Design Ops & Creative Automation Lead

Ruslan
Karymov

Brand systems at scale · Presentation & information design · Creative automation · Data-driven
Varna, Bulgaria — remote worldwide, open to contract

Design that survives contact with scale. For eleven years I owned the brand of a company that went from twenty people to five thousand. The artwork was never the hard part — the machine that produces it correctly, in 23 languages, every week, was.

By the numbers

250×
Headcount growth at Exness while I owned the brand
23
Localised markets running in parallel
500+
Creative assets shipped weekly
50%+
Landing page conversion lift from A/B testing
20–25%
CPA reduction from automated creative selection

What makes this different

I build the production line, not just the poster. A Figma API and Airtable pipeline that removed the manual step from localised banner production across 23 language markets. Custom Midjourney style models so brand identity reproduces at scale instead of drifting. BambooHR REST API into personalised interactive PDF offers, then NFT certificates on Polygon — an industry-first use of blockchain for employer branding.

Design decisions I can defend with numbers. Conversion lift from iterative A/B testing, not from taste. CPA reduction from an SQL-integrated creative management system. Frankfurt Airport selected for out-of-home by weighted scoring matrix on CPM, GRP, passenger volume and geo-profile.

Brand governance under real pressure. Real Madrid, Cristiano Ronaldo, Red Bull Racing, Inter Milan, WWF — each with its own approval chain and no tolerance for a wrong shade. Gartner, Cisco and Dell through Curvature, where the slide goes to a CIO.

Institutional register. European Commission and European Parliament deliverables through GDSI. A different discipline entirely: a tender is read by a committee scoring you against a rubric, not by someone who likes your work.

Trained as an engineer. Licensed Chief Engineer of Projects before I was a designer. That is why every creative problem starts, for me, as a systems problem.

Brands & clients

via Exness
Real Madrid CFCristiano RonaldoRed Bull RacingInter MilanWWF
via Curvature
GartnerCiscoDell
via Twigeo
UniswapDuolingoSoundCloudAVIDHeatonistSwimply
via GDSI
European CommissionEuropean ParliamentAsian Development BankWorld Bank
Direct
DexToolsGovernment of KazakhstanLUKOILGazprom

The work

One design system, 23 languages
One design system, 23 languagesWeekly market content across Latin, Arabic RTL, Thai, Bengali and CJK
Real Madrid CF × Exness
Real Madrid CF × ExnessCampaign creative that earned a 400,000-copy magazine spread
Red Bull Racing × Exness
Red Bull Racing × ExnessA season-long contest across 23 markets, two guideline sets
Swimply — 300 creatives a day
Swimply — 300 creatives a dayListings to five paid channels through the Bannerbear API
Job offers as NFTs on Polygon
Job offers as NFTs on PolygonTwo to three days per offer became seconds. 100+ issued
Enterprise co-branding, two legal teams
Enterprise co-branding, two legal teamsCisco, Dell EMC and Gartner in one banner system
Making institutional data legible
Making institutional data legibleEuropean Commission, Parliament, ADB — 100+ page tenders
Advertising a protocol, not a purchase
Advertising a protocol, not a purchaseCreative and UX strategy for the largest DEX

Full case studies with process and credits on Behance · shots on Dribbble

Selected work

2011–2022Brand system for a company that grew 250×Exness — Design Lead

Challenge. Own the visual identity of a fintech from twenty people to five thousand, across 23 language markets, without the brand fragmenting.

  • Owned the brand book and corporate identity system through a decade of evolution — startup mark to globally recognised fintech
  • Ran an output of 500+ creative assets weekly across all markets
  • Art directed elite co-branding: Real Madrid CF (2+ years, 20+ markets), Cristiano Ronaldo (motion design), Red Bull Racing (OOH, social, localised), Inter Milan
  • Directed global environmental campaign design for WWF as an Exness co-branding initiative, under strict brand integrity requirements
  • Built the localisation machine: multilingual UTM tracking across 23+ languages, 23+ translators coordinated through CrowdIn
  • HTML5 interactive banner campaigns in Google Web Designer; large-scale digital ad libraries
  • Selected Frankfurt Airport as optimal OOH placement via a weighted scoring matrix on CPM, GRP, passenger volume and geo-profile

A brand system that held together through 250× headcount growth and 23 simultaneous markets — and a 50%+ landing page conversion increase from iterative A/B testing on Unbounce.

Brand systemsArt directionLocalisation opsA/B testingOOHCrowdIn
2011–2025Presentation & information design — making a decision findableCurvature · GDSI · Exness · DexTools

Challenge. The hardest audience is not the one that dislikes your work. It is the one with ten minutes, no context, and a decision to make. Board members, CIOs, evaluation committees.

  • Curvature — turned dense Gartner analyst research into C-suite visual narratives; co-branding decks for Cisco and Dell where the slide ends up in front of a CIO
  • GDSI — authored 100+ page strategic tender documents for the European Parliament, read by an evaluation committee scoring against a rubric, not by someone admiring the layout
  • GDSI — institutional-grade infographics aggregating heterogeneous multi-expert and financial inputs for the European Commission, ADB and World Bank; architected the “Europa Experience” spaces across European capitals
  • Exness — a decade of executive dashboards and campaign performance reviews delivered to CEO, CTO and CMO
  • DexTools — delivered an entire platform audit as an authored video walkthrough instead of a deck: the narrative itself was the deliverable

A separate discipline from brand design, and a rarer one. A committee does not ask whether it is beautiful — it asks whether the answer is findable in the time it has. I build for that, and for the boardroom, with the same hands.

Executive decksTender documentationInstitutional infographicsData storytellingVideo walkthroughsInformation hierarchy
2022–2023Creative automation on the Figma APITwigeo — Creative Performance Lead

Challenge. Localised banner production across 23+ markets was a manual bottleneck. Creative testing was slow enough that winners deployed after the campaign had moved on.

  • Built an automated localised banner production pipeline on the Figma API + Airtable — no manual step from source design to market-ready asset
  • Built an SQL-integrated creative management system that selected A/B winners automatically and deployed them in evergreen mode
  • Developed custom Midjourney style models so brand visual identity reproduced consistently at scale; Jasper AI for multi-market copy
  • Directed creative and UX strategy for Uniswap, the largest decentralised exchange: audience analysis, performance metrics, competitive landscape mapping

20–25% CPA reduction with CTR improvement, across pools of 6–8 creative variants per campaign.

Figma APIAirtableMidjourney modelsSQLTableauSigma
2018–2022HR offer automation and NFT certificatesExness — an industry first

Challenge. Manual offer generation for premium candidates, with no way to make an offer document verifiable.

  • BambooHR REST API into personalised interactive PDF offers, each with a unique secured URL
  • Extended the system to NFT tokens on Polygon with embedded share count and vesting conditions — verifiable, non-transferable offer certificates
  • Polygon chosen over Ethereum mainnet on gas cost

Full automation of the HR offer process, plus an employer-branding artefact nobody else in the sector had.

BambooHR APIPolygonNFT smart contractsPDF automation
2024–2025Institutional data narratives for the EUGDSI Limited — Strategic Visualisation & AI Expert

Challenge. Aggregate heterogeneous multi-expert and financial inputs into proposals that score well with an EU evaluation committee.

  • Final strategic link in tender proposals for the European Commission, European Parliament and Asian Development Bank
  • Authored 100+ page strategic tender documents for the European Parliament
  • Architected “Europa Experience” physical and digital spaces across European capitals
  • AI Expert on Horizon Europe projects: NLP-driven analysis of public discourse at scale
  • Applied NotebookLM and custom AI workflows to make complex data legible to non-technical committees
Institutional infographicsTender documentationNotebookLMNLPEU communication
2022Enterprise visual narrativeCurvature — Gartner, Cisco, Dell

Challenge. Turn dense Gartner analyst research into material a C-suite audience will actually read and decide from.

  • Built synthesised visual narratives for C-suite decision-making from Gartner research
  • Managed complex co-branding initiatives across Cisco and Dell
  • Enterprise brand governance under multi-party approval chains
Executive communicationCo-branding governanceInformation design
2024Dashboard audit for a top DEX analytics platformDexTools — freelance

Challenge. Identify where a leading DeFi analytics platform loses users to its own information density.

  • Audited the platform's data presentation: signal-to-noise ratio, information hierarchy, first-view metrics, widget layout
  • Analysed user scenarios and navigation patterns
  • Chart-type recommendations for trading data — time series, volume, liquidity depth
  • Delivered findings as an authored video walkthrough, prioritised on an impact and effort matrix

Prioritised, actionable recommendations delivered as narrative video rather than a deck — data storytelling as the deliverable itself.

Dashboard auditData visualisationUX analyticsDeFi
2024–nowSolana DEX Signal ScannerPersonal project — designed, built and shipped solo

Challenge. Build a statistically validated signal tool for Solana DEX tokens, where existing platforms surface noise.

  • Pre-filtered the top 300 Early-Bird wallets via Helius and BitQuery APIs, sniper bots excluded manually
  • Bootstrapped validation in Python: 1,000 iterations, 70/30 train-validation splits
  • Built the entire front end: score per token, buy-pressure signal, volume velocity, BUY / STRONG BUY / NEUTRAL / AVOID filter, grid and table views, light and dark modes, fully responsive
  • Zero dependencies — pure HTML, CSS and JavaScript against the GeckoTerminal API, refreshing every 60 seconds

A live production tool. The interface, the statistics and the deployment — all mine. See it running →

PythonHelius APIBitQueryBootstrappingFront-endProduct design
2010National e-government data infrastructureLoyalty Peak — Government of Kazakhstan (egov.kz)

Challenge. Standardise data across 8,000+ government forms from incompatible ministries for a national platform.

  • Built the complete Data Dictionary: field typing, validation rules, formats
  • Developed the Data Hierarchy and Taxonomy — citizen, document, agency, service
  • Created the Master Data Model with canonical identifiers and conflict resolution rules
  • Led 8 analysts across 4 countries

Unique data fields reduced by ~40%. egov.kz now ranks in the global top 10 of the UN E-Government Development Index 2024.

Master data managementData taxonomyData qualityDistributed teams
2007–2011Engineering analytics and industrial design systemsUECHM & Teploproekt — Chief Engineer (ГИП)

Where the systems thinking comes from. Licensed Chief Engineer of Projects for industrial infrastructure serving LUKOIL and Gazprom, working to ISO and GOST standards.

  • Led a team of 50 engineers at UECHM
  • ANSYS finite element analysis, MATLAB modelling, TRIZ methodology for systematic contradiction analysis

Production costs cut by 17%+ at Katur Invest, verified by the client.

ANSYSMATLABTRIZISO / GOST

Toolkit

Design & art direction
Adobe CC (Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, After Effects) · Figma · Affinity · brand systems and brand books · OOH and DOOH · print · HTML5 interactive banners
Presentation & narrative
Executive decks for C-suite and evaluation committees · institutional infographics · 100+ page tender documents · data storytelling · authored video walkthroughs · impact/effort prioritisation
Video & motion
Apple Motion · Final Cut Pro · After Effects · OBS · ProRes 4444 and WebM alpha workflows · stinger transitions · broadcast overlays
Design ops & automation
Figma API pipelines · Airtable · design systems and components · RTL/LTR localisation across 23+ markets · CrowdIn · PDF automation · BambooHR REST API
AI & automation
Midjourney custom style models · Stable Diffusion · NotebookLM · Jasper AI · MiroFish · OpenClaw · local LLAMA models · prompt engineering · AI agent configuration
Data & analytics
SQL · Python · Tableau · Power BI · Sigma · dashboard and infographic design · A/B testing · UTM tracking · funnel analysis · CRO · CPM/GRP media mix analysis · bootstrapping
Web3
On-chain analytics (Helius, BitQuery) · Solana · NFT smart contracts · Polygon
Leadership
Distributed and cross-functional teams · SCRUM · Jira · Monday.com · MS Project · executive reporting · budgeting · EU institutional communication

Education & certification