Sergey Mekryukov

I am a design director for digital products, working at the intersection of strategy, brand and product design since 2012. Today I lead design for Alfa-Bank's digital channels: more than a hundred designers across retail and business products, web and mobile, managed through art directors and design leads.

Before that I was Head of Design IT at Dodo Brands (Dodo Pizza, Drinkit, B2B products). In a year I rebuilt three product design teams, B2B from scratch, hiring through my own network rather than HR; the Dodo Pizza team learned to run day-to-day and tactical work on its own while I focused on strategy. I launched the core Dodo Pizza redesign, built the Dodo Engineering brand in-house and rolled out a grading system for designers. Earlier: Design Director at R-One (Dom.ru, Movix), Art Director at Kinopoisk (Yandex), and Art Director and Head of Design at Okko, where I built the design department from scratch.

My core topic is emotional design — how a digital product earns trust, becomes memorable and brings people back for the feeling, not only the function. Related themes: design strategy, design leadership and AI in design teams. Most of my writing and talks are in Russian; see the talks and interviews and the Telegram channel.

Selected work

• Dodo Pizza app redesign, 2023–2026: 7M+ monthly users. My idea for the app's architecture was "collections" — each section works as a mini-app for a guest or marketing task; the visual style was later adopted by the brand team, down to store interiors.
• Dodo Engineering brand, 2024: the IT brand refreshed in a month by two part-timers, then grown in-house into a full brand system, promo video and careers site. Embacy's co-founder cited the video as one of his references.

Experience

• 2026 — present
  Design Director, Digital Channels · Alfa-Bank
• 2023 — 2026
  Head of Design IT · Dodo Brands

  Dodo Pizza, Drinkit and B2B products. Three product design teams, B2B built from scratch. Core product redesign, Dodo Engineering brand, design employer brand, designer grading system.

• 2020 — 2023
  Design Director · R-One (ER-Telecom)

  Dom.ru, Movix, smart home. Three distributed product design teams, Movix brand and product redesign.

• 2020
  Art Director · Yandex, Kinopoisk

  Merged two design teams, new mobile experience, PlayStation app.

• 2015 — 2020
  Art Director and Head of Design · Okko

  Built the design department from scratch; multi-subscription model, sports product, new brand.

• 2013 — 2015
  Product Designer · Okko
• 2012 — 2013
  UX/UI Designer, Web Developer · RAIDIX

Earlier talks and press

• "From fintech to fun-tech" — talk and panel at Centra, Bank CenterCredit's design meetup, Almaty, September 2026.
• Represented Alfa-Bank in a quiz game with Sber, VTB and T-Bank teams at T-Bank's "Producty 24 × ffdd2d" conference, Moscow, September 2026.
• "Design for large screen" — talk at TechTrain, 2019.
• Article on the Okko TV app redesign, VC, 2018.
• Press on Okko during my tenure: Sostav (communication strategy, 2018), Adindex (first TV campaign, 2017; "Okko captured by raccoons", 2017), RUVOD (EST sales leader per J'son & Partners, 2017).

Contact

Conferences, podcasts, press: mekrukov@gmail.com.
LinkedIn · Telegram · YouTube

Читать по-русски →