Meet Daria Shiian | Art director, Brand strategist

We had the good fortune of connecting with Daria Shiian and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Daria, how does your business help the community?
Since 2022, I’ve been redefining how branding works for the real world—not just for Fortune 500s, but for neighborhood cafés, independent studios, and fast-moving startups.

I’m a multidisciplinary, award-winning art director and systems thinker with over a decade of experience in branding, packaging, and visual storytelling. My work creates emotionally intelligent, concept-driven brands that resonate with modern audiences.

I specialize in translating high-end brand experiences—once reserved for luxury fashion houses and global tech giants—into practical, accessible systems for small and medium-sized businesses. I build tools, teach methods, and design frameworks that help creative teams deliver premium results fast, without losing soul or quality.

How My Work Impacted the Industry:

1. I’ve raised the baseline of what “premium” means across all business sizes
Before, “premium branding” was synonymous with expensive agencies and long timelines. I helped flip that narrative. Today, thanks to my frameworks, small and medium-sized businesses can offer brand experiences as thoughtful, emotional, and multisensory as those of industry giants, without the overhead.

2. Gave creative teams a blueprint for scale
My modular branding system is tested and proven at DD.NYC introduced a new industry standard: fast, repeatable, high-quality branding sprints. These weren’t just internal process upgrades—they were cultural shifts in how teams design, collaborate, and deliver. As a result, agencies using the system cut revision rounds by 30%, onboarded junior talent faster, and launched more projects with less stress.

3. Made sensory design tools actually usable
From sound and scent to micro-rituals and emotion-driven templates, I’ve built toolkits that help designers go beyond the screen – and into experience. Through masterclasses and hands-on training, I’ve helped teams implement touch, tone, and feeling into every brand layer. Brands that adopted just two sensory elements reported 20–30% increases in customer return rate and organic word-of-mouth.

4. Normalized the use of AI as a creative accelerator, not a replacement
Long before AI became mainstream, I integrated Midjourney, Runway, and GPT tools into daily brand development, with clear roles, ethical use, and designer curation. This made prototyping faster, cheaper, and more expressive.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
My career is a journey of self-discovery through design started in childhood and, over time, evolved into a calling. From early on, I believed that everyone was destined to create. That belief shaped me.

A pivotal point in my growth was my first role as an art director for SVCH, a leading culinary school in Russia. I joined at the very beginning, during construction. It was my first experience shaping a brand’s entire visual world—from spatial design and signage to digital communications. With a small team, I took on multiple roles, but what I’m most proud of is that I created a holistic, recognizable visual identity that resonated with audiences across Russia, Europe, and beyond. Years later, it still remains strong.

What sets me apart as a creative director is my ability to translate moods, atmospheres, and cultural codes into clear, sensory branding. I don’t follow trends—I study macro-shifts, timeless aesthetics, and the emotional needs of real people. When I led the design for Antidote, a premium home fragrance brand, I leaned into mysticism and inner rituals, reflecting a growing audience’s desire for spiritual grounding. It earned a Pentawards for its sensual, layered world and esoteric storytelling.

Throughout my career, I’ve moved between projects in fashion, hospitality, tech, and wellness—but always with the same foundation: understanding people, distilling their needs into emotion, and designing brands that feel like places you want to live inside.

My process is deeply influenced by my passion for art, photography, architecture, and music. I think in moods. For instance, I might start a brand identity with a feeling of jazz echoing through rain-soaked streets, or the quiet longing of a sailboat at sunset. That emotional fluency is what fuels the multisensory worlds I build.

Of course, the journey hasn’t always been easy. I’ve led full projects with little to no budget, and learned to solve with creativity instead of cost, like transforming a low-budget awards ceremony in New York with projection mapping and color-washed architecture instead of expensive printed decor.

And I’ve launched my own projects from scratch, like Addicts Collective, a fashion resale concept where I did everything myself—from styling and photography to web design and logistics. It grew from my belief in sustainable fashion and aesthetics that speak boldly. That project taught me resilience, improvisation, and how to turn limitations into creativity.

Today, I want the world to know about my approach of democratizing premium branding for small businesses and entrepreneurs. I believe that beautiful, emotionally intelligent design should be accessible, not just to luxury clients, but to the cafés, the yoga studios, the emerging creators who shape our everyday lives.

I don’t just create logos—I create immersive, sensory, human experiences.

That’s the story I carry with me. That’s what I’m most proud of.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
My journey wouldn’t be what it is without Anjelika Kour, the Creative Director at DD.NYC. I want to dedicate this shoutout to her.

Anjelika is one of those rare creative leaders who radiate boldness, clarity, and magnetic energy. She not only inspired me by the way she led, but also deeply trusted my vision when it was still just forming. That kind of belief changes everything.

In a field where many ideas are filtered down or slowed by doubt, she gave me room to build, test, and expand. Her support helped me transition from talented designer to system-level thinker and industry contributor.

So much of what I now share with others—about trusting your instincts, designing with feeling, and moving fast without compromise—was sharpened in that environment. For that, I’m deeply grateful.

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/vivalaweed/

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/daria-shiian/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/shian.dasha

Other: https://www.behance.net/dashashiyan