Paphos, Cyprus · Open to Design Team Lead roles

Design & Creative Lead —
fintech & trading platforms.

15 years in design, 8+ of them building and leading creative teams. I turn design into a system: over the last year I built a set of AI tools that made my team faster and cut production cost without losing brand consistency.

+ 0 ×
CTR in multiple campaigns
+ 0 ×
IPM growth
+ 0 %
conversion — Thailand campaign
0 %
video share of paid ads (vs ~20% competitors)
0 %
onboarding completion rate
+ 0 %
daily active users
+ 0 %
user lifetime value
0 k+
users in month one — education platform

Results across trading-platform brands. Featured in Google's Fintech SEA Creative Playbook.

Brands & products I've created for

eToroExpert OptionSimpleMcDonald'sCoca-ColaLand RoverWargamingAlber BlancSharjah Light FestivalNMBRDraftMeCircle of Light — Moscow

AI Tools & Systems

Tools that gave the team its time back

Over the last year I built internal AI tools that take routine off the team and keep the brand consistent.

Combined effect: 1,000+ hours of routine removed per year, about two-thirds of a full-time designer returned to creative work.

After Effects

After Effects Localization Plugin

Problem —
Projects packed with title cards had to be manually copy-pasted and restyled across 14 languages.
Solution —
A plugin that translates an entire AE project into every required language in one pass.

14 languages · a full day of copy-paste cut to about an hour per video

Figma

Figma

Figma Banner Localization Plugin

Problem —
Figma's native translation works one language at a time and loses text styles along the way.
Solution —
Batch-translates selected banners into all target languages at once, clones each onto a new page and preserves text styles — only minor manual tweaks remain.

A 10-banner task in 14 languages: from ~3 days of manual work to a few hours

Figma + API

Figma

Live Asset Data Plugin

Problem —
Screen mockups for tradable assets needed prices, parameters and icons updated by hand.
Solution —
Pulls live asset data from the platform API into mockups — auto-updates prices and parameters, fetches asset icons and recolors cards to match.

The most-used screens populated with real data in a couple of clicks

AI agent

Clawd — Claude Code

Design-System Banner Generator

Problem —
High-volume banner production was slow, and quality drifted off-brand under pressure.
Solution —
An agent that generates on-brand animated HTML banners in every required size — and renders HTML to video when needed.

100+ banners in ~30 minutes, all on the design system

QA automation

Gemini

Marketing-Automation QA Tool

Problem —
The marketing-automation team had no fast way to validate banner batches before launch.
Solution —
Runs banners by the folder and automatically flags translation and design errors.

Whole folders checked in minutes, with errors caught before launch

AI agent

Clawd — Claude Code

Trend & Signal Agent

Problem —
Content and SEO needed to stay on top of what was trending across many channels.
Solution —
Aggregates signals from Telegram groups and websites, spots rising trends and recommends what to write per channel.

Keeps SEO and content timely and channel-aware

Leadership

Building and leading teams

Expert Option

At Expert Option I built an in-house creative production team from the ground up; it became one of the company's strongest competitive advantages. I led cross-functional delivery across motion, static design, copy, and coordination with development leads.

  • 150+

    video assets per week at peak — enabling rapid testing and scaling of top performers across Google, Meta, and TikTok.

  • 85%

    video share of paid performance under my leadership, against roughly 20% among competitors.

  • 0 → 6

    sourced, hired, mentored and developed a six-person motion team from scratch, scouting candidates myself without recruiters; set the process and the quality bar.

  • Idea to screen

    creative producer in parallel: concepting and scripting, organizing shoots (casting, locations, props) and directing on set, solving problems on the fly, solo or with a team.

Product & UX

Owning product outcomes

Expert Option

As a product/design lead I owned user-facing flows end to end, leading design and copy and coordinating with development. Every initiative started with research: I talked to users, mapped their jobs-to-be-done, studied weak points in the journey and identified segments. Those insights drove the onboarding, gamification, education platform and lifecycle emails.

  • User interviews
  • JTBD mapping
  • Journey analysis
  • Segmentation
  • Lifecycle emails
Onboarding redesign — screen 1Onboarding redesign — screen 2Onboarding redesign — screen 3Onboarding redesign — screen 4

Onboarding redesign

Led design, copy and cross-team delivery of a new onboarding flow with development, UX/UI and customer support.

  • 85% onboarding completion
  • Higher registration conversion
  • Fewer support tickets
Gamification system — screen 1Gamification system — screen 2Gamification system — screen 3

Gamification system

Designed and shipped a gamification layer with design, development and marketing teams.

  • +25% daily active users
  • +10% 30-day retention
Education platform — screen 1Education platform — screen 2Education platform — screen 3Education platform — screen 4Education platform — screen 5

Education platform

Led the development of an educational platform with UX/UI, content marketing, development and analytics.

  • +30% lifetime value
  • 100k+ users in month one
  • −15% support workload

Led design, copy & cross-team delivery at Expert Option, a 30M+ user trading platform.

Showreel

15 years of craft: motion, 2D/3D, hands-on.

Play

Selected Work

Hands-on when it matters

Performance creatives

3D & mapping shows

Product tutorials

AI-assisted video

About

Ilya Panchukhin

I started as a motion designer in 2011, built and led a creative team from 2018, and spent a year as a product lead owning onboarding, gamification and education. Now I combine all three: leading creative work through systems and AI tooling.

My background is IT engineering, which is why I reach for a script or a plugin where others reach for more headcount. I optimize for team leverage and business outcomes: speed, cost, conversion, consistency.

On the side I build Mirrai Careers — an AI career platform used by job seekers in 30+ countries.