh that's going to help the interpreters to get more talented people like ourselves to be part of their product and evolve that as they scale and grow but that's going to to be upcoming and our new brand called fat cat i do everything with a q uh inside of it that's part of the brand yeah it's my actually it's my life big life goal i guess is to claim the q letter on the brand level this is one of this big ambitious foolish goals i would say but still like i want to claim the the whole letter from the alphabet to belong to cream which is the q that's why whenever we're using the k letter i always switch it to q so it's always q in the you know, in the mix.

13:49Yeah, yeah. And you mentioned a little bit about this earlier, and I see this in your social media about, you know, how to think more creatively or how to inspire creativity within our organizations, our teams. Any thoughts on that? Or maybe some practices that we can start kind of working into our daily life so we can start thinking maybe less linearly and a little bit more broadly? I don't know if you have any suggestions on that. For sure. I would say the interesting thing about creativity, as I said, it is actually belonging. There's a bunch of frameworks that can be helping you to become more creative and exercises that kind of trigger this learning process and the creative process by itself.

14:34So there are different ones in the internet. You can Google them up. They're very interesting, but they give you like a very precise step-by-step plan for the people who are more like thinking systems or being like more organizational, less of this kind of windy creative approach that I would say. Again, you just Google down the framework and you see different ones that can get you creative. And one of the basic ones I would say is just design thinking itself. The other advice that I would say, if any interpreter has the designer within their company, launch a short conversation and ask them about how to be creative.

15:06I think this can actually open up a lot of doors and open up a lot of different cool ways of thinking about the business itself. It's not about just the design. I think that the designers themselves are just the holders of the knowledge, how to apply the science of psychology and creative brainstorming to generate the best ideas. They just turn out to be visual most of the time. So product driven. But in the end of the day, it's about generating the solution based on certain requirements. I think that's the core skill of the every designer and for myself I was also showing this very interesting practice practice that you can practice which is called basically the alpha state of mind which is I'm a lot into also brain hacking and understanding how the brain works so basically rewiring yourself from what you're currently doing going for unwinding for like 15 20 minute walk just getting all the thoughts cleared out from your cash and then you when you come back to the problem it it becomes way easier to solve or the solution starts popping.

16:04And this is the, again, the state of mind that is characterized by alpha frequency waves working at 80 to 130, 30 Hertz in your brain. And this state kind of happens when you're going to bed. So before you go to bed, you would also always have this, or not always, but frequently when you're actually relaxed, you're going to have this amazing ideas pop into your head and you're going to connect the dots that were not anyhow kind of, you know, connecting in the normal way of thinking. Because normally when we're focused on something, this is a very narrow thinking corridor when we're like all in to find the solution, but we don't see the wider picture just because we're focused on that one specific solution that we're kind of fixing.

16:43And then before going to bed, your mind opens up fully and then you start, what about this? What about the urine intercombine everything that has been in your head for years? And then you're like, oh, this might be a great solution. So again, before bed is something that naturally kind of occurs when you unwind yourself fully. But if you want to do it throughout the day, it's an amazing 15 to 20 minute practice to just meditate or get yourself a coffee, walk around. It gives tremendous results. Even in the busiest days when I got 10 or 12 hours of work, if I managed to get this 15 or 20 minutes to unwind, then the productivity of the leftover time, it just increases dramatically.

17:22So definitely a must thing and something I do frequently. Yeah. Yeah, great tips. Thank you. I appreciate that. Your website, thecream.com, who, you know, in terms of like who might be listening, should be reaching out? How might they know that they're going to be a good candidate for you to potentially work with? And who might not be a great fit? Okay, so I think there's definitely one criteria that can help to determine, are you actually the right fit? Or what we're offering, is it the right solution for you? If you look at our website, you would see it's not conventional. I would say like it's really unconventional.

18:01There's the 3D character flying around and the whole narrative and just the way the design visually and verbally is built is a little bit on the evocative side and a bit on the bolder side of things. So when you're doing something with your business and you believe that your brand is not that bold or, you know, like people are not maybe getting it, maybe not enough of people are being excited about what you're offering. You're not getting enough of traction, especially on the early final stages. So there's not a lot of traffic coming to your website, for example, or not a lot of the traffic, all the traffic that comes, it's not converting properly.

18:38I think the answer is pretty much always in your identity. And again, it's about the narrative that you're telling to them, the visual that you're showing to them and just overall how they comprehend you. So I would say our enemy is like the boring brand and the faceless brand is the brand that it's just trying to be like everybody else. And if you, again, are looking at our website, looking at your presence, you see that we are a bit sharper in that and you're probably not getting enough traction yet. This is something that we can be helping you out, like finding your perfect North Star amongst the star constellations that are happening because everybody has the competitors and all of them shine at different respect.

19:20If you want to shine brighter, if you want to be remembered forward and struggling with attraction of the clients again I think like the conversion of the website if you measure it numerically this is the best metric I would say or just the engagement of the social media and the pipeline this is definitely something that we are the best at and this is something we help brands to fix finding their image and communicating that primarily on the website so I would say again one special thing if the website is not converting in way possible. It's again, it's not about the color of that button. It's not about whether it's on the left or the right.

19:57Is it circled or square? No, it's about the message that you're telling and who are you telling it to. So I think this is where the biggest part of the work and the biggest part of the output actually comes from. Sure. Sure. Okay. So the website, again, thecream.com, Q-R-E-A-M. When somebody goes there, and again, if you want to have a boring brand, And thanks for listening, but we're looking for a good connection would be someone who doesn't want to have a boring brand. They want to connect and engage. And for those folks, Bodan, what would be their next steps? I would say just reaching out and saying like, hey, I think the most important problem in reaching out or like maybe the hesitation is that the founders usually try to come up with a solution and then contacting somebody to find a do-it.

20:49I think with the designers, the best advice is to share the problem itself. Like, hey, I'm experiencing, you know, like low attraction or my website, again, is not converting. Or maybe, I don't know, there's a lot of people looking at me, but not a lot of people are moving forward our pipeline. What can we do about it? Or we just want, you know, we have a thousand people looking at us. We want 10 ,000 million people looking at us. What can we do about it? So I think just giving us a quick email is going to have our creative strategist and myself probably because I'm the leader definitely in the brainstorming part.

21:24Like I love solving problems. This is something that I'm dreaming for, like with my life solving business problems, because I run a business and I solve these problems for myself. So whenever I see a fellow entrepreneur facing some problems that I already solve for my brand or for the other clients, I'm extremely excited to generate bazillion ideas how that can be possible. So I would say just shooting an email saying, hi, we have, you know, something that we would like to achieve. We can always hop in a 30 minute call, just, you know, brainstorm, tell about the ways that it can be possibly done.

21:52And whenever the problem lies in the surface that we are not currently solving or anything, I would definitely just recommend, you know, something you want to do is go there, go there and go there and ask these people about how you can do it. If it's not something that is fixed by our services. So I would say I would myself, I'm never like selling anything. Usually I'm always like consulting people to get the best result. So often when they come for requests for the website, they actually end up having a video because the website can be doing quite okay. But just the video is not working for them that they have, or they don't have any video explaining what the business actually is.

22:27And this is quite important for the very first stages. So yeah, shooting an email with, hey, we'd like to achieve this. If you're a tech company, definitely something that should be addressed towards the cream.com. myself personally, LinkedIn or just any way possible is definitely fine. Yeah. And you can go play with Chabik, the little guy, the soul of cream. I'm telling you, it's addictive. I can't stop turning this guy around and flipping him over and stuff. It's crazy. Great. Again, it's been great having you. And again, Bodan Paladichuk. Yeah. Wow. Okay. All right. CEO and creative director, forgive me, of Cream Design Agency, your website, thecream.com.

23:17Bodan, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you so much, Josh, for having me.

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