#seenfromtheair

I love sitting in the window seat when flying, and for a while now, I've been snapping photos from the air. I've actually gathered quite the collection of interesting aerial views, and I thought it was time to gather them in one place and share them - hence, my new Instagram profile seenfromtheair.

If you make me go up to the tenth floor of a building and have me go out to the balcony to look down, I'd be mildly terrified, but put me at the window seat of an airplane and I can spend half the journey looking down at the world in fascination. It is an interesting contradiction, but one I am grateful for because it allows me to enjoy my time in the air fully.

I love how you can see things in a different way when you are up above: the way a city is organized, the progression of low residential construction slowly growing into taller structures and skyscrapers as you get closer to the center, or sometimes the sudden jutting up of the buildings as if out of nowhere, the parks and fields, the rivers winding through or the sandy and rocky seashores. I hope you will enjoy my collection as well and follow it as it grows.

Art Is Everywhere

My college friends Leo (from Brazil) and Ana (from Equador), who both now live in London, were here in Bulgaria for a quick vacation. We traveled around for a couple of days, visiting cities, nature reserves, monasteries and old towns, but throughout the trip, the one trend that emerged - apart from the nice weather, good food and great company, of course - was the beautiful art we encountered everywhere. Whether it was frescoes in a church or graffiti on a wall in the neighborhood of Kapana in Plovdiv, I soaked it up and enjoyed it all. I am loving the way street art can transform a place; the kind of art that embraces the city and is embraced back by it. I get quite annoyed at the aimless scribbles that vandalize buildings, but these works of art are something else.

It's interesting to go from street art to religious art, but they are both gorgeous in their own way. I'd been to the Rila Monastery and Bachkovski Monastery back in the day, but I'd actually forgotten how beautiful these places are. The frescoes are exquisite, and as an artist, I couldn't stop looking. It was a feast for my eyes!

All That Happened in 2014

So, what happened in 2014?

Commissioned art (read more about one of the pieces here)
New job!
Team building in Verona and the Tyrolean Alps
Greek road trip to Thessaloniki, Lefkada, Meteora and Katerini
Two weddings: being a bridesmaid at my friend Lilly's and a guest at the other wedding in Arbanasi  (read more here)
Museum Night in Sofia
One Design Week in Plovdiv (read more here, here and here)
Product training in Osijek, Croatia
Reenactment of the April Uprising in Koprivshtica (read more here)
Day trip to the Krushuna Falls
Holiday parties and reunions with friends
10 year reunion at the American College of Sofia
Some articles about me (read here and here)

and that's just in brief :)

And what to expect (and hope for) in 2015?

More commissioned art.
New products in my art shop (stay tuned!).
Travel, travel, travel! Somehow it always seems like I don't travel enough, even if this year alone I had three trips abroad and many more around Bulgaria. I am kicking off next year with a birthday bash with friends in London, and we'll see how it goes from there.
One Design Week again, and maybe this time I will try to participate in the bazaar if I have time.
More weddings coming up.

And let's hope for:
Healthy lifestyle and lots of movement
More time spent with friends
Only happiness on the personal front

New year, here I come!

One Design Week 2014 - Kapana Logo Deisgn Contest

Those of you who have followed my blog over the years know that I am quite the fan of Sofia Design Week, and I try to attend the forum every year if I can. This year, to my surprise, Sofia Design Week became One Design Week (named after the organizers, One) and was moved to the city of Plovdiv. At first I was annoyed. How dare they move my favorite event of the year to another city!? What are they thinking!? What insolence! I wasn't even sure that I would be able to go at all if a work thing came up for that weekend. 

But then I sort of liked the idea. True, I couldn't spend a full week in Plovdiv browsing the design exhibitions and attending various events, but I had quite a lot of fun taking a weekend to roam the streets and galleries of this charming city. I spend most of Saturday at the Forum, which I will talk about in a separate post, as usual, but I spent my brakes visiting the nearby design shows, walking along the pedestrian zone and enjoying some parmigiano, sun-dried tomatoes, sausages, and canolli at an Italian food fair in downtown Plovdiv. 

Walking along the pedestrian zone, I also had the chance to look at the logo designs of the finalists in the Absolut Kapana logo design contest. For those of you who don't know, Kapana is a 19th century neighborhood in downtown Plovdiv, which used to house various worksmiths, but has at the edge of oblivion as a cultural playground in the past few years. Now the manucipality of Plovdiv is trying to revive the area as an artistic meeting place, and ABSOLUT joined in the fun by organizing a contest to find a new symbol for Kapana, focusing both on its past and on its artistic future. You can read more about the contest on its official website www.absolutkapana.bg

I snapped a few photos of the entries of the finalists (not all of them) with my phone, which I have posted below with a short commentary for each one. Unfortunately, the logo that I liked best (and even those I liked almost as much as that) was not the winner. I am sure that there will be people who don't agree with my opinions, asking who am I to critisize the work of others. Oh well. They'll have to deal with it. After all, these are just my humble opinions:) 

Let me start by talking about my favorite logo. Perhaps it is not all that minimalistic as is the trend in logo design lately, but it captured my attention right away, which is what a logo should be doing in the first place. I think that this logo carries a certain feeling of mysticism that is inherent in the Kapana area, and it does a great job of conveying the uniqueness of the traditional Bulgarian architecture of the Revival in a modern way, without having too many unnecessary details. Also, I think that the origami-like structure (see the tshirt) that is made to resemble the map of the area gives the design an artistic, DIY, craftsy look that I like very much. 

Photo from http://www.absolutkapana.bg/ 

This next logo is nice and colorful, but for me it fell just short of being original, perhaps because I think I have seen a million other logos with the same bright colors and angular shapes online and in stock vector websites. It is visually pleasing, and I do like the design of the bag, but otherwise I felt it was too generic for Kapana. 

I liked this next logo by Elena Kalpakchieva reminds me of the Hudertwasserhaus in Vienna, which is both a good thing and a bad thing. It is good because the logo conveys a sense of cultural richness and the uniqueness of the location with its colors and building shapes, but at the same time it is bad because, well, it evokes the Hudertwasserhaus, which is nowhere near Plovdiv. But perhaps that's just me.

The logo by Boris Bratkov is another favorite of mine, even if it is probably the most abstract in the selection. To me it seems like it is also loosely based on the map of Kapana, and also emphasizes its desired status as a meeting point for diverse artists. Furthermore, I can see a certain letter K shape in the lattice of objects in the logo, which reminds me of the name of the neighborhood. If you go to the contest website and leaf through the finalist booklet, you can also see some other applications of the logo that the designer has presented in terms of themes (astronomy, typography, etc.) that I really liked.

The following logo is very focused on the letter K, and even though the designer explains that it is constructed of architectural shapes typical for the neighborhood, I can’t help but be focused entirely on the K shape. If anything, to me the letter looks like a chair. I guess that there is always a risk when you create a design that can take on lots of shapes depending on how you view it: there is always someone who sees something that you didn’t mean them to see.

This next logo looked interesting to me, and I think that the funnel shape does play into the idea of a “trap,” which is the meaning of the word “Kapana.” It looks like something you fall into and might not be able to or want to get out of. However, you could also argue that it looks like a colorful iceberg or icicle.

The next design by Stoyan Hristov plays with the same means of expression like the logo by Elena Kalpakchieva that I discussed above. I find this design by Stoyan Hristov more appealing, however. There is a certain art deco feel about the typography and colors, though, which does not entirely correspond to the architecture of the area. Still, I think this design was one of my favorites.

Apart from being visually pleasing in its triangular shape, the next logo by Ilia Gruev didn’t seem like it had much to do with the past, present or future of the Kapana area, but that might be just my opinion. The design resembles that of skater apparel, which is nice, but also limits its appeal if we want to real a wider audience. When I read the short description that the designer submitted, I had to agree that he did play around with the idea of a crossroads, but I have to admit that I didn't see that when I first looked at it. Perhaps we are all too jaded by the commercial designs we see each day, and it is hard to look at images without putting them in the context of your own experience.

I did enjoy the design by the team of Mila Ivanova, Tsvetomir Pavlov, and Vassil Krustev, but I do wish that there were options in color. The logo is constructed in such a way as to demand applications in black and white, but I feel like we would lose something of the artistic feel of the neighborhood if we don’t have any color. After I came back to Sofia, I browsed through the contest website, and I saw that they did, indeed, offer an option in color. However, I still felt like there was something small that was missing.

At first glance I found the next logo quite charming: it has a vintage feel and could be viewed as a sort of artistic compass. However, on second thought I decided that while it was pleasing and beautiful, it was too focused on the past and on the specific architectural element of wrought iron and other decorative elements from iron. The designers noticed these elements in Kapana, but I missed them.

The design by Mariska Ferket is decidedly minimalistic, but adds visual interest through colorful patterns, textures, and other graphic elements. Somehow, though, it is only vaguely connected to the atmosphere of Kapana by its shape, taken from the letter K. Looking at the logo, I would guess that it had something to do with design and creativity, but definitely not that it represented the Kapana neighborhood in Plovdiv.

And finally, the winner. It is a good design, constructed out of the letters of the name Kapana and stylized into a square; it is both open, closed, minimalistic and expressive. What I didn’t necessarily like about it was the associations with the art of Mondrian that it brought in me, not because I don’t like Mondrian (which I do), but because Mondrian and Kapana in my mind do not invoke the same feeling and meaning. At the same time, I do agree that the execution is smart and fresh, so even if it is not my absolute favorite design, I definitely see its potential to work wonderfully as a logo for Kapana that is modern, clean, and focused on the future. 

Photo from http://www.absolutkapana.bg/ 

For those of you who didn’t get the chance to be at One Design Week in Plovdiv and look at the design entries in the contest, I do urge you to browse through the official website and check out the explanations of the artists that accompany their design submissions. I always find it very refreshing and enlightening to see the thought and work process of other creatives. Head over to www.absolutkapana.bg And enjoy! 


Disclaimer: No copyright infringement is intended.

A Photo Walk Around Koprivshtica

We've had quite a lot of holidays this month, but since I was quite busy at work, I hadn't actually realized how long of a break we would be having until it was almost upon us. This meant no travel plans, which sucked a little bit, especially when it seems that everyone you know is suddenly going somewhere new and exciting. Oh, well. There's nobody to blame but myself and the Prague trip that some friends and I were thinking of doing but never actually booked. I actually had to work a bit during these holidays, so I guess it was great for my clients that I was here in Sofia, although I would have been happier strolling around Prague's Old Town or, say, enjoying the sights in Sorrento.

Still, some friends of ours called us with the idea of heading to the picturesque town of Koprivshtica for its annual reenactment of the famous April Uprising from 1876 that happened there against the Ottomans, who ruled the area at the time. The town is quite lovely with its Revival architecture, and it has a special place in every Bulgarian's heart because of both its historical significance and the fact that it was the home and birthplace of several important Bulgarian writers and poets. My personal favorite is Dimcho Debelyanov, and I found some translations of his poems here (my favorites are "To Return to your father’s house" and "Remember, remember the quiet yard…", although of course they sound the best when they are read in Bulgarian).

 

The weather here has been iffy all month, and while I like that everything is lush and green, I do not enjoy the constant London-like cloud cover and having to carry an umbrella everywhere. We knew that there was a risk of getting to Koprivshtica and having to run from museum-house to museum-house in the rain, but we decided to hope for the best. We got in early and had a couple of hours of nice weather, walking around the old cobblestone streets and visiting some of the historical places. However, we weren't so lucky as to enjoy a whole day without any rain, and of course it started pouring right at the beginning of the April Uprising reenactment, meaning everyone, especially the volunteers, got completely drenched and all restaurants in the area got fully packed in something like a second.

One of the guys in our party, though, was able to book us a table at a local mehana, so after enjoying some good food and waiting out the rain, we had another couple of hours of nice weather that we used to the fullest to check out all the sights and even buy local sweets and crafty items like my new favorite crooked rustic walnut chopping board. The trip was actually very nice, and apart from the rain, I enjoyed all of it and the opportunity to get out of the city. Strolling along the streets and admiring the beautiful colorful houses was a great change of scenery and, of course, a photographer's dream :).

 

 

 

The locals were also making a huge pot of something between a jam and the English mincemeat, boiling dried apricots, nuts and raisins and selling them fresh from the fire in jars. The dried apricots looked so colorful in their plate that I couldn't resist snapping a picture.

 

And how about this hand-painted sign saying "Cafe-Sweet Shop Delight"? Isn't that just lovely!

2013: A Year in Review

Time for a Year in Review.

Looking back at my blog during 2013, I am sorry to say I did not write much. Even came as far as skipping two whole months - October and November. This sucks. Hopefully, with my MBA out of the way, I will be able to post more.

2013 was both better and worse than 2012. I managed to squeeze in two great trips, which made me very happy in view of the last few years of OK, but not awesome vacations. I toured the US with Pavel for three weeks, attended my five year college reunion, and even passed through London on the way back to see a friend. I also spent a long weekend in Brussels and Bruges with my cousin, which turned out to be quite the pleasant retreat in between school terms.

Something great that I did in 2013 was finally opening that Etsy shop of mine, and actually selling four paintings! I am so glad about being able to earn some money through my art, and this year I will try to paint more and take care of my shop.

As for the negatives: stress, stress, work, stress, stress, stress. I feel burned out, to be honest. Also, as I have often said, stress is bad for your health, literally, and I think that I am suffering some of the consequences. Long days, barely managing to eat lunch at 4 in the afternoon in front of the computer, weekends spent inside writing papers, evenings at the office instead of at dance class, they have all taken their toll on me, so now I need to make sure I have a better balance for my health.

Looking at last year's resolutions, though, I think I did pretty well in that respect. It was the first year when I put them formally in writing on my blog, and it has helped me stay on track. I was not perfect, but then again, who is? So here is my retrospective:

1. Graduate with an MBA. Check! I am sooo done with studying! Having a demanding job and a demanding graduate program was hard as hell, I have to say. Still, the grades from my final class are out, so now I am just expecting my diploma. Yey!
2. Do more of the things I love and connect more with the people I love. Opening an Etsy shop: check! Spending time with people I love: I could have done better on this one, but now that I am done studying, this one will resolve itself.
3. Socialize. OOkay, this needs work. Like, major work. With my job and school, I have become a recluse, which sucks big time. This resolution will be transferred to 2014.
4. Look well-groomed all the time, not just sometimes.  I did OK on this one, I am proud to say. There is still room for improvement, but I am definitely taking better care of my appearance. I am also very happy to say that I have found some great cosmetics and make-up products that work well for me. One of my friends used to say that every woman should have her pamper beauty kit of quality cosmetics, and I think she is right. I feel good using the Bioderma line for problem skin, my Estee Lauder lipstick, my Clinique Superbalanced makeup, my Urban Decay Naked eyeshadow palette, and my latest favorite find - the Chanel Inimitable mascara.

Next up on my blog, expect my 2014 resolutions! Stay tuned!

Bruges Travel Photos

 

Bruges is a fairy-tale little town an hour away from Brussels that, if not for the tourists, would make you feel like you are in a different century. The canals and the houses with little terraces and backyard patios facing the water create quite the serene and romantic atmosphere; in fact, I am all for having one of those terraces and drinking my morning tea and reading a book surrounded by greenery and a beautiful view of the water. I got a little obsessed with that image when my cousin Tsveti and I strolled around Bruges that I wouldn't stop talking about them, and she kept teasing me.

Bruges is quiet and quaint, and I could easily picture myself spending a couple of quality weeks there in the summer painting some watercolors. With its picturesque buildings, the place is a painter's heaven. I am only bummed that I don't really speak French or Dutch. I really like getting immersed in a place, and it's just not the same when you don't speak the language.

I spent quite the pleasant day in Bruges, and while it lacks the hustle and bustle of bigger cities, it will help you relax and unwind from a stressful work week.