About the studio
Studio Šterijev · Belgrade
A strong idea needs more than polish. It needs position, identity, and a clear next step.
That is what this studio is built to do.
Behind the studio
One person, and the road that led here.
Studio Šterijev is run by me, Aleksandar Šterijev. Before the studio had a name, there was more than a decade of learning on the job. This is that road, told the way it actually went.
2013
It started with a certificate and a first job.
In 2013 I joined the company I still work with today, hired as a certified web designer. The certificate opened the door; the work did the teaching. I started with graphic design — the everyday material a business runs on — and learned the craft the only way that really sticks: by doing it every day, for people who were going to use it.
Learning on the job
Nothing arrived finished.
Graphic design led to web design, and web design led to building. I learned WordPress and made websites and landing pages myself, because I wanted to understand how the things I designed actually worked. Then came video editing and motion graphics, learned when the work started to move.
None of it followed a plan. Most of it was learned alongside a full-time job, in whatever time was left, by saying yes to the next thing I did not know yet. Looking back, that is the whole method: learn what the problem in front of you needs, then learn the next one.
Today
From doing the work to leading it.
Leading the marketing team brought me to a position the company had not had before: creative lead — in practice, digital art director. Today I lead a team and the creative processes behind everything it makes. A large part of that job is building brand style guides: rules clear enough that recurring tasks get done faster, and scalable enough that the work stays consistent whoever picks it up.
We work under a great deal of regulation, and it shapes every brief. What we can say, show and promise is limited, and the content still has to earn attention. Making something attractive inside those limits is a discipline of its own.
AI
Learning it before anyone asked.
I started learning about AI on my own initiative, and I was the first to bring it into the company's workflow. We began by generating images with DALL·E 3, then moved on to Midjourney. Over time the toolset grew to ElevenLabs, ChatGPT and ComfyUI, and today those are not experiments. They are primary, indispensable tools in how we work.
Outside the job
Brands built to keep their meaning.
My personal interest has always been visual. Outside the job I created brands of my own, and each one was a place to push my skills further — visual identity, the way a brand communicates, and what it actually stands for.
The question I kept returning to was longevity: how an identity scales across everything it touches and still keeps its form and its meaning years later, protected from whatever the next trend happens to be. That same question led me to design systems — the rules underneath an identity that let it grow without coming apart.
Some of themVoyant Webovanje Hotel Mountain
The mark, drawn by hand 
The rules, in Webovanje's brand book 
The site, beside Voyant's moodboard
Kaptly
The thing I always wanted to do.
I always wanted to be able to program. There was never enough time, and design always came first, so it stayed a wish. Strong AI models changed that: they let me join what I know with what I had always wanted to do, and start building SaaS products of my own.
It began with a personal need — better lead capture for my own portfolio website — so I set out to build a system in the spirit of Typeform and Tally. In a single weekend, Fable 5, Anthropic's AI model, laid down a foundation strong enough to keep building on. The hobby project became a full-time investment, and the result is Kaptly: a product ready not only for my own needs but for marketing agencies and many other professions.
That was my road so far. The next one is the studio.
Where the studio is going
A more serious frame, and a wider reach.
I created Studio Šterijev to present this work at a more serious level. A studio is more than a portfolio with a name on it: it is a standard, a clear process and an accountable way of working. That makes the work more credible, and more valuable to the people it is for.
I do not want it tied to a single market. The aim is to work with clients across Europe and beyond, to widen the range of services the studio can offer, and to build a team that can lead larger, more demanding projects.
Until then, and after it, the work stays direct: the person who sets the direction is the one doing the work, from the first decisions to delivery.
The work stays personal.
The ambition does not stay small.
