The world is charming indeed

I spent three wonderful years (2002-2005) of my life at the International University Bremen. In 2006 it was renamed to Jacobs University, after the great Klaus Jacobs who made a very generous donation to the institution. Here is where this amazing place was:



When I say 70 nationalities, I really mean it. They were not equally represented, of course, but they were there: Germany, Bulgaria, Romania, Poland, USA, Nepal, Bangladesh, India, China, Taiwan, Turkey, Colombia, Peru, Botswana, Kenya, Nigeria, Ghana, Zimbabwe, Jordan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Finland, United Kingdom, Czech Republic, Brazil, Bolivia, Uruguay, Ecuador, Trinidad and Tobago, Tanzania, Sudan, Latvia, Lithuania, Thailand, Sri Lanka, Mexico, Malawi, Phillipines, Mauritius, Australia, Serbia, Albania, Croatia, Italy, Spain, Jamaica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Costa Rica, South Africa, Ireland, Bahrain, Niger, Papua New Guinea, Indonesia, Russia, Hungary, Belarus.

I am writing them on purpose in a mixed order because that is how you encounter people during the day. I think it is very difficult to realize what is international experience until you are set into such a place.

And because I was really amazed that such daily interactions between people from all over the world were made possible so easily, I made a documentary about 8 of my friends at IUB, portraying their daily activities. This was my internship project during my last semester. The movie carries the proud title (courtesy of my mom) United Colors of IUB. It was aired twice on German TV (Offener Kanal Bremen) and has been used multiple times by the university for various purposes. The tagline of the movie is 'The world is charming indeed' :) It is in English and has German and Bulgarian subtitles. It is specially dedicated to my grandmother who was also excited, due to her eagerness to communicate with people from other countries, was trying to learn English at the age of 60.

Here are the participants in this project:

• Marcela Fialova > (Narrator)
• Farah Gammoh > (Personal Portrait)
  
• Artur Palacz > (Personal Portrait)
• Maria Eliana Barona > (Personal Portrait)
• Maria Joy Earle > (Personal Portrait)
• Ognyan Seizov > (Personal Portrait)
• Mayuri Nigam > (Personal Portrait)
• Connie, Mareike and Wiebke Bröker > (Host Family)
  
• Chien Fu (Jeff) Lin > (Personal Portrait, Assistant)
• Assia Rashkova > (Assistant)
  
• Markus Wachtmeister > (German Subtitles)
• Raju Dhital > (Assistant)
  

Thanks a lot, guys!!!

Here is the DVD cover for my movie:




... and this is the DVD label :)



And this is my internship reference in German :)


If you are interested to watch United Colors of IUB, let me know :)

AF Work Green

It has always been a real pleasure for me to work on the marketing of the AF cleaning products. Why? Not only because I love playing with Photoshop. The more important reason is that I believe they are good products. And I also think Freckles has a very good strategy for their sales. This was proved by our award 'Customer of the year 2007), because of the huge increase of our orders to UK.

How they sell so well in Bulgaria? Certainly not because of lowest market price. No. They sell because of their best quality-price ratio. More about their features you can find here.

Nowadays companies are faced with the challenge how to work efficiently while not harming the environment. Some do not look for solutions, but AF International is not one of them.

Inspired by the English brochure of AF - Work Green - I made a Bulgarian equivalent, but I changed the text inside by selecting the things that would be interesting for us, Bulgarians. I substituted the detailed explanations with short, clear sentences, which would not load people's mind, but rather make them intrigued.

Thus the brochure ended up 4 pages instead of 6. This made it easier to print as well.

Here are pages 4 and 1. The title of the brochure is 'Work Green' and the subtitle is 'You also depend on the environment'. I selected the word 'YOU' because I think it makes people more engaged. When they are addressed personally, they can feel their choice makes a difference. With this brochure we are trying to send the message that when you buy and use AF products, you are one step closer to saving the environment.

I selected to put a child on the first page, because children are the future. People are not supposed to be feeling good just now and neglecting the future. A child's face (particularly the close-up) is supposed to remind them that 'Hey, it is your kid that might suffer the consequences of your actions'.
Page 4 educates in a few sentences why people should recycle - a) because our resources are not endless and b) in this way they pollute less. Under this there is a table with guidelines how to recycle AF products.



Pages 2 gives a short introduction about AF International, after which the goal of the brochure is stated: To show AF's engagement for environment protection. Further there is a text titled 'Does warmer mean nicer?', which quickly explains the terms Global warming and Greenhouse effect. On the right I have listed some of the consequences under the title: 'What if we don't take measures?'

Page 3 clearly shows how AF work green, without compromising its products' quality and safety:

• Usage of recycled materials
• Introduction of more pump bottles instead of aerosols, which have a propellent gas (which contains Greenhouse gases)
• Refill sales, so that the plastic covers are re-used multiple times
  
• Transport by water, which reduces the harmful emissions 6-7 times

In order to have a complete set of the Work Green marketing materials, I also made an INFORMATIONAL poster, where all the brochure text is nicely summarized.




So if you are using AF to clean your keyboard or laptop screen, you are working green as well :)

New Release Template for Freckles

Every month the product portfolio of Freckles was increasing in almost all catgories. It was incredibly important to let the customers know about the new products they can order. Again this was a process with random character and with no strategy. Therefore, I sat down and made a New Release template, which was as flexible as the promotion template.

The whole idea behind the template was the beginning of new sales. Therefore, I tried to relate it to the new day. We feel the new day mostly when we get up in the morning, eat breakfast and read the headlines of the newspaper. I wanted the New Release of Freckles to bring that mood.

1. So my title for it was 'Good morning' and subtitle was: 'Another good morning with new products from Freckles'.
2. On the side there was always some typical breakfast 'accessories' and the date.
3. Under the title there were all the categories in exactly the same order as in the promotion template and the web site. However, this time it was only titles with no pictures. I decided this would make the template too crowded.
4. The color I chose after many tried was blue. These two shades of blue suited very well each other and the darker rectangle in the middle is the one supposed to be filled with content.
5. At the bottom there is the same footer as on promotion template.

This New Release is about some new cleaning products: real perfume-scented cleaning wipes for office needs. I always try to be creative in the 'filling' of the blue rectangle and at the same time I try to follow current design trends.



As you may notice, this new release has other breakfast accessories. This time there were too many products to include pictures of all of them, so I decided a simple list will look more orderly. The new release is about products for remanufacturers of toner cartridges: drums, wiper blades, etc.



I was also responsible for posting the new releaes on the web site, so this is a small web banner, which the product category and the brand of the product(s), which was newly added to it. This time the morning sign is the orange juice :)



Here comes one more web banner in English. This time about inks. I like the combination of toaster and newspaper in this one.



Here I have to admit my morning element is missing, but this is only on the web banner. The real new release that was sent by email had it :) Anyway, once I thought for a minute how to represent new DVDs coming to the product portfolio, I immediately made an association with a frisbee game, so I tried to visualize it :)



This is my morning freshness new release template :) Very often design is dictated by the world around and the usual order of things.