hotburo

What Hotburo Is

Hotburo is a digital design studio and creative partner founded in February 2023, headquartered in Ivano-Frankivsk, Ukraine with a second office in Tallinn, Estonia. The studio positions itself as a full-service design partner for startups and scaling technology products, helping founders translate complex ideas into clear, compelling visual identities and digital experiences.

The studio's own tagline — "Design is when chaos stops being random" — captures its philosophy: structured creative thinking applied to brand problems that most early-stage teams lack the bandwidth to solve in-house. Its complementary positioning statement, "We create visual solutions, websites, and branding that deliver results — not just attention," signals a product-minded orientation rather than pure aesthetics.

Services

Hotburo covers five broad service areas:

Brand Identity — Logo design, visual systems, and design language creation for startups entering competitive markets, including Web3 and DeFi.

Website Design and Development — End-to-end design and build for marketing websites and landing pages, with an emphasis on responsive layouts, motion, and 3D integration where appropriate.

UI/UX and Product Design — Interface and experience design for platforms and applications, including research, concept development, wireframing, high-fidelity design, and interactive prototyping.

Web3 Design — Creative services targeted specifically at blockchain projects, decentralised finance protocols, and crypto-native products. The studio lists this as a discrete service category, reflecting meaningful prior experience in the space.

Design Support and Maintenance — Ongoing retainer-based work for clients that need a continuous design partnership rather than a single-engagement studio.

Payment for services is accepted in USDT and USDC alongside traditional methods, making the studio readily accessible to crypto-native teams working with treasury in stablecoins.

Solana Ecosystem Connections

Hotburo has served clients operating on or adjacent to the Solana ecosystem. Their client roster includes Evaa Protocol, a Solana-native lending and borrowing protocol, alongside other crypto and DeFi clients. Crypto.com and True Trading are among the other finance and trading-adjacent names listed in their portfolio. The studio's willingness to accept stablecoin payment and its dedicated Web3 service line reflect practical experience with the operational rhythms of blockchain-based teams rather than crypto interest adopted purely for marketing purposes.

The studio's work with Solana projects like Evaa places it inside the broader Solana ecosystem as a design-layer service provider — helping protocols present themselves credibly to users, investors, and integrators who judge protocol maturity partly by design quality.

Team and Background

Hotburo was co-founded by Anatoliy Shovkovyi, who serves as Art Director, and Olya Andrushchenko, who holds the Co-Founder role. The broader team includes UI/UX designers and web designers operating across the Ukraine and Estonia offices.

Shovkovyi's background is in product design and art direction. His personal portfolio documents recent Web3 startup projects, reflecting his continued involvement in the crypto design market alongside Hotburo's broader client base.

The team operates across European time zones, which is a practical consideration for Solana and DeFi projects with distributed, international teams.

Recognition

Within the first year of operation, Hotburo's agency website earned a CSS Design Awards "Website of the Day" honour on 28 January 2023, receiving a final judges' score of 8.50 out of 10. Panelists awarded near-perfect scores across UI design, UX design, and innovation categories. The studio's Behance profile has accumulated over 130,000 project views and more than 12,500 appreciations across its portfolio work.

Notable public portfolio projects include the Padel Racket website design and CGI campaign (over 5,300 appreciations on Behance), T3NZU brand identity and website, Greenfarmer corporate identity, PUBLIC ARENA PLAYBOOK branding and app design, and HIVE/Kasper AI platform design. While the studio's more visible portfolio pieces skew toward consumer and B2B brands, the Web3 service line is maintained as an active offering with dedicated client experience behind it.

Design Approach

Hotburo's aesthetic, as observed across public portfolio work and award recognitions, is characterised by bold typography, restrained use of colour, integration of 3D elements treated in a 2D graphic language, and high compositional clarity. These qualities translate well to crypto and DeFi product design contexts, where users frequently need to parse complex protocol mechanics while the visual design simultaneously communicates trustworthiness and forward momentum.

The studio's stated process follows a structured research-to-delivery pipeline: discovery and competitive research, conceptual development, wireframing, visual design, prototyping, and final handoff or development. For ongoing clients, this cycle loops into continuous iteration and design system maintenance.

Fit Within the Solana Ecosystem

Hotburo occupies the design services layer of the Solana ecosystem — a category that is material to ecosystem health even if it is often overlooked by protocol-focused analysis. DeFi protocols, NFT projects, wallets, infrastructure providers, and tooling teams all require professional design to compete for user trust and developer attention. Studios with crypto-specific experience, stablecoin billing, and established working relationships with on-chain projects provide genuine value to teams that cannot hire senior in-house design talent in early stages.

For Solana projects at the brand identity or product design phase, Hotburo represents an experienced external partner with an established track record, a working portfolio visible on Behance, and direct familiarity with the requirements of DeFi and Web3 clients.