BG 17 - With Love for Alexander

My nephew Alexander was born on 17 Nov 2005, the first baby in the family after lo-o-ong time. His coming to our world was a big big event for me and I was feeling the proudest aunt. For weeks he was the only topic of my talks, the only thought in my mind and I felt I wanted to do something special for him.

At that time I was doing an internship at Retro Radio, Sofia. This was my favorite station with very cool people, who really made me feel comfortable there. I was working in the sound editing department and I was all day long mixing and preparing programs, jingles and ads for airing. Still, I had lots of time when I could do something on my own, so I decided to prepare a music collection for Alexander with 17 BG songs, which I liked at that time. Before each song I make an introduction in order to explain why I chose each of them.

It turned out a pretty nice product of mine! It made few people cry because at times my explanations were very sentimental :) This was my Christmas gift for Alexander :)

Here is the CD cover, where all the singers are written down:



Later I realized that this CD could serve one more purpose - if a person from another country was interested to listen to Bulgarian songs, I could just give them that CD. It contained songs of different times and styles. For this purpose, I recorded myself in English. I actually like the English version more.

Once in a few months I listen to it and it makes me feel very good while remembering the exact time my nephew was born :) It was one Thursday evening, I heard the big news right after I came out of my hip hop practice at Alfredo Style...

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 :)