20 Years of the Department of Digital Media Directing and Design

Faculty members, alumni and students gathered in the classrooms of the department, which was established at our institute just four years after the profession of multimedia director was officially recognized in Russia, to look back on the key milestones in the history of the school of the new screen culture.

 September 5 was a special day for everyone at our university who explores the possibilities of creating works using multimedia technologies. These include game design, web storytelling, mapping, VR, augmented reality and much more. What seemed impossible 20 years ago has now taken on its own forms and language — and, most importantly, found its audience.

 At the official opening of the celebration, Head of the Department Olga Efimova read out a message from Nina Dvorko, the department’s first head:

 “In 2006, we started with an idea that seemed futuristic to many at the time. We were laying the foundation for a new screen culture without knowing exactly what forms it would take in the future.”

Nina Dvorko continues to follow the achievements of the department’s students and faculty with great attention and affection:

“What you are doing now — your projects, your bold experiments and your genuine interest in digital art — is the best continuation of the work we started back then.”

The celebration was attended by department alumni who are now successfully developing their own projects in theatres and computer graphics studios and taking part in — and winning — national and international festivals. Maxim Trifonov founded his own company, Content Studio, together with other department graduates and is grateful to the masters and faculty members for the unique creative atmosphere they created during his studies.

“The main advantage of our school was the freedom given to students. We were allowed to work on whatever interested us. We were not confined by a very narrowly focused educational programme. Each student had the opportunity to choose something that interested them within this broad field of multimedia and start exploring it. If you were interested in games, you studied game design; if you were interested in computer graphics, you went in that direction. This helped me a lot in the later years of my studies,” said Maxim Trifonov.

Graduate Egor Kudashkin now leads teams of computer game developers, works with various global brands and is grateful to the department for all the lectures and practical classes that taught him not only hard skills, but also helped him develop the soft skills necessary for creating and managing projects and teams.

“It is a truly unique and incredibly cool place, and I always talk about where I studied with great pleasure and pride. There is definitely no other department like this anywhere, because we have the best teachers. This is especially evident from the very first presentation by the first-year students: from their very first days of study, they are incredibly motivated and enthusiastic about learning,” Egor shared his impressions of the celebration.

The most emotional moment of the anniversary was the traditional initiation ceremony for first-year students. The newcomers were asked to introduce themselves by preparing their first creative presentations and telling the guests about themselves.

 At an anniversary celebration, it is customary to offer warm wishes to the person being celebrated. Words of encouragement came from Head of the Department Olga Efimova:

 “I would like to wish everyone perseverance and hard work! It may seem that creativity is easy. It is wonderful when that is how it appears to the audience. But behind it lies an enormous amount of work. Many things do not work out; sometimes you want to give up, stop and walk away. But the winners are those who know how to work hard, persevere, not lose heart, and keep themselves energized and motivated — and, perhaps most importantly, maintain their love for their profession.”