Costin Benescu
Verified Expert in Design
Designer
Vejle, Denmark
Toptal member since June 10, 2025
Costin is a senior designer and artist with almost two decades of experience in gaming, toy design, UI, UX, branding, marketing art, and more. He balances a focus on details with a big-picture understanding, easily aligning with leadership strategies. Costin shows a solid foundation in academic design and art education and a curiosity for new AI, VR, and 3D tools, offering flexibility that can fit any client, pipeline, or creative challenge.
Portfolio
Experience
- Adobe CC - 20 years
- Color Theory - 20 years
- Illustration - 20 years
- Blender - 15 years
- UI Design - 7 years
- Social Banners - 5 years
- App UX - 2 years
- Figma - 2 years
Tools
- Blender
- Adobe CC
Work Experience
Art Director, Design Director, Phygital Artist, NFT Designer, UX/UI Designer, 3D Illustrator
Alien Ape Star ApS
- Promoted the koii.network Atomic NFTs leaderboard platform as a brand ambassador and helped them with web UI/UX design for their platform. I also started working with virtual reality sculpting to develop Atomic NFTs to promote their platform.
- Built brand identities with style guides, including colors and typography, language and tone, logo versions, brand elements, 3D illustrations, and UX/UI designs, keeping true to the brand consistency of two tech start-ups, in crypto and AI gaming.
- Produced a presentation design that helped an AI-based Swedish game studio attract millions of euros in investments.
- Organized hands-on creative workshops that empowered the public to get in touch with their artistic side.
- Helped shortlist an amazing group of street artists to kickstart the first Street Art Festival in Vejle, Denmark.
Brand Designer, Presentation Designer, UI/UX Designer
Spellscaper A/B
- Designed visual brand elements for a presentation design that secured significant funding and investment for Spellscaper A/B, a Swedish game studio startup.
- Built a brand identity guide, including color palette, brand elements, logo design, use cases, typography, 3D illustrations of a player character, and various AI bots in less than 4 weeks.
- Created banners for social media and, after layout testing, finally delivered the entire media pack and layered assets in separate assets and project source files from Figma, Photoshop, and Adobe Illustrator.
- Developed UX flows and UI icons, buttons, and menus that were easily implemented in Unreal Engine to empower kids to build their own games using AI Agents.
- Designed a logo for the company and game platform representing a playful AI bot that could act as a profile icon for all social media accounts.
- Sketched and sculpted 3D illustrations in Procreate and Nomad, which resulted in an appealing girl player character and a few AI Agents bot designs that looked sleek and fresh and matched the branding colors and elements.
Art Director, Brand Designer, UI/UX Designer
Kwil
- Designed the UI/UX for a blockchain app technology to safeguard freedom of speech on social media.
- Provided design work that led the blockchain database platform to secure significant investment and funding.
- Built a fresh-looking icon pack to communicate innovative social media posting experiences.
- Designed the first branding version and detailed style guides, including logo versions, color palettes, and various branding elements. Branding collateral included business cards and digital assets.
Concept Designer, Toy Designer, Concept Artist, 3D Designer
The LEGO Group
- Built a brand redesign with support for creating de visual brief for the 2018 LEGO Friends TV Show “Friends on a mission”.
- Re-trained comics illustrators to work with industry standard character design specifications of the mini-dolls by organizing, leading and presenting in a 3 day comics illustration workshop.
- Helped the LEGO Friends team re-brand the product and character designs with fresh concepts for 2021, 2022 and beyond.
- Supported the concept design phase for product design and marketing communications (the tv show) for 5 years (2016-2021) in the LEGO Friends team.
Game Art Manager, Lead Production and Marcom, Marketing Artist, Art Director
Yggdrasil Gaming
- Art Managed more than 10 video slot games with hands-on Art Direction, Logo Design, Production Art, Outsourcing, Marketing Art and more.
- Built a B2B design presentation that helped Yggdrasil gaming acquire more investments, more business clients and expand operations.
- Raised the visual design standard for Yggdrasil Gaming studio games to the current industry standard and even surpassed it.
- Successfully used traditional sculpting to improve visual quality of game symbols in the games “Magic Mushrooms” and “Casino Zeppelin”.
Education
Bachelor of Arts Degree in Fashion Design
Bucharest National University of Arts, Decorative Arts, and Design - Bucharest, Romania
High School Diploma in Fine Art and Fashion Design
Margareta Sterian Art High School - Buzau, Romania
Certifications
What is Generative AI?
Certificate in Fashion Design
Bucharest National University of Arts
Skills
Tools
Blender, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe CC, Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator CC, Photoshop CC, Maya, Adobe InDesign, Autodesk 3ds Max, AI Tools, Autodesk Maya, Apple Keynote, Krita
Platforms
Figma
Industry Expertise
3D Illustration, Fashion, Fine Arts
Other
Concept Sketching, Illustration, 3D Modeling, Digital Art, Character Design, 2D Graphics, 2D Design, 2D Illustrations, Visual Design, Creative Production, 3D Art, 3D Design, Logo Design, Presentation Design, Pitch Decks, Presentations, Workshop Facilitation, Workshops, Training Materials, Learning, Animation, Motion Graphics, Branding, Graphic Design, Brand Design, Mobile Design, Visual Storytelling, Website Design, 2D, 3D, Isometric Design, Product Design, 2D Art, Digital Illustration, Visual Identity, Crypto, Web App Design, 2D Animation, 2D Motion Graphics, Animated GIFs, Rendering, 3D Rendering, 3D Character Modeling, Pitch Deck Design, Nomad, Social Banners, Web Marketing, UI Design, Color Theory, Layout, Composition, 2D Games, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Art Direction, 3D Assets, PowerPoint Design, Instructional Design, Training, Training Content, Virtual Reality (VR), Children's Illustration, Typography, Web Design, User Experience (UX), User Interface (UI), Brand Strategy, Infographics, Print, Data Visualization, Brand Guidelines, UX Design, 3D Games, Mobile Game Design, AR Games, Game Design, Collateral Design, Digital Graphics, Creative Direction, Mobile App Design, Landing Page Design, Art, Game UI Design, 3D Character Design, Social Media, NFT Design, Technical Drawing, Technical Illustration, 3D Print Design, 3D Printing, Mascots, Motion Design, Iconography, Visual Brand Guidelines, Sales Pitches, Social Media Content, App UX, Fashion Design, Art History, Nomad Sculpt, Drawing, Art & Painting, Sculpture, 3D Scenery, Game Art, Facebook, Hand Drawing, Concepting, Concept Testing, Hand Drafting, Concept Art, Comics, Comic Art, Comic Books, Creature Design, Conceptual Design, Toy Design, Story Art, Color Concepts, UX Prototyping, Marketing Art, Outsourcing, Non-fungible Tokens (NFT), App UI, Web UI Design, 3D Product Animation, 3D Animation, Social Media Design
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