A year after Farrukh Safarzade’s death, he continues to be remembered not only as a talented designer, but also as a person who knew how to support, unite, and inspire others. Colleagues, students, and friends shared what character traits and views of his remained with them.
I’m sitting at Farrukh’s mother’s place. Having tea. She’s finishing cooking chicken. Exactly the kind her son loved. Golden crust, sweet and sour sauce, roasted vegetables on the side. “Come by more often, at least that way I’ll get up to cook. Otherwise, since Farrukh died, I don’t even want to cook for myself,” she says.
Over this past year, I’ve already sat with her like this several times, over tea. Sometimes just the two of us, sometimes with someone else who knew Farrukh. And each time I noticed the same thing: as soon as the conversation turns to him, to some story, a detail, a random phrase he once said, her face changes. She lights up. As if that’s exactly how she reclaims another small piece of his life that she herself never saw. Not because she didn’t know her son. On the contrary, she knew her only child better than anyone. But every person has a life that even the closest person doesn’t see. Farrukh the friend. Farrukh the colleague. Farrukh the mentor.
So, over a cup of tea, she pieces him together. From others’ memories, from intonations, from funny and touching stories, from details that others preserved.
Perhaps that’s why, as we approached the first anniversary of Farrukh Safarzade’s death, we didn’t want to list his awards, projects, and professional achievements. All of that hasn’t gone anywhere. We wanted to collect something else – what remained of Farrukh in people.
“I think that’s from him in me”
Amina Rakhmanova first learned about Farrukh even before she became his colleague. In 2021, she was taking a course called “SMM from Scratch,” and during one of the classes, participants were analyzing various advertising works, among which was one of the campaigns for Humo Bank. Amina was quite harsh about it then – she was particularly upset that the visual didn’t match the feed. And just one class later, she learned that a designer from Humo would come to the final session, and that designer had created that very work. It turned out to be Farrukh.
“I was shaking with nerves the entire session. And he calmly explained why exactly that color palette was chosen and what was behind that decision. There was no offense or attempt to prove to me that I was wrong,” she recalls.
Moreover, at the end of the course, Farrukh noted her work as one of the best. And later, when an opportunity came to join the Humo team, he supported her candidacy and gave her positive feedback. He was the first person Amina met when she came for the interview.
“I still remember that moment very well. We were standing and waiting for him to finish his cigarette. And he looked at me and asked:
– Are you nervous?
– Yes, very.
– That’s normal. Everything will go well.
It seems like a very short conversation, ordinary words. But now I understand that all of Farrukh was in them,” Amina emphasizes.
Their acquaintance began with a paradoxical thing: Amina criticized his work, and in response he saw something good in hers. And this story, according to her, best shows what Farrukh was like – he could see more in people than a first impression, support them, and give them a chance.
Today Amina no longer works at Humo. She heads marketing at MDO “Zinda Capital” and says that it’s precisely in her new role, when responsibility became much greater, that she unexpectedly began to notice Farrukh’s traits in herself.
“I started more often pausing before finally saying ‘no’ to something, and thinking: Well, maybe just redo it? Refine it? Maybe give it another chance? I think that’s from him in me,” Amina says.
“Everyone was drawn to him”
Doniyor Sanginov knew Farrukh, first and foremost, through their shared craft. He is also a designer, taught a lot, and once found himself in front of students for the first time precisely because of Farrukh – he invited him to teach a course together.
But what Doniyor remembers most is not the collaborative work or even what Farrukh taught him as a teacher. Rather, it’s how he knew how to gather people around him.
“Farrukh was probably the only person in our design community who constantly tried to unite everyone. He supported the community, created professional events, introduced people to each other, helped beginning designers take their first steps. Everyone was drawn to him, and he in turn was drawn to people. At the same time, professional meetings with Farrukh easily stopped being exclusively professional – he could come to an event and perform better than any stand-up comedian,” Doniyor recalls.
I listen to him and can’t help but smile, because I understand what he means. After all, not long before Farrukh’s death, I also invited him as a speaker at a Central Asian event for journalists, where the audience wasn’t the most obvious for him: sitting before him were people for whom a conversation about visual identity might seem too narrow and design-focused. Perhaps that’s why I was worried back then that his topic wouldn’t resonate with them.
But in the end, Farrukh became one of those speakers whose teams literally ran to during mentoring – for a new idea, a fresh perspective, and a dose of creativity. And all because he managed to talk for an hour and a half about fonts and color palettes as if it were the most fun topic in the world. Someone might ask: how can you even joke about that? Farrukh could. He generally knew how to bring lightness to places where others found it difficult or boring.
So, listening to Doniyor, I could only smile: I didn’t need to prove anything here.
“This is the Way”
For artist Nasiba Karimova, Farrukh was not just a colleague in the creative community. He was, as she herself notes, and will remain her teacher – Sensei. After all, it was Farrukh who once made her fall in love with digital painting.
“Back then, after university, I was still only painting with watercolor and oil. I really wanted to try myself in digital, and how pleased I was when he agreed to take me as a student. These were barter courses,” Nasiba smiles. “I explained to him the academic foundation – drawing, form construction, composition – and in return he taught me how to work on a tablet. It wasn’t just about which button to press. He taught how to find your own path.”
For Farrukh, who was a Star Wars fan, the theme of the path held special meaning. The phrase This is the Way – the Mandalorian motto about loyalty to one’s code – at some point became almost his personal creed. It was important for him to remain true to himself and his path.
So, when on the day of his death Nasiba published a tribute poster and captioned it This is the Way, for those who knew Farrukh, this phrase needed no explanation. There was too much of him in it.
